The Blue Galleries presents “Invisible Family (Portraits): Smoke is a Prayer Transforming the Truth”

Wednesday, January 17 – Friday, March 22, 2024
Gallery hours: Tuesday-Friday 10 am-5 pm
Blue Galleries at Center for the Visual Arts, 1110 S Capitol Blvd, Boise, ID

The Blue Galleries presents “Invisible Family (Portraits): Smoke is a Prayer Transforming the Truth,” a project described by artist Alex Wiseman as a weaving of time and space, of histories rendered invisible and of futures to be determined by the capacity of our hearts to reckon with them. The artist’s Chippewa (Ojibwa / Anishinaabeg) relatives have woven baskets for centuries; likewise, this work functions as a basket, embodying and containing reminders and artifacts that stitch together this question of our shared future.

Admission to the Blue Galleries is free and open to the public.

About the artist: Alex Wiseman FKA Gary (they/them) was born in SE Portland, OR, and grew up in the forests, high deserts, and intertidal zones of the Pacific NW. In 2015, Alex began exploring wildfire ecology and the creative possibilities of charcoal collected from wildfire sites. Alex’s work with wildfire and charcoal has been exhibited nationally, featured in High Country News and Oregon Arts Watch, and included in “Fire Season,” a monograph examining art and wildfire.

Alex explores themes of integration, balance, and patterns and conditions of suffering that help or hinder our ability to connect with ourselves, other humans, our animal siblings, plant relatives, and the biosphere. Much of Alex’s recent work centers around being separated from their indigenous (Chippewa/Ojibwa) birth family and what it means to inherit and hold cultural wounds and resilience without ready access to external cultural support.

For more information on the Blue Galleries and other upcoming exhibitions, please visit their site here.