Suspended Matter

Exhibition OVERVIEW

Berkeley Art Center presents Suspended Matter, a group exhibition curated by Patricia Cariño Valdez and featuring four Bay Area artists, Julia Goodman, Asma Kazmi, Laura Arminda Kingsley, and Jenifer K Wofford. The exhibition borrows its title from the event of a disruption in the environment — such as erosion or flooding due to rainfall — that mixes together detritus and particles, creating a new composition of matter that doesn’t dissolve. Suspended Matter refracts our contemporary moment, examining the sentiments and materiality of these unsettled times. Through sculpture, video, photography, and paintings, the artists consider the intimate connections with ourselves, others, and the domestic objects that shape our surroundings.

About the Artists

JULIA GOODMAN creates low- and high-relief handmade paper sculptures. Goodman’s work holds strong throughlines with the history of rag paper as she gathers, sorts, tears, soaks, and pulps fabrics. She transforms discarded bedsheets and t-shirts into malleable pulp to press against brick walls, concrete, textiles, woodcarvings, flat surfaces, and even her own hands. By working with fabrics that exist in close proximity to our bodies — objects that hold personal histories both mundane and profound — she highlights layers of relationships and caretaking, the love and loss that shapes our lives. Goodman earned an MFA from California College of the Arts (2009) and a BA in International Relations and Peace & Justice Studies from Tufts University (2001). She studied art at Santa Monica College (2002–2006). Recent exhibitions include: National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington D.C.; Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, CA; San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA; DePaul Art Museum, Chicago, IL; Poetry Foundation, Chicago, IL; Salina Art Center, Salina, KS; Saint Mary’s College, Notre Dame, IN; California College of the Arts Hubbell Street Gallery, San Francisco, CA; and the Berkeley Art Center, Berkeley, CA. Her residencies include JB Blunk Residency, Inverness, CA; Recology SF, San Francisco, CA; Creativity Explored, San Francisco, CA; and Salina Art Center, Salina, KS. Goodman lives and works in Berkeley with artist Michael Hall and their young child. She is represented by Euqinom Gallery in San Francisco, CA, where she will have a solo show in November 2021.

ASMA KAZMI is a research-based artist who combines virtual and material objects to explore simultaneity. Her work involves long-term engagement with cities, architecture, plants, animals, stones, and other matters to locate vestiges of relations forged by the legacies of colonialism and post-colonial contexts. Kazmi was born in Quetta, a city in Pakistan near the border with Afghanistan. She works between the US, India, Pakistan, China, Europe, and the Middle East to create installations that are legible in various cultural contexts. Asma Kazmi’s selected exhibitions include Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture (Shenzhen, China); San Francisco Art Commission Gallery; the Espacio Laraña, University of Seville, Spain; the Commons Gallery, the University of Hawaii in Honolulu; Faraar Gallery (Karachi, Pakistan); Elaine L. Jacob Gallery, Wayne State University (Detroit, MI); Wattis Institute of Contemporary Art, (San Francisco, CA); San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art (San Jose, CA); Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (Salt Lake City, UT); Queens Museum of Art (New York, NY); Galerie Sans Titre (Brussels, Belgium); LACE (Los Angeles, CA); 18th Street Arts Center (Santa Monica, CA); Contemporary Art Museum (St. Louis, MO); among others. Kazmi is the recipient of many grants including the Townsend Fellowship; the Hellman Fellow Fund award; the BCNM Seed Grant; Al-Falah Grant; the Fulbright to India; and Faculty Research Grant, CalArts. Kazmi is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Art Practice and the Berkeley Center for New Media at UC Berkeley.

LAURA ARMINDA KINGSLEY is a Swiss-Dominican-American artist based in Zurich. In her work Kingsley looks at the world through the lens of deep time, giving equal importance to; the microscopic and the macroscopic; folklore and science; and the archaic and the new, to offer the viewer a non-hierarchical perspective witch which to reconsider their place in the world. In 2004 after completing her Associates in Fine Arts and Illustration at the Chavón School of Design in La Romana, Dominican Republic, Kingsley migrated to New York. She completed her BA from Hunter College, New York, in 2012 and obtained her MFA from California College of the Arts in San Francisco in 2014. Shortly after, she moved to Zurich, Switzerland. Her work has been exhibited in the Museo de Arte Moderno and Altos de Chavón in the Dominican Republic; the Asian Art Museum, Southern Exposure, Luggage Store Annex, Heron Arts, Oliver Art Center and Isabelle Percy West Gallery in the Bay Area; Taller Boricua Gallery, Thomas Hunter Project Space and Sidney Mishkin Gallery in New York, and Casa Escute, the Interamerican Gallery, Art Gallery of the Humanities Dept. of the University of Puerto Rico and the Department of State in Puerto Rico. In 2021 she received the Art Studio Award of the City of Dübendorf and the LOCUS Micro-Grant. Her work has been featured in various publications including Time Out London, Womanifesto Magazine, Denkbilder Magazin, SMoCA’s Blog, The Mass and Let’s Get creative by the Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose. In 2021 her work can be seen in Sculpture in the City (London), 22. Triennale Grenchen (Grenchen), the CICA Museum (Seoul), the LOCUS Digital Gallery (Chicago), Pineapple Black Arts (Middlesbrough), Kunst im GZ (Regensdorf), and the Aargauer Kunsthaus (Aarau).

JENIFER K WOFFORD is a San Francisco-based artist and educator whose work plays with notions of hybridity, authenticity and global culture, often with a humorous bent. She is also one-third of the Filipina-American artist trio M.O.B. Her work has been exhibited in the Bay Area at the Asian Art Museum, Berkeley Art Museum, Oakland Museum of California, YBCA, San Jose Museum of Art, Southern Exposure, Kearny Street Workshop. Further afield, she has shown at New Image Art (Los Angeles), Wing Luke Museum (Seattle), DePaul Museum (Chicago), Silverlens Galleries (Philippines), VWFA (Malaysia), and Osage Gallery (Hong Kong). Wofford is a 2017 recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant. Her other awards include the Eureka Fellowship, the Murphy Fellowship, and grants from the San Francisco Arts Commission, the Art Matters Foundation, and the Center for Cultural Innovation. She has also been an artist-in-residence at The Living Room (Philippines), Liguria Study Center (Italy), and KinoKino (Norway). Wofford is part-time faculty in Fine Arts and Philippine Studies at the University of San Francisco. Born in San Francisco and raised in Hong Kong, Dubai, Malaysia and the California Bay Area, Wofford has also lived in Oakland, New Orleans, and Prague. She lives and works in San Francisco.

About the Curator

PATRICIA CARIÑO VALDEZ is an independent curator based in Los Angeles, CA. Her passion is to inspire curiosity about material culture, and her vision is to strengthen the community through art collecting, exhibitions, and public programs. Currently, she works as an Associate and Artist Liaison at Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles. Previous to this role, she started Cariño Valdez Art Advisory. From 2018 to 2021, she developed engaging virtual and onsite public programs for the Oakland Museum of California, and from 2016–2018, she served as the Curator and Director of Public Programs at the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art. Valdez was appointed by the Mayor of Oakland to serve as a member of the Public Art Advisory Committee in 2017 and served two terms. Valdez has curated exhibitions and public programs for the Asia Society Texas (Houston), Erica Broussard Gallery (Santa Ana), Exploratorium (San Francisco), Contemporary Jewish Museum (San Francisco), San Francisco State University, Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts (San Francisco), and Pro Arts (Oakland). She has participated as a lecturer, speaker, and panelist at the Asian Art Museum (San Francisco), San Francisco Arts Commission, Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, Living Room Light Exchange (San Francisco), Stanford University (Palo Alto), University of San Francisco Thacher Gallery, Cal State University East Bay, Central Features Contemporary Art (Albuquerque), and Arizona State University. Valdez earned her BA in History of Art from the University of California, Berkeley, and her MA in Curatorial Practice from California College of the Arts.