MMoCA Announces a New Multimedia, Documentary-Based Exhibition Examining the Roles of Destruction in Rural Areas
Jojin Van Winkle: The Destruction Project
On View October 17–December 20, 2020
Jojin van Winkle: The Destruction Project Press Release
MADISON, WI–The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art announces its upcoming exhibition The Destruction Project by Wisconsin-based artist Jojin Van Winkle. The documentary-based, multimedia video and audio installation will explore the complex roles of destruction and its counterpoints of resilience in rural areas.
The Destruction Project is a multi-channel audio and video installation with accompanying photographs that unpacks the concept of destruction in three chapters: destruction as entertainment, destruction as rejuvenating, and destruction as irreversible. Through the use of theatrical imagery and multimedia, including soundscapes of field interviews with women living in rural areas and their relationships with ‘destruction’ in their lives, Van Winkle is able to capture the beauty visible in both loss and renewal as well as examine deeply the way destruction and growth intersect with choice, change, and violence to impact our everyday existence.
“Destruction has value. I grapple with this concept. It’s not something I want to admit to myself.” says Van Winkle. “For me various processes of destruction are extensions of conscious and unconscious paradoxes. Beginnings that are really endings. The joy of something being transformed into something else recognizable yet different. The pain and the scars of violent separation. The sadness associated with loss of what was, mixed together with fear and hope of what might become. The singular moments of beauty and sometimes humor in the chaotic mess of it all. This project is an attempt to address these challenging co-existences, whether personal, societal, natural or unexpected and their relationship with aspects of rural life.”
Van Winkle is a visual artist, filmmaker and writer whose work is centered around the practice of listening, with a focus on resilience, environmental stewardship, and human rights, as is evident in The Destruction Project. Prior to her upcoming exhibition at MMoCA, Van Winkle has found success in a variety of video, film, soundscape and installation projects and has participated in artist residences both internationally and in Madison, where she served as the artist-in-residence for the Madison Children’s Museum, collaborating with Museum staff and over 500 local children on a multi-media permanent installation, Stair Trek: Core to Cosmos. From 2008-2012, in conjunction with her artist residences, Van Winkle choreographed new experiences>used materials, a large-scale, site-responsive, collaborative art installation series with accompanying blogs and soundscapes, displayed at institutions across the country.
Van Winkle was also an associate producer for the documentary The Land Beneath our Feet, (2016, 60 min.), which won several awards after its 2017 screenings at festivals and institutions across the world, including the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and the European Film Festival in Monrovia, Liberia. She was the US-based cinematographer for the PBS/Independent Lens documentary In the Shadow of Ebola, (2015, 27 min.), a film that follows a Liberian family displaced through the Ebola crisis. This film too won several awards after screenings in international and national festivals as well as at several medical-based events, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, and at the American Public Health Association – Global Public Health Film Festival.
In 2000, 1999 and 1998, Van Winkle received Community Arts Assistance Program grants from the Department of Cultural Affairs in Chicago. She recently received an Equity in the Classroom— Implementation Subgrant via the 60Forward in Wisconsin supported by the Lumina Foundation. In addition, she has received faculty grants from Carthage College and Piedmont Virginia Community College.
Van Winkle earned a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) and a Master of Arts (MA), both focused on film and video, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Prior, she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) focused in sculpture and painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She serves presently as an assistant professor of art at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where she teaches foundations and new media and acts as program director for Carthage College’s new Photography and Film and New Media Program.
Generous support for Imprint Gallery programming has been provided by Willy Haeberli in memory of Gabriele Haberland. Van Winkle’s research and work for the exhibition is supported in part by two Faculty Research, Scholarship and Creative Grants from Carthage College ( 2019 and 2020) and a 2019 month long unplugged artist residency at Arteles Creative Center in Haukijärvi, Finland.
About MMoCA
Housed in a soaring, Cesar Pelli-designed building, the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art provides free exhibitions and education programs that engage people in modern and contemporary art. The museum’s four galleries offer changing exhibitions that feature established and emerging artists. The Rooftop Sculpture Garden provides an urban oasis with an incredible view. MMoCA is open Thursdays and Fridays from 12 pm to 8 pm, Saturdays from 10 am to 8 pm and Sundays from 10 am to 5 pm.
Contact:
Marni McEntee
Director of Communications
Cell: 608-515-0137
marni@mmoca.org
Images
Attribution
Jojin van Winkle, The Destruction Project – Derby Dashes 1 – Summer/ Lodi WI, 2017. Digital print, 18 x 24 in. Courtesy of the Artist.
Attribution
Jojin van Winkle, The Destruction Project (video still), 2020. HD video. Courtesy of the Artist.
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Jojin van Winkle, The Destruction Project – Derby Dashes 15 – Summer/ Monroe, WI, 2019. Digital print, 18 x 24 in. Courtesy of the Artist.
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Jojin van Winkle, The Destruction Project – Perttu Uncle’s Russian Truck in Car Graveyard – Summer/ near Haukijärvi, Finland, 2019. Digital print, 18 x 24 in. Courtesy of the Artist.
Attribution
Jojin van Winkle, The Destruction Project – Derby Dashes 11 – Winter/ Bloomer, WI, 2019. Digital print, 18 x 24 in. Courtesy of the Artist.
