Since its first exhibition opened in March 2020 — and despite the pandemic — NXTHVN has managed to mount show after show that makes great use of its wide gallery walls, whether it’s by nearly covering them or using their white space to make distance between the pieces. Its latest exhibit is the first to give the viewer a sense of having entered and perhaps become a part of the art on display, the first to impart a feeling of bringing people somewhere else, if only for a little while.
That, as it turns out, is part of the point. In “Let Them Roam Freely” — curated by Marissa Del Toro and Jamillah Hinson, and running now at the gallery space in Dixwell through May 15 — artists Hong Hong and Darryl DeAngelo Terrell “focus on the creation of portals through physical movement,” as an accompanying note reads. “A portal is a bridge, a gateway, a tunnel to a different time and space. Hong’s and Terrell’s respective practices evoke gateways linked to personal, communal, and cultural histories.”
Hong and Terrell were commissioned to create their artwork at NXTHVN, with transformative results. Hong, who was born in China but has made her career in the United States, uses traditional Chinese papermaking in her art, sometimes to make monumental pieces. In this case, “Hong enacted an experimental approach different from her traditional method of papermaking, which is usually conducted outdoors in the spring and summer months. She used NXTHVN’s gallery as her studio to make the paper indoors and employed a more tactile process that required her hands to layer the surface of the work,” the accompanying notes read. “Within Hong’s work, we witness the impressions left by her physical application of materials as an expression of relocation, specifically in terms of distance, time, and cultural shift from a place of origin.”
The sense in Hong’s work of a past being played out, a tradition worked and reworked, is palpable even without knowing how Hong made it. Hong’s pieces in the gallery read like maps. The wrinkles and other textures in the paper itself, combined with the colors she has applied, give a sense of how far Hong has traveled, both geographically and personally, to arrive at the present moment.
Meanwhile, “Terrell performed and composed new portals throughout Dixwell and its surrounding areas. Focused initially on the presence of Black history attached to specific locations and events throughout Detroit, such as Belle Isle, Terrell shifted to seeking out broader landscapes with Black leisure, life, and existence embedded into the environment,” the accompanying notes read. “Terrell presents the cultural aftermath of living in a Detroit shaped by the Great Migration by aligning the visible and absent presence of these histories in their search and documentation of portals.”
Again, even without that context, Terrell’s images pack a visceral emotional punch. The artist has a knack for finding evocative places that feel both individual and indicative of other places, larger themes. Their landscapes — houses amid greenery, a playground with no one on it — are both forlorn and touched with a bit of mystery, a sense of wonder heightened by the inchoate forms they place within them. The shapes seem like tumbleweeds made of glitter, or perhaps they’re an image of an object in frenzied movement. This touch of the surreal is both playful and unsettling, more than enough to make the viewer linger longer to take it in.
The transformations Hong and Terrell are interested in are meant, in the end, to create a bit of hope. “This exhibition centers on restorative and joyful practices rooted within the discovery and creation of thresholds to alternate worlds,” the accompanying note reads. “The artists look towards portals as gateways, vessels, or entries (seen or unseen) to escape from or emerge into different realities.” As helpful as they are, the notes aren’t totally necessary in order for viewers to get the picture. With their swirling textures and bold colors, both Hong and Terrell make space for life and action, and open the door for the viewer to join them.
