State of Emergency Features Kenyon’s Notepad project

Matt Kenyon’s Notepad will be shown with works by Ai Weiwei, Mel Chin and more in State of Emergency, opening Jan. 23 in Davidson, NC.

Curated by Lia Newman, the works of art in State of Emergency depict both real and imagined disasters. The exhibition features 18 contemporary artists working in a variety of media. Artists: Ai Weiwei, Miguel Aragón, Mel Chin, Joelle Dietrick, Eben Goff, Naoya Hatakeyama, Miki Kato-Starr, Tatana Kellner, Matt Kenyon, Kate Kretz, Mario Marzan, Richard Misrach, Jason Mitcham, Matthew Picton, Robert Polidori, elin o’Hara slavick, Katherine Taylor, and Paul Villinski.

The Notepad is an act of protest and commemoration disguised as a stack of ordinary yellow legal pads. Each ruled line, when magnified, is revealed to be microprinted text enumerating the full names, dates, and locations of each Iraqi civilian death on record over the first three years of the Iraq War. A printed edition of 100 notepads, was covertly distributed to US representatives and senators, as a sort of Trojan horse, injecting transgressive data straight into the halls of power and memorializing it in official archives. SWAMP is now working on a new edition that takes into account the American incursion into Afghanistan; with the disclosure of confidential information by WikiLeaks.

State of Emergency
Opening Reception: January 23, 2014, 6:30 – 8:30pm
Belk Visual Arts Center, Van Every/​Smith Galleries
Davidson College
315 N. Main St., Davidson, NC 28035