Artspace New Haven’s newest exhibition “Dyschronics,” features four distinct artists whose works all have one thing in common: They don’t want to conform to chronology.
The idea of Dyschronics was formally proposed by Spanish writer Miguel Á. Hernández-Navarro, who suggested that marginalized groups could operate within a “fourth time,” antagonistic to the Western “chronos” and “kairos” conceptualizations of linear and present time. Curator Laurel V. McLaughlin said that prior to Navarro’s proposal, migratory time was generally viewed as a “mal-adjudgment.”
In contrast, Carolina Caycedo, Emily Jacir, Baseera Khan and Tsedaye Makonnen — the four artists represented in this exhibition — embody Navarro’s notion of time as a form of resistance against displacement, injustice and exclusionary Western ideologies.
Upon entering the exhibition, visitors are first met with the “Reading Room, on purpose” — a work by Baseera Khan. Khan’s work focuses heavily on the idea of rest, inviting onlookers to sit down, take their time and operate within the space in their own way. This first piece, a literal reading room, is furnished with bean bag chairs situated about round tables. Each table contains pens and reading materials, including those titled “The Darker Nations” which visitors are encouraged to sit with and annotate.
The second portion of Khan’s showcase, featuring the work “Karaoke Spiritual Center of Love” and the “Psychedelic Prayer Rugs” series from 2017, also invites viewers to interact with the exhibit by sitting in it. The cushions in this second section are constructed from multi-colored fabrics situated on top of a LED light display. As the light’s colors change, Khan alludes to the idea that each “bodily experience” in this space is incomparable to the next. The idea that one’s time and experiences are not one's own, but rather necessary for a larger productive mechanism, is a product of Western culture that Kahn seeks to erase in this work, McLaughlin said.
The exhibition’s second artist, Carolina Caycedo, approaches the removal of Western time mainly through her critiques of “extractivist” efforts. Her work, “Serpent River Book,” which is accompanied by a video titled “To Stop Being a Threat and To Become a Promise,” documents her time spent with Indigenous people in Colombia, Brazil and Mexico. Caycedo highlights how the Indigenous people utilize the river systems in a way that is contrary to capitalism-driven forced extractions.
The video portion of Caycedo’s showcase emphasizes these divergent ways of interacting with the land through a split screen effect. One side contains a straight-forward, non-linear documentation, while the other presents a distorted, optically illusive sequence of images. Caycedo said that the two screens represent ways “of understanding and relating to nature.”
“These two views of the world have clashed, and continue to clash through processes of colonization, slavery, damming and resistance, spirituality, solidarity,” Caycedo said.
Emily Jacir, who currently works and lives in Palestine, also utilizes both physical and digital media in her work “letter to a friend.” In this 43 minute documentary made over the span of 10 years, Jacir explores the concept of what McLaughlin called “anticipatory time” as she recalls writing to a friend in anticipation of a crime occurring at her family’s generational home in Palestine. This home, situated between occupied territory and a displacement camp, witnessed much of the region’s violence. In a way, McLaughlin said, this documentary is a video “diary,” recounting scenes as Jacir remembers them, rather than in a linear fashion.
In an unfortunate materialization of the artist’s fears, her family home was destroyed by fires shortly after the documentary was released. Jacir had been using her home as an art center for local Palestinian artists, and now all proceeds made through the film’s viewing go toward rebuilding it for this same purpose. In addition to the film, Jacir exhibits photographs that depict scenes from within the documentary itself. These more digestible snapshots of her film highlight gentrification and her own experiences with living in hostile territory.
As viewers round the final corner of the gallery, the work of Ethiopian artist Tseydaye Makonnen is displayed. Makonnen’s section of the exhibit, entitled “Astral Sea I, III, and IV,” contains four videos and three textile works. McLaughlin said Makonnen’s works “typically focus on forced migrations,” including the Atlantic slave trade and the current migration crisis of North and East Africans to Europe. Yet another artist utilizing multiple mediums, Makonnen’s videos show how she has used the textiles she makes in performative protests. She has performed with her textiles in several locations, notably in London in front of Buckingham Palace and the Houses of Parliament, signaling once again the rejection of colonialism.
The textiles themselves are meant to honor “Black ancestors” in their reference to another one of Makonnen’s works in which she creates what her studio manager Aisha White called “obelisk” like public light towers resembling Ethiopian grave markers. These markers or “steles” tell “multi-register stories” about those who have passed, according to McLaughlin. Makonnen uses this same concept but modernizes it, with her light towers referencing the lives of Black women who have been killed, including Breonna Taylor. In “the negative space left over from these towers,” she creates the designs visible on her textiles.
As viewers walk through the gallery of Makonnen's work, an audio recording can be heard, calling out the names of Black women who have lost their lives.
Throughout the entire gallery, a conglomeration of sounds from each section of the exhibition can be heard, gesturing once more to this asynchronous, fourth dimension of time.