Manifesto for Mutualistic Tendencies

Work by Kayla Anderson and Dao Nguyen

July 1 - 30, 2023

Opening Reception:
Saturday, July 1st
4 - 7 P

On View Sundays in July
11 A - 2 P
*Additional hours by appointment

In Manifesto for Mutualistic Tendencies, Dao Nguyen and Kayla Anderson attempt to find intimacy with and build care for synanthropic creatures. Prodding at the miniature worlds nested alongside ours, the artists create playgrounds, sanctuaries, and narratives as bridges between human and non-human experience. The exhibition explores the erotic landscapes of others, and our unruly impulses towards sympoesis, or “making with”.

Dao Nguyen is a Chicago-based, interdisciplinary artist. Their name is a homophone for the Vietnamese word for knife. They are the compact, red Leatherman multi-tool your aunt gave you for Christmas ten years ago. On sale at Marshall’s. Versatility and hidden strength in a small package at a discount. Stealthy enough to pass through security checkpoints on three continents on four separate occasions. They can cut, screw, file, saw, and open your beer. Bonus applications include carving miniature graphite figurines, picking locks, and sculpting tofu.

They have exhibited and performed in backyards, bathrooms, stairwells, highways, white cubes, and black box spaces, including Sector 2337, Defibrillator, the MCA, Hyde Park Art Center, Sullivan Galleries, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Brea Art Gallery, The Foundry Arts Centre, and Irvine Fine Arts Center. They received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and was Artist-in-Residence at ACRE, Vermont Studio Center, Ragdale, Elsewhere: A Living Museum, and Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts.

Learn more about the artist
@bluepupae
daonguyen.com

Kayla Anderson participates in the art world as an artist, a critical writer, an uncompensated curator, a precarious administrator, and a roaming educator. Their name sits somewhere between the Hindi word for Banana (kela) and the Arabic word for "let's go" (yallah). In Hebrew it means slim, slipping through the cracks like that stubborn blade of grass now in bloom after repeatedly being missed by the lawnmower.

Their work has been shown at festivals including Onion City Experimental Film Festival (Chicago), HTMlles Festival (Montreal), ART+FILM Festival (Australia); cultural spaces including Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), The Chapter House (Los Angeles), Detroit Center for Contemporary Photography; and published by platforms including Art & Education, Temporary Art Review, Leonardo Journal.

Growing up in San Antonio, Texas, where capitalism and disenfranchisement are more relentless than the sun, they value art as an arena for non-strategic modes of thinking, feeling, and communing with others. They spend their spare time staring lovingly into the eyes of insects.

Learn more about the artist
@kaylanderson12
kayla-anderson.com