Ely Center Leaps Into Virtual Space

Generalova Kate’s Revelation is part political cartoon, part street manifesto, simple and provocative. It has an effect even without Kate’s explanation, conveying the raw immediacy of today’s headlines and a sardonic, intriguing distance from them.

“It became a ​“revelation” for me when the news began to report that doctors are subjected to aggressive behavior by the urban population,” Kate, who lives in St. Petersburg, Russia, writes in an accompanying statement. ​“This is due to the fact that people panic and are afraid of being infected by doctors.” Revelation, she explained, was made in solidarity with health workers, who help protect so many from the virus but are vulnerable themselves.

Kate’s piece is one of dozens from around the world in the latest show at the Ely Center of Contemporary Art.

With its gallery space on Trumbull Street closed to the public due to the Covid-19-related shutdown, the Ely Center made a strong pivot, threw its virtual doors open to the world, and has created a show — called ​“What Now?” — that echoes with the voices of artists from four continents and just up the street, and is full of revelations, loud and quiet.

“What Now?” can currently be seen on the Ely Center’s website and will grow as more submissions come in.

For Debbie Hesse, the Ely Center’s board vice president and gallery director, the center is ​“doing the same thing” as it did before the pandemic, ​“just different delivery tools.” As soon as the shutdown went into effect, ​“we tried very quickly to move everything to digital. The Nike spirit of ​‘just do it’ — get it out there, and then reflect on how to do it better.”

The Ely Center has been hosting Zoom studio critiques on Sundays; the first few have drawn about 20 people ​“working in their studios and starved for interaction,” Hesse said with a laugh. Happy hours it has hosted have also turned out to be a draw.

But what to do about the gallery and the Center’s upcoming exhibitions? ​“The most obvious was to start with the exhibit we had up that nobody got to see,” Hesse said. That would be ​“Witchy,” which opened March 1 and was supposed to run until April 19; with the gallery closed, the artwork for that exhibit is still on the Ely Center’s walls. The Ely Center staff set about digitizing that exhibit, which can now be seen on the Ely Center’s website. The Ely Center then developed an online gallery called Digital Grace that houses shows by Joy Pepe and Margaret Roleke. A more lighthearted show, ​“Your Pet Here,” is an open-call show in which artists can submit artwork focusing on the animals in their lives.

And then there is ​“What Now?” ​“It feels really urgent to do something that’s more responsive of this time,” Hesse said.

The question the exhibition’s title poses is as much one for the Ely Center as it is for the artists in the exhibition. ​“What does it look like as an exhibition online?” Hesse said. ​“How is it different from an exhibition in real space? As a curator, I am trying to find an equivalent to moving through a space slowly with pauses.” She meant the physical experience of entering a room and first just seeing glimpses of the art, taking it all in, then focusing on specific pieces as they catch the eye. ​“How do you move people slowly through a virtual space?” Hesse said.

As the Ely Center developed a (quite successful) format for its website, Hesse also turned to the opportunities that not being tied to the gallery space created. For starters, she said, ​“the opportunity to create some highly curated exhibitions, and some where we just ask a question and put it out there — anybody, whether they’re artists or not, can connect and be able to participate.” Not just in New Haven, or even New England, but all over the world.

Many of the artists in ​“What Now?” address the question by focusing on the mask and its often jarring visual effect when it’s put on people’s faces.

New Haven-based artist Sarahi Zacatelco plugs into the mask’s association with radical politics and street protests, seeing the disruption created by the pandemic as perhaps creating greater opportunities for broader social change.

Jenkins Okpokpor, an artist based in Benin City, Edo State, Nigeria, uses the mask to connect present events to older traditions, highlighting how looking to our pasts and to our cultures can help us get through. ​“My painting is about a noble figure: His Royal Majesty, Omo N’Oba N’Edo, Uku Akpolokpolo, Oba Ewuare II (Ovbi’Ekpen N’Owa) of the great ancient city of Benin at Ugie Ewere, the annual Igue Festival,” the artist writes. ​“Ugie Ewere holds at the beginning of the Benin yearly calendar. In the early hours of the Ugie Ewere, young people across every quarter in Benin run around every street bearing firebrands to ward off evil and bad luck from the dying year. When the day is bright, everyone plucks the ewere leaves to symbolize an incoming prosperous year.”

“What to do now is to never stop seeking for blessings even in our Pains just as we do during Ugie Ewere,” Okpokpor continues. ​“The more you look, the more you think of not just what you’re seeing but about yourself, your existence. In such turbulent times, there is still hope: As we pray, let’s ​‘Keep Calm, and Stay Home’ until Covid-19 dies. It’s time to eat fear back and become stronger until we win.”

Azin Moradi, an artist based in Iran, uses the idea that superheroes typically wear masks to show the deep, astonishing strength in everyday people as they help each other get through the pandemic. He pulls all the humanity he needs out of his subjects’ faces, even if they need masks to cover half of those faces to survive.

Connecticut-based artist Margaret Roleke conveys the chaos the pandemic has created.

While Susan McHale, also based in Connecticut, finds a moment of eerie quiet in it all, like the eye of the storm.

How did people from all over the world come to be in the exhibit? ​“We got the word out and they came to us,” Hesse said. ​“Most of the artists found us through our open call for global responses posted on social media. We did some outreach via social media and invited a few artists we came across whose work seemed relevant.”

“I think the exhibit is building momentum as each artist reposts and shares their submission on our site to their respective circles,” she continued. ​“It has been rewarding to see all the international submissions pouring in. This is the silver lining of the current crisis.”

Hesse said the Ely Center has exhibits scheduled through June. ​“We have the opportunity to work with artists globally,” Hesse said. ​“We can create a whole new art community.” She is optimistic not only about being able to continue doing exhibitions, but also about what artists may do with the new platforms suddenly available to them.

“It’s just learning all the new tools as well,” Hesse said. ​“How do you use them as more creative platforms?” In response to social distancing measures that are likely to be with us for the foreseeable future, she said, ​“I want to bring up a drive-in movie theater concept, because that’s one of the things that we’ll be able to do. There’s billboards to use. You can still experience art outdoors. You just can’t be close to people.”

“I don’t think it’s temporary,” she said about the changes the pandemic is bringing. ​“We’ll find ways to adapt. It’s going to offer something new and people won’t want to go back. And then,” she added, ​“human connection will be that much more important and meaningful.”

She might even see the glimmers of ​“the birth of a new humanism,” she said. ​“All of our vulnerabilities will be exposed, and we’ll have a new way to connect.” She sees artists increasingly working together, citing a project in which artists, in support of the Post Office, mailed artwork to each other to collaborate on and posted online about the work they were doing. It was about ​“connecting to each other and being activists at the same time,” she said.

“I feel hopeful,” she added. ​“The Renaissance came out of the Dark Ages. It’s a ripe time to be creative.”

Meanwhile, she and other Ely Center staff continue to check on the Ely Center’s building on Trumbull Street. The arts organization rents the space from ACES and Hesse expects that it will continue to do so. A fundraiser planned for April did not happen, but ​“we’ve gotten sponsors for exhibitions. We’ve gotten a couple grants. We have a lot of paid interns,” the funds for which come from other sponsoring organizations. ​“And we only have one part-time paid employee,” Hesse said. She has ballpark plans for what happens if they are able to reopen the gallery to the public in the early fall. ​“There are a lot of shows that we can nimbly do,” Hesse said. She has solo shows in mind and other ideas in the works. ​“A lot of people want to do it,” Hesse said.

But she doesn’t expect the Ely Center to simply hit the reset button. ​“That’s going to seem so strange … the hassle,” she said with a laugh, of setting up a physical gallery show. She doesn’t expect that capacity restrictions will necessarily allow the gallery to hold large-scale live events like full-on art openings in the space, and ​“it’s much harder to maintain audiences between receptions and special events. It’ll force us to find other ways,” Hesse said. But ​“if you can stay lean and mean, you can weather it.”

The considerations for the Ely Center, after all, are the same considerations every visual arts space has to contend with, from Yale’s galleries, to Artspace, to the Artspace-organized City Wide Open Studios, which typically draws an audience of thousands in the fall.

“Could it happen in a different way? In a parking lot? Outside? Letting in people 20 at a time?” Hesse said. She doesn’t know what the future will look like for the arts scene generally, but ​“I feel hopeful and willing to ride the wave and allow things to keep evolving.” Constraints can breed creativity. And she has little doubt about the desire of artists to continue to produce art and reach an audience.

“It’ll give people new energy, and new ways to share it,” Hesse said. ​“That’s what we want to capture when we get the chance, on the other side, when we’re face to face. Even if we’re six feet apart.”