Subversive Dreams: Allison Maria Rodriguez
2020 | Subversive Dreams an exhibition featuring digital video animations by Cuban-American visual artist Allison Maria Rodriguez showcased on the windows of the Media Art Gallery.
Subversive Dreams: Allison Maria Rodriguez
August 1 - August 30, 2020
The exhibition is featured as a Special Project in the AREA CODE Art Fair, New England’s first art fair dedicated exclusively to regional artists. It features work from the “Legends Breathe” series, an ongoing project based on interviews with different female-identified and non-binary artists about childhood fantasies that assisted them in overcoming trauma.
This project speaks to a strategy of survival activated through the power of creativity and invokes the imaginary, a force that is socially embraced in youth, but suppressed in adulthood. Each of the six videos explores these individual fantasies, highlighting their uniqueness, their commonalities, and their inherent power. One primary element evident in all the fantasies is a harvesting of strength and transcendence through a deep connection to the natural world.
The work is populated by endangered species and threatened habitats, conveying a link between the trauma and healing of our planet to that of the individual. Subversive Dreams reclaims the concept of fantasy as a tool of empowerment for social change, not as a method of escapism. Declared worthless in a capitalist society centered around white patriarchal notions of productivity, fantasy and play are the building blocks in creating something new - they are exercises in resistance and in the possibility of reimagining our world.
This project was funded in part by a grant from The CreateWell Fund.