Brooklyn-based installation and sound artist Mekko Harjo’s collaborative installation with Jordan Hill, ‘a point a place a home’, is on view at UAA until Jan. 23.
“The work is an expression of our collaboration, and in fact, the structures themselves are to-scale amalgamations of our separate living spaces,” Harjo said. “We consider the show to be a celebration of our creative community.”
Harjo has lived in New York for the last 15 years, but grew up on the west coast in Los Angeles. For more than a decade, he was primarily a studio and documentary photographer before he began to rethink his career path.
“At the time, I was feeling that photography was very consumptive, and I wanted to make things,” Harjo said. “I wanted to have a productive practice, and I got really into ceramics. First, utilitarian ceramics, then sculptural ceramics.”
After a few years of building up his ceramics portfolio, Harjo applied and was accepted into the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe, NM. He’s since graduated with his Master of Fine Arts.
“I had already shifted from photography to ceramic making, and as I was going into grad school, I wanted to explode my practice and experiment,” Harjo said. “IAIA is very experimental, and the mentors involved in that… they’re all these contemporary Indigenous artists who we are very lucky to have access to.”
Harjo began to expand on those ideas and eventually began combining all of his interests; multimedia, sound, video and the idea of space. Then, around a year ago, he was invited by UAA professor Erin Gingrich to have a show at the Kimura Gallery on campus.
Harjo says that Gingrich essentially paired Jordan Hill and himself up. Gingrich was familiar with both of their work and thought they would collaborate well together. The two had never met until they got to Anchorage for the opening reception in November.
Harjo and Hill reached out to UAA students to collaborate with, and asked for artists who had personal work that had never been exhibited before. Ceramics student Lejonique Trim and poet and singer Jessie Heller were part of the opening performance. Heller read poetry and sang around the installation, Harjo activated the space with an electro-acoustic piece, and Trim mic-ed up a bucket of clay constructed a pot in real time.
“Each of these performances generated remnants, which are in the gallery and are now part of the show until January,” Harjo said. “We liked thinking of this installation as a space to hold people and hold potential for future gatherings and have the remnants of past gatherings within it… A work of art is never finished, it’s in this process of development.”
Harjo says it’s not your typical gallery installation where art is hung up on a wall. He says it’s “a very weird show,” and hopes to confuse and excite anyone who walks through.
“I think this show hopefully makes the audience think about the context around a work of art, that’s something I’m very interested in as an Indigenous artist,” Harjo said. “Thinking of art as this living thing, that is living and breathing and constantly morphing, and is influenced both in shape and meaning, by the people and the culture around it.”
Harjo and Hill’s installation, ‘a point a place a home’, is on view in the Kimura Gallery at UAA until Jan. 23.
Sam Davenport is a writer residing in Anchorage. She's a leo and a plant-person, and loves spending quality time with her dog, Aspen. She is a Real Housewives fan and has been called a Bravo historian.
