social engagement – Art Spiel

Social Pharmacy (Installation View), Skövde Art Museum, Sweden

Jody Wood uses mediums of social practice, video, photography, and performance in her art practice. On a brisk January afternoon in Brooklyn, we discussed the joys of transformation and the metrics to determine success and trauma in healing. Wood’s recent work re-imagines routines in poverty support agencies, aiming to sculpt power dynamics and relationship networks and resist stigmas surrounding poverty. Her solo show Collecting Health at Open Source Gallery features Social Pharmacy (2021-ongoing), a project that redefines public health as a collaborative performance and asks what healing rituals can be found in simple acts of generosity between members of society and by utilizing the natural world around us. Collecting Health at Open Source Gallery runs from February 10 to March 22, 2024.

In Dialogue with Diana Schmertz

Diana Schmertz has always been interested in systems that people create to organize what they perceive in the world around them — based in science, religion, psychology, philosophy or politics. The artist says that no matter how cerebral a system or an idea may appear, it is always experienced through our physical senses and in order to communicate balance between reason and senses, she paints imagery of the body expressing emotional understanding juxtaposed with systems of verbal and/or mathematical reasoning. In Domestic Brutes, the women group show at Pelham Art Center Diana Schmertz shows a painting installation. Her virtual artist talk hosted by PAC is scheduled for October 8th.