The word “reclamation” implies taking back or seizing—a repositioning of where control lies. Representative Maxine Waters was acutely aware of this when she famously “reclaimed her time” during a 2017 House Financial Services Committee meeting. Yet the reigning queen of memes’ reclamation of speaking time points to a much larger need for an active repossession of space, time and power, especially on the part of people of color grappling with the precarity rampant in so many facets of everyday life. Reclamation: of time, of agency, of narrative explores the acts of taking back or repositioning various forms of control.  In the respective practices of artists Amanda Assaley, Mandy Messina, and Fidencio Fifield-Perez this theme is apparent. 

Assaley manipulates domestic objects, in this case a sofa, and mobilizes a Baroque sensibility while pulling in Arab Christian motifs. There’s a certain desperation in these mashups. Her work orchestrating a dialogue that pushes the aesthetic forms from the realm of object or tool into that of an emotional regulator. Assaley temporary removes the onus of emotional control from the individual and places upon the physical object. 

For Fifield-Perez, anxiousness and restlessness have become commonplace as he moves through the immigration process. These feelings manifest in the fastidiousness of hand drawing and monoprinting offset an omnipresent looming sensation. His hands are never idle, becoming a unique measure of time all based on creative practice and output. Making has become not only a source of comfort, but also a new way in which time can be perceived and experienced. 

Through five short stories Messina illustrates the rehabilitation of their native language, Afrikaans, by millennials. Ninety six tiles made in the Dutch style (the colonizer’s style) subvert the narrative of South African monuments and the co-opting of a “Brown language” into a tool of oppression. This piece, an intimate monument, is a retelling of history and a contemporary recording of the effort to reclaim a language.

Featuring the work of artists:
Amanda Assaley, Fidencio Fifield-Perez , and Mandy Messina

ACRE Projects (Chicago, IL)
August 2-30, 2019

Episode 705: Amanda Assaley and curator Adia Sykes on the Bad At Sports Podcast