THREE EXHIBITIONS AT NSU ART MUSEUM

Rose B. Simpson and Vanessa German: IT INCLUDES EVERYONE, EVERYWHERE, ALWAYS

This exhibition presents a visual conversation between two leading emerging artists that have profoundly influenced one another. Rose B. Simpson (b. 1983, Kha’p’oe Ówîngeh / Santa Clara Pueblo, NM; lives and works in Kha’p’oe Ówîngeh / Santa Clara Pueblo, NM) is a Native artist descended from a long matrilineage of Tewa tribe artists. Her work integrates ancestral Pueblo pottery traditions with metalwork, automotive design, performance, installation, music and creative writing. Vanessa German (b.1976, Milwaukee, WI; lives and works in Asheville, NC) is a self-taught citizen and LGBTQIA+ artist and activist, working across sculpture, communal ritual, and immersive installation. Both artists address structural racism, heteropatriarchy, and the persisting reverberations of resource extraction in a post-colonial world.

Cici McMonigle: Creatures for the Divine

The exhibition showcases Cici McMonigle’s ((b. 2001, Tianjin, China) exuberant and colorful paintings of fabulous beasts and monstrous creatures derived from Chinese and American western fables and tales, and a new series of painted wood cutouts inspired by traditional Chinese folk toys, which symbolize peace and prosperity. She notes that her work is a “distinctive and exaggerated blend of cultural spiritualism.”

For McMonigle, these creatures emerged from her exploration of her multicultural experience as an artist of half-Chinese and half-American heritage. Although South Florida is known for its diversity, McMonigle stands out as part-Chinese, as Asians represent less than two percent of Miami’s population. She contends that through her paintings she can create characters with ten legs, a thousand horns, and giant teeth, that still feel familiar and relatable to a broad audience. These paintings not only celebrate the coexistence of her diverse background, but also invite viewers to embark on their journey of storytelling.

Jacqueline de Jong: Vicious Circles

Vicious Circles is the first exhibition in the United States dedicated to artist Jacqueline de Jong (b.1939, Hengelo, Netherlands, d. 2024, Amsterdam, Netherlands). The exhibition considers the perpetual theme of war and protest within the artist’s oeuvre; whether in paintings dedicated to the rebellious spirit of rock ‘n’ roll, or haunting portrayals of the ongoing war in Ukraine, De Jong remained focused on the present, reacting to the now.

Vicious Circles questions how the present relates to history, and the ways in which De Jong’s decades of engagement with current events forces viewers to confront the harsh reality of humanity’s endless repetition of violent trauma, and the critical nature of art as a form of resistance.

The show takes its title from a painting within De Jong’s mid-1960s series, Private Lives of Cosmonauts. In this body of work, the artist took on the subject of the Cold War and what came to be known as The Space Race. The image juxtaposes the interior experience of an astronaut with the grand historical narrative of man’s entry into the cosmos. The candy-colored, spiral composition plays with the fantastical notion of looking down upon the hubbub of the world from a whirling, zero gravity perspective. Among the revelry, however, is the underlying threat of nuclear destruction that defined the Cold War era. Nothing can be taken at face value in the art of De Jong, duality is always at play, humor and solemnity must coexist.