In Conversation
A. E Chapman with Magdalena Dukiewicz, Bang Geul Han, and Georgia Lale

UNCOMMITTED at Stand4 focuses on civic literacy, engagement, and social matters which affect and reflect the daily lives of folks within Bay Ridge. This local lens also overlaps with national issues surrounding the 2024 presidential election. In particular, these artists examine concerns related to health care, migration, conflict, tensions between state and federal voting rights, the role of technology, surveillance, and advocacy. Art Spiel invited the curator of the show, A.E. Chapman, to elaborate on these concerns and their relevance within each of their works in the exhibition.
A.E. Chapman: Bang Geul, Magdalena, and Georgia, your works in UNCOMMITTED deal with a wide range of issues central to our current socio-political climate. You engage with these concerns across an equally diverse set of practices and materials.
Bang Geul, in Warp and Weft #4 and Warp and Weft #2 – Toilet, Warp and Weft #02 – Reading, and Warp and Weft #03 – Sleeping, a series of photographs documenting a performance that you did, you employ legal texts as your base material. While Magdalena, your installation work in the show, Interactivity, invites participants to activate the sounds of pre-recordings of police radio channels, ambient street noise recorded during the pandemic, and a data sonification made from data on surveillance cameras in NYC gathered during that time, and Georgia, your works Alabama and 404,770 on Inauguration Day incorporate donated hospital gowns.
Can you each talk a bit about the political (and inherently personal) significance of these issues, materials, and approaches in your individual works in the show?
BGH: Each work weaves legal opinions and laws regarding women’s reproductive rights together with policies and court rulings concerning immigration, voting rights, class, and race. For example in Warp and Weft #2, the warp consists of anti-immigrant presidential orders and agency directives issued in 2019 and 2020, with the weft consisting of anti-abortion bills introduced during the same time period. In both a more philosophical sense as well as a far more literal sense, these legal structures exist and flow through one another within the material form of the tapestries.
MD: The COVID-19 pandemic underscored our local and global interdependence while also highlighting social inequalities. This context inspired the use of surveillance data to reveal how we are constantly observed and listened to in public and private spaces without our consent and knowledge. And how this information is used and manipulated oftentimes targeting people of color and immigrants. By offering participants the chance to “watch back” through accessible police radio frequencies, the installation invites reflection on accountability and observation.
GL: Both works were made during the Covid-19 pandemic. I started performing with hospital gowns since my cancer diagnosis in 2019, that was when I came in personal contact with the fragmented and commercial healthcare system of the United States. The extremely high numbers of people that died from Covid-19 reflect on how insignificant our health and well being is in America.


Bang Geul, your practice spans across a wide range of media, materials, and approaches yet still feels very focused and distilled, eliciting a clear impact that also has many complicated layers in both the making, the content, and context. In True Threat, an AI generated video of Justice Roberts plays on a loop. To me this looping quality relates to the weaving work that you do with your tapestries. Does that resonate with you?
BGH: Absolutely. I enjoy switching between high and low tech, haptic and mediated modes of art making. It’s not too much of a stretch to see weaving as an algorithmic, code-based practice, yet there still tends to be a gendered distinction between so-called low-tech craft and high-tech media. I’m working in a space that consciously blurs and complicates these boundaries. In some of my digital works, there’s often a giddy repetitious quality, like an unruly wind-up toy that won’t stop, whereas the woven pieces tend to function as materializations of obsessive process and repetition.
Magdalena, how do the concerns brought to the fore in the work you have presented in UNCOMMITTED intersect with ideas that you have worked with in previous pieces in your overall body of work?
MD: My goal has always been to create experiences for my audience. I prefer installations because they engage multiple senses simultaneously. Recently, I’ve focused on transforming abstract ideas into tangible sensory experiences, bridging conceptual understanding with sensory perception. Through immersive environments, I invite individuals to interact with artwork using all their senses and cognitive faculties, addressing timely socio-political topics. I blend experimentation with organic materials and innovative techniques like data sonification and conductivity to create interactive installations and 3D objects.
This brings together multiple temporalities and places. What are your thoughts on this sort of time and space play?
MD: My installation thrives only in the presence of an audience, designed for engagement and participation. It highlights the interconnectedness of our actions within society. It requires a physical presence, action, and intention. Participants trigger various sounds by touching elements, creating a cacophonic orchestra, and becoming part of a unique ecosystem through their body’s conductivity.
The installation’s ephemeral 3D elements symbolize an entangled social net, encouraging not just interaction with the artwork, but also among the audience members. This interactivity emphasizes societal reliance and the fleeting nature of social interactions.
Georgia, you work with the iconography of both the United States flag and the flag of Greece. Can you discuss the concerns and significance these symbols have in common? When you are working with these very recognizable symbols, how do you approach reworking these immediately identifiable forms?
GL: For me, the flag of the United States and of Greece both stand for democracy. And democracy is a continued fight to maintain and expand our individual and collective rights. As a citizen of both nations, I have the responsibility to express myself through those symbols, in order to address core social issues.
On August 10th, you will perform DEFENSE outside in front of Stand4 Gallery where you will read the entirety of the United States Constitution. You have performed this work once before in 2022 at The Border Gallery. Can you speak a little bit about the experience performing that work then and what you are excited to explore in this second iteration? How do you feel the political and social landscape then compare or contrast to the current moment now?
GL: Unfortunately, what we get to experience and understand is that people with wombs are second class citizens in the United States. Womxn don’t have the right to decide for their own body. Our own anatomy enslaves us! The Supreme Court, on June 24, 2022, decided that we are reproductive machines! The United States Constitution does not mention women at all, though it references men a lot. The US Constitution is not perfect but it is the most democratic constitution of our times. Democracy is a work in progress, but we cannot progress without knowledge. The biggest intake I got from performing DEFENSE is that most American-born citizens are Constitutionally illiterate.
Finally, Bang Geul, what do you feel is the Truest Threat within our current socio-political climate?
BGH: Apathy

All photos courtesy of the gallery.
UNCOMMITTED curated by A.E. Chapman, features works by Francisco Donoso, Magdalena Dukiewicz, Bang Geul Han, and Georgia Lale is on view at Stand4 Gallery Through August 10th 414-78th Street Brooklyn, NY 11209 @stand4gallery Upcoming UNCOMMITTED programming: Artist Panel with Bang Geul Han and Georgia Lale August 3, 2024 3pm; Closing Reception featuring DEFENSE performance by Georgia Lale 11am-3pm
About the curator: A.E. Chapman byaechapman.com / IG ash_ash_ash