Black Sun: Rini Yun Keagy with Miljohn Ruperto

February 17 – April 16, 2017

Black Sun: Rini Yun Keagy with Miljohn Ruperto considers human life, the earth, and its objects through an investigation of a soil-dwelling pathogenic fungus, Coccidioides immitis, and its associated disease, valley fever, in California’s Central Valley. The exhibition’s focus is Ordinal (SW/NE), the 2017 experimental documentary film directed and produced by filmmaker Rini Yun Keagy in collaboration with visual artist Miljohn Ruperto.

Black Sun: Rini Yun Keagy with Miljohn Ruperto transforms elements of the film Ordinal (SW/NE) into a rich sensory environment. The gallery is occupied by film stills, live-action video, animated sequences, soundscapes, and physical objects used in the film’s creation. The collaborators’ wide-ranging influences span diverse eras, cultures, and ways of ordering the world. Forging links among ancient Assyrian cosmology and mythology, contemporary research into the spread of valley fever, the novel and film The Grapes of Wrath and the Depression-era dust bowl, and the films The Exorcist I and II, the exhibition and film explore relationships among land use, global climate change, human health, and non-human entities.

EVENTS AND PROGRAMS

Opening Reception: Friday, February 17, 7–9 p.m.

Ordinal (SW/NE) Film Screening and Conversation: Thursday, April 6, 7:30 p.m.

RELATED PROGRAMING

Bentson Critical Group Panel, Walker Art Center: Saturday, February 25, 7 p.m.

Please note: Flaten Art Museum will be closed for Spring Break March 18–26; open over Easter April 14–17.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Rini Yun Keagy
Rini Yun Keagy received her M.F.A. in Film and Media Arts from Temple University and her B.A. in Geography from University of California, Berkeley. Keagy’s moving image practice in video and 16mm film is multimodal and research-based, and investigates race and labor, disease, and sites of historical and psychological trauma. Screenings and exhibitions of her work include: Souvenirs from Earth International TV Project, Cologne; Light Industry, Brooklyn; Raum für Projektion, Kaiserslautern, Bergen, Olso, Buenos Aires; Mind TV/Media Independence, Stella Elkins Tyler Gallery, Philadelphia Film Festival, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia; Cellular Cinema, Minneapolis; Wits School of the Arts, Johannesburg; Festival Images Contre Nature, Marseilles; Berlinale Talent Campus Editing Studio, Berlin. Keagy is based in Minneapolis, MN.

Miljohn Ruperto
Miljohn Ruperto received his M.F.A. from Yale University in 2002 and his B.A., Studio Art from University of California, Berkeley in 1999. Recent exhibitions featuring his work include: Nervous Systems, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Afterwork, Para-Site, Hong Kong; The As-if Principle., Magazin4 Bregenzer Kunstverein, Austria; 2014 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Janus, Dunlop Art Gallery, Regina Public Library, Saskatchewan, Canada; Ulrik Heltoft and Miljohn Ruperto, Voynich Botanical Studies, Thomas Solomon Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Made in L.A., The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; and Picture Industry (Goodbye to All That), organized by Walead Beshty, Regen Projects, Los Angeles, CA. Ruperto lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.

Stills from the film Ordinal (SW/NE), 2017, courtesy Rini Yun Keagy and Miljohn Ruperto.

SPECIAL THANKS

This exhibition is generously supported by the Glen H. and Shirley Beito Gronlund Annual Exhibition Series Fund. Special thanks to the Museum of Antiquities, University of Saskatchewan. The film is produced in part with support from Jerome Foundation Film, Video and Digital Production grant 2016, Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative grant 2016–17, Carleton College Arts and Technology curricular initiative grant 2015, REDCAT, and Todd Madigan Gallery at California State University Bakersfield.

Rini Yun Keagy is a fiscal year 2016 recipient of an Artist Initiative grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.