Frozen World of the Familiar Stranger

Frozen World of the Familiar Stranger
Exhibition dates at KADIST, San Francisco: September 21–October 1, 2016
Exhibition dates at KHOJ, New Delhi: December 8–January 11, 2017

Opening: Wednesday, October 12, 6–9pm

Works by: Andrea Bowers, Cao Fei, Steffani Jemison, Chris Johanson, Farideh Lashai, Rodney McMillian, Sahej Rahal, Rachel Rose, Tejal Shah, Himali Singh Soin, Kartik Sood, Ho Tzu Nyen, Adrián Villar Rojas, and Maya Watanabe

Frozen World of the Familiar Stranger reflects upon the uncanny sensation of the ultra-modern global megalopolis, and the increasing sense of alienation we encounter in our flattening world. Elements of this condition are characterized by the stabilizing ambitions of modernization, and the brutal acceleration of global capitalism, which reveal a complex tension between permanence and contingency. Every city contains variants of this tension, while also remaining bound to a particular history, culture, geography, economy, and memory that inform their own urban core.

The exhibition builds upon social psychologist Stanley Milgram’s 1970s theory of “The Familiar Stranger” to consider urban apocalyptic symptoms: physical, environmental, behavioral, psychological, and social. Through works exploring isolation, confinement, collapse, transience, anxieties, and fantasies of inhabiting collective urban space, Frozen World offers an almost satirical point of view on the human condition and what it means to be alive together in the present, and in the constructed future.

The exhibition is a curatorial collaboration between KADIST and KHOJ International Artist’s Association in New Delhi.