Jean-Marc Superville Sovak. a-Historical Landscape: Albany/On to Liberty
The Hurleyville Performing Arts Centre is honored to host artist and educator Jean-Marc Superville Sovak discussing his “a-Historical Landscape” series. This conversation will be moderated by Tal Beery.
“a-Historical Landscapes” uses as its source original 19 th century landscape engravings typical of the representational idealism of the Hudson River School, with the addition of details that may at first glance appear incongruous such as images of captured fugitive slaves and Underground Railroad caravans. The images for these additional “edits” originate from anti-slavery tracts and illustrated abolitionist literature and are in practice very close in historical contemporaneity to the original printed engravings. “a-Historical Landscapes” are a decolonizing strategy to interrogate art historical conventions and to serve as a corrective by filling the absences left by those dominant narratives.
Jean-Marc Superville Sovak
Jean-Marc is a multidisciplinary artist whose work deeply involves the community around him. Jean-Marc has collected and altered 19th century antique prints, built and toured a Tiny House of Steel, staged a neighborhood portrait drawing-as-oral-history storefront, constructed a brick wall with a built-in hole, produced videos of his doppelgangers and given guided tours of NYC housing projects. His work has been exhibited at the Samuel Dorsky Museum, the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Socrates Sculpture Park, Manifesta 8 European Biennial. He is the illustrator of several award-winning novels by Julie Chibbaro. He lives and works with Julie in Beacon, NY.
Historical Landscape Series
http://www.supervillesovak.com/drawing.html