Q&A [Question and Artist]: SUPERCOLLIDER

No Song Unsung made its opening on July 22nd and will close September 15, 2023. This exhibition is a collaboration by the Brea Gallery and SUPERCOLLIDER — a SciArt Ambassador Fellowship with other women, non-binary and trans artists based in LA. We are here to ask and learn more about the curatorial practices and personal connections to the artistic mission behind SUPERCOLLIDER.

Meet the Visionary Curators and Artists

Isabel Beavers and Naomi Stewart

A Time to Tear, A Time to Mend Curated by Naomi Stewart and Isabel Beavers, Wonzimer Gallery

[Brea Gallery]: Can you introduce us to what SUPERCOLLIDER is?

[Isabel]: SUPERCOLLIDER is a collective of women, trans and non-binary artists who create exhibitions around themes related to art, science and technology. Everyone who participates with SUPERCOLLIDER is essentially creating it - our artists inform the concepts for our exhibitions, and the way we imagine and build community from the ground up with artists in LA and beyond.

Methods for Descrying, Intimate Eyes That Listen Installation by Paige Emery. The installation location is at the lookout outside of the 100″ telescope at Mt. Wilson Observatory.

[Naomi]: SUPERCOLLIDER believes in a future where art, science, and tech collide to inspire social and environmental responsibility. We bring together leading artists, scientists, and the public to celebrate the future and reframe the challenges facing our world. In this process, we build accountability networks and creative connection across disciplines and locations to spark new skill sets for humanity: collective perseverance and collaborative action.

Our mission is to drive persistent conversation about the future of our home planet. Out of sight, out of mind can no longer define our pursuit of progress. We bring such topics in-sight and in-mind, with art at the forefront.

SUPERCOLLIDER creates immersive science+art experiences—including (inter)nationally curated satellites for pop-ups, festivals, and research institutes—that vividly reclaim our future and explode our present.

We are a womxn-run organization and are committed to fostering a community of art-sci-tech practitioners in Los Angeles that actively seeks inclusivity. While our leadership and SciArt Ambassador Program are open only to womxn, womxn-identifying, nonbinary, and trans individuals, we welcome all folx to participate in our residency programs, and curate all folx into our exhibitions.

A Time to Tear, A Time to Mend, 2022. Featuring works by Mich Miller, Paige Emery, Cara Levine, Maya Livio, Jody Zellen (in photo). Photo by Ian Byers Gamber.

[Brea Gallery]: How have you impacted this collective in your own individualistic way?

[Naomi]: I connected with the Founder of SUPERCOLLIDER, Richelle Ellis, in 2020 and curated my first show at the Mothership HQ titled “The Emergent” with SciArt Ambassador Maru Garcia. Since then, I have been an active contributor, serving as a SciArt Ambassador and Curator in 2022 for the exhibition titled “a time to tear, a time to mend” at Wonzimer, alongside Artistic Director, Isabel Beavers, and most recently as an Assistant Curator to Isabel for “No Song Unsung” at Brea Gallery.

In addition to curations, I have participated in panel discussions like ReFest 2022. My curatorial work centers on art practices, poetry, and narratives as vehicles to interrogate systems of inequality and histories of injustice, and to help facilitate collective healing and joy in its midst. Working with SUPERCOLLIDER has allowed me to explore these themes and discover new ways to intersect art, social justice, technology, and environmentalism.

Installation View, Extraction: Earth, Ashes, Dust; Artists L to R: Beatriz Jaramillo, Matthew Brandt, Ignacio Perez Meruane

[Isabel]: I have been working with SUPERCOLLIDER since January 2020, and have been Artistic Director since 2021. I have curated or co-curated a suite of exhibitions in the last few years including “DEEP FAKE”; “Extraction: Earth, Ashes, Dust”; “FEELERS”; "a time to tear, a time to mend”; “No Song Unsung”; and the “Grammar of Animacy”. I have also facilitated the last two cohorts of SciArt Ambassadors. SUPERCOLLIDER is an incredible community to be a part of and I am very grateful for my colleagues and all we have done together.

No Song Unsung, SUPERCOLLIDER x Brea Gallery. Located at the Brea Gallery. Left: ‘What is 500 million years to a shark tooth?’ by Isabel Beavers. Right: Berfin Ataman, Eli Joteva

[Brea Gallery]: Can you describe your artwork in the show? Where did the inspiration come from and how does it translate in the No Song Unsung exhibition?

[Isabel]: My piece in the show is called ‘What is 500 million years to a shark tooth?’. This is from a larger body of work titled ‘The Abyss’ that explores the impacts of deep-sea mining on deep ocean creatures. It is made of many pieces of broken glass. I tried to create an image within the field of glass pieces that references an explosion.

The piece speaks to violence caused by deep-sea mining. I tried to show this through the rough edges of the glass, and arrangement of the pieces in a vertical field–much like the vertical space of the water column in the deep ocean. It is called ‘What is 500 million years to a shark tooth?” because polymetallic nodules often grow around a shark tooth or piece of coral that fell to the bottom of the ocean hundreds of millions of years ago.

We now mine them for technologies that are created, broken, and discarded in a very short amount of time. I am thinking about the sense of time embedded within these objects, and how fast our needs and technology seem when juxtaposed against that time scale. I hope that audiences will consider the relationship between our extractive industries and the creatures that will be affected by these practices.

Tambaqui1 by Moara Tupinamba, as part of The Grammar of Animacy

[Brea Gallery]: What upcoming projects can we expect from you or SUPERCOLLIDER?

[Naomi]: SUPERCOLLIDER’S next satellite show “The Grammar of Animacy”, will be on view at Idyllwild Arts (52500 Temecula Rd, Idyllwild-Pine Cove, CA 92549).

“The Grammar of Animacy” takes its title from Robin Wall Kimmerer’s chapter and is a collaboration between SUPERCOLLIDER and Idyllwild Arts. This multimedia exhibition brings together the work of eight artists who strive to challenge Western myths and cultivate visions that intertwine embodiment, queer mythologies, indigenous modes of knowing, and ethical relationships with ecology and technology.

The exhibition is co-curated by Berfin Ataman, Isabel Beavers, Yara Feghali and Kira Xonorika of SUPERCOLLIDER and is on view September 29 – October 26, 2023.

[Isabel]: For my personal art practice, I am exhibiting a few different projects at Earth Edition, a festival at Cal Arts September 15-24, 2023. The exhibition FUTURING is exploring ways that we can envision new futures in relation to the earth and sustainability.

I will also be exhibiting work related to deep-sea mining at Blue Hour, an exhibition at AltaSea curated by Kim Abeles, this October 14. Lastly, I will exhibit work from “The Abyss” next year at the Oceanside Museum of Art for “CURRENTS” an exhibition curated by Cassandra Cobleentz for the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time: Art x Science. 

Tiare Ribeaux + Qianqian Ye, Kai Hai Included in upcoming exhibition The Grammar of Animacy in collaboration with Idyllwild Arts.

[Isabel]: SUPERCOLLIDER also has another show coming up at Idyllwild Arts Academy’s Parks Exhibition Center. It opens September 29. I was a co-curator on this project along with Kira Xonorika, Yara Fehali and Berfin Ataman. The exhibition is called “The Grammar of Animacy” and explores indigenous worldviews in relationship to land, mythology, and ecology: “This multimedia exhibition brings together the work of eight artists who strive to challenge Western myths and cultivate visions that intertwine embodiment, queer mythologies, indigenous modes of knowing, and ethical relationships with ecology and technology.”

Thank you Isabel and Naomi for answering our questions and giving us more information about SUPERCOLLIDER! This has been an amazing collaboration to feature at the Brea Gallery, and you can find/keep up with members in SUPERCOLLIDER at this link here.

We will be hosting a closing reception Friday, September 15th from 4pm-6pm to celebrate and say goodbye to the art in No Song Unsung. It is free and open to the public; and will have light refreshments and live music to close the party up!

We are open Wednesday - Sunday

12pm-5pm

General Admission $3

See these incredible works on display now through September 15, 2023.

Brea Gallery will be closed for installation,

September 16 - October 13.