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Photo of Gordon Parks authorized for use by the Gordon Parks Foundation, New York CIty, NY.
The Gordon Parks Gallery ascribes to a multi-faceted mission: to support the arts curriculum and cultural activities of Metropolitan State University and to preserve the legacy of the 20th century multimedia artist Gordon Parks.
As an academic venue, the gallery is committed to providing educational opportunities for adult learners through internships, student exhibitions and related programming. As a civic venue, the gallery is dedicated to exposing Minnesotans to the life and work of Gordon Parks through youth and community outreach programs.
Gordon Parks Gallery is dedicated to showing the work of various subjects, media, forms and content by diverse artists, including emerging and established artists of various ethnic and cultural backgrounds.
If you’re interested in exhibiting at The Gordon Parks Gallery, please reach out to Erica Rasmussen, gallery director, at erica.rasmussen@metrostate.edu to receive details about the submission process.
Presented for the first time in this multi-media exhibition is a body of work that Zoe Cinel has been creating since 2018, when they started the process to become a non-resident alien with extraordinary abilities. About their experience, the artist writes, “It is challenging and highly performative. The labor is invisible, the hopes are high, and it takes a village to keep an alien in this country. To cope, I turned it into a journey, wearing the “alienness” as an extraordinary superpower, as a costume to protect my vulnerability. And so began my Earth Odyssey!”
Longing for home, Cinel - dressed as their alter ego “The Alien” - traveled far east and west, exploring the nation’s iconic landscapes, symbols and pop/media culture references, feeling a sense of familiarity yet estrangement. In Cinel’s words, “When visiting new places as “The Alien” I asked myself: how do I relate to new geographies, iconic landmarks, and places of memory? Traveling with a silver suit and a camera, I intuitively stop to capture real landscapes that I encounter, drawn to places that are surreal yet (somewhat) familiar: a giant pastry-themed carousel in an empty food court, an abandoned vintage car next to a sign that says ‘danger, rattlesnakes’ in the middle of the desert, a brutalist Gotham-like subway.”
They conclude, ”The Alien suit is my armor. An embodiment carrying roots of a distant land. And a visualization of the red, pulsing sensation of being forever split between places and cultures.”