Main Space

October 22 - Dec 11, 2022
Home Meaning: Nuveen Barwari, Rubens Ghenov, Sean Heiser, and Maria Walker
Opening Reception: Saturday, October 22nd 5-8pm
Curated by Zahar Vaks

Ortega y Gasset Projects proudly presents Making Home, a four person show featuring the work of Nuveen Barwari, Rubens Ghenov, Sean Heiser, and Maria Walker, curated by Zahar Vaks. This show explores ideas of home through various material narratives. Navigating themes of what it means to be part of a diaspora, finding a community, building a family, being an immigrant, and finding home within being transient. 

The following passages are gleaned from the way the artists describe their work in their own words.

Nuveen Barwari uses a specific shiny material that she uses as a layer underneath a Kurdish dress. By bringing this layer on top, she can use “shininess” as a level or layer of confrontation to disrupt the colonial gaze. When dealing with shine in textiles, the viewer's reflection becomes obscure and disjointed. Occasionally Barwari will stretch and force the fabrics and Kurdish dresses out of their original, flowy state to make them “behave” like traditional paintings. Stapling the fabric to the stretcher bars feels like an aggressive and violent act. Perhaps the tension of the fabric being stretched from different directions is a form of assimilation and a result of diasporic living. 

Rubens Ghenov’s work lies at the intersection of fact and fiction where painting, storytelling and sound comprise the preponderance of his work. Both their vernacular and potential inexorably constitute the architecture of his praxis. As an immigrant turned naturalized citizen, Ghenov has become accustomed in localizing the past and the present in this precarious juncture where fact coupled with memory compose fiction.

Sean Heiser’s paintings are made using both flashe and acrylic paint, on either linen or canvas. They are generally constructed in layers, similar to the way an imaging software would operate. The mediating craft of a hard edge shifts his relationship to the paintings; the act feels closer to building than the action of the brush. Flat expanses of interweaving color form broader compositional structures within the paintings and serve as a sort of stage or machine for the interplay of abstraction and representation.

Imagery within the paintings is sourced from day-to-day life, lived experiences, and a separate writing practice. While he is interested in the paintings oscillating between the formal, abstract, personal, and imagined, at the most basic level my practice looks to process thoughts and experience into a language of color, form and architecture.

Maria Walker’s works in the show are Window Paintings, built to the same dimensions as the windows in her studio. Each painting focuses on a specific point in time in Walker’s life. Hung together, they visualize a passing of time, a shift through phases of the moon or cycles of living. The works are painted flat with thin layers of paint applied one color at a time over the entire surface. In some areas the watery paint sinks into the raw canvas, while in other areas it collects on top of a gessoed surface, the colors separating out into a visible spectrum. The movement through the window is made physical in Cold Moon, Open Window. Here added cross-bars and the weaving back and forth of the canvas parallel the movement of air through the open sash of a window in winter. 

Home Meaning explores the way artists may use observation, memory, experimentation, research, risk taking and play as modes of material narratives that may embody, communicate, or question the meaning of home. 

Opening October 22, 2022, and running through December 4 2022, the exhibition will feature paintings, mixed media work, and soft sculptures.

Some reflections from the curator:
If one listens closely, they may hear Homie as Home Meaning is spoken out loud. It is not a coincidence that I share histories, experiences, and friendships with the artists in the show. 

I was an undergraduate at Tyler School of Art while Maria Walker was a grad. Walker’s generosity to share her work and give feedback along with the other grads solidified Tyler as a place of growth, serious rigor, and discourse. I was eager to learn from the grad students and their interactions with me played a significant role in how I approach my practice. Years later, seeing Walker’s work at her openings in New York became a beacon. Her intuition, risk taking, and commitment was an inspiration to me as I was searching for an art community. 

Rubens Ghenov was at Tyler before Maria Walker and I. We share stories of the old campus and of working with the incredible faculty there. We met briefly once before I came to Knoxville as the artist in residence at the University of Tennessee. We became fast friends discovering  that there were multiple times  we were in the same room together without knowing it. From Dona Nelson’s opening to a Stones Throw concert. I became close with  Rubens and the rest of the Painting and Drawing faculty. This was also where I had the absolute pleasure of working with my amazing graduate students. This included Sean Heiser and Nuveen Barwari. Ghenov, Heiser and Barwari, along with the rest of the welcoming community at UTK created a home for me over those five months.

I have a vivid sensory recall of the incredible Kurdish meal Nuveen put together. Bulgar, chicken rice balls in the shape of mini footballs that her mom put in the freezer. Tomato vegetable eggplant soup that Nuveen made in the oven accompanied by lentil soup and homemade buffalo chicken ranch dip. I can still conjure the magnificent Feijoada that Rubens and Lynne cooked for me. Finally, the magical chicken soup Sean cooked for me. I can still taste the Homey medley of chicken, rice lemongrass, Bok choy and mushrooms! These meals, along with our conversations about art, music, film, places, memory and people provided a feeling of home while being away from home. 

Artists Bios

Nuveen Bawari was born in Nashville, TN and spent her adolescent years living and attending school in Duhok, Kurdistan. Barwari received a Bachelor of Science in Studio Art from Tennessee State University in 2019 and a Master’s in Fine Arts from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville in 2022.  Barwari’s expansive practice includes installations; writing; performances; collecting and repurposing artifacts from her community such as photos, rugs, fabrics, and Kurdish dresses. Barwari has worked with and completed projects with the Frist Art Museum, Oasis Center’s Art and Activism Series, Coop Gallery, and McGruder Social Practice Artist Residency. Barwari’s work has been featured in national and international publications including Nashville Scene, Native Magazine, New American Painting, Yahoo Nachrichten Deutschland, Rudaw, Gazete Duvar, Botan Times, and Caravel Magazine. She has exhibited in numerous locations such as Kurdistan’s first Fashion Week (2018) in Erbil, Kurdistan region of Iraq, the University of Michigan (2019), Sugar Gallery (2019) in Fayetteville, Arkansas, Zg Gallery (2020) in Chicago, 21c Museum Hotel (2021) in Nashville, Tennessee, NGBK Gallery in Berlin Germany (2021) and Duhok Gallery (2021) in Duhok, Kurdistan. Barwari is represented by The Red Arrow Gallery in Nashville, TN and is currently based out of Albany, NY. 

Rubens Ghenov was born in São Paulo, Brazil and immigrated to the US in 1989.  He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Tyler School of Art (1999) and his Master of Fine Arts from Rhode Island School of Design (2010). Ghenov has shown nationally in both solo and group exhibitions at Geoffrey Young Gallery (MA), TSA Brooklyn (NYC), Woodmere Art Museum (PA), and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In 2013, he co-curated with Dona Nelson the 72nd Annual Juried Exhibition at the Woodmere Art Museum. Ghenov has been featured in Title Magazine, Bomb Magazine, and the Philadelphia Inquirer.  His work is included in many prominent collections, including Fidelity Investments and the Museum of the Rhode Island School of Design. He is currently a professor of painting and drawing at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Sean Heiser, is a Malaysian-born artist relocating to Knoxville from Milwaukee, WI. He received his BFA from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and was a recent residency fellow at Anderson Center, MN. He has shown work nationally, with recent solo and two-person exhibitions at The Alice Wilds, Milwaukee, WI, and Real Tinsel (with Georg Frauenschuh), Milwaukee, WI. His work has been published in Duomo IV, and New American Paintings Issue 131 (back cover).

Maria Walker received her MFA in Painting from Tyler School of Art and her BA in Visual Art from Brown University, where she also completed a Capstone Project in Poetry. In 2011 she attended the Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture. Walker’s work has been published in the Smithsonian Magazine and reviewed as a Critic’s Pick on Artforum.com. Her paintings and poems have been featured on numerous other sites including The Brooklyn Rail and New American Paintings, and her work has been shown widely in the United States, including in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Provincetown. Walker lives and works in Bronx, NY.

Curator Bio

Zahar Vaks born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan is a visual artist and curator. His practice navigates the various levels of fluency in painting, performance, violin playing, rhyming, and video. He lives in New York City. He has had exhibitions in New York, Philadelphia, Columbus, Las Vegas, Houston, Vienna, on the island of Svalbard in Norway, and, most recently, in Beijing , China. Zahar participated in the Robert Rauschenberg Residency, the Galveston Artist Residency; and in the Artists in Residence (AIR) program at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville in 2021. He holds a BFA from Tyler School of Art, and his MFA from The Ohio State University.