Wisconsin Triennial Brochure 2019

JON HORVATH WAUKESHA
Stray, from the series This Is Bliss, 2016 • Archival pigment print
24 x 30 inches • Courtesy of the artist and Alice Wilds Gallery, Milwaukee
Jon Horvath’s narrative project This Is Bliss investigates the roadside geography
and culture of the rural Idaho town of Bliss. The town is historically significant
due to its positioning on the Oregon Trail, but sadly Bliss reached its peak in the
mid-20th century when Interstate-84 was constructed and vehicular traffic was
redirected away from the once thriving community. This Is Bliss investigates the
complex booms and busts of a small town, while reflecting its humanity and the
complicated, romantic ideals of the American West.
CHELE ISAAC MADISON
You were invented to manipulate, 2019 • Installation with single-channel video,
sculpture, sound, and scent, dimensions variable • Courtesy of the artist •
Video in collaboration with Jack Kellogg
Video footage, written prose, atmospheric sound, scent, and sculpture come
together to create an immersive environment in Chele Isaac’s installation, You
were invented to manipulate. Isaac mobilizes the prose within her video to
interrogate issues of control, particularly to question who is in control of our
democracy. By deploying language and image to confuse rather than clarify,
she illuminates the fractured nature of information and the subjectivity of
truth within our current political landscape. Working intuitively, Isaac activates
all of our senses and challenges us to enter into a space, both physically and
emotionally, that prioritizes free association, ambiguity, and the unknown
over any definitive answer or didactic message.
TOM JONES MADISON
Payton Grace, from the series Strong Unrelenting Spirits, 2017 •
Archival pigment print and beads, 25 x 20 inches • Courtesy of the artist
Tom Jones has been photographing his tribe, the Ho-Chunk Nation of
Wisconsin, for the past 19 years. Part of an ongoing photographic essay on
the contemporary life of his tribe, Jones uses the Native American tradition of
beadworking that is typically reserved for clothing to hand-stitch floral designs
onto the surface of his photographs. For Jones, the resulting beadwork, which
envelops and adorns his figures, is a metaphor for his Ho-Chunk ancestors and
their spirits. The series, Strong Unrelenting Spirits, enriches the art historical
genre of portraiture and provides visibility to a nation of people who are
often left out of prevailing societal narratives.
TOMIKO JONES MADISON
Hatsubon, 2016 • Mixed media installation, dimensions variable •
Courtesy of the artist
Tomiko Jones explores cultural landscapes and the ways in which our relationship
to the land shapes our identities and defines our sense of place. In Hatsubon,
a memorial to her father, Jones creates an installation with photographs of
three bodies of water that have familial significance: the Monongahela River
in Pennsylvania where her father grew up; the waters surrounding Big Island,
Hawaii, her mother’s birthplace and the site of her father’s burial; and the Pacific
Coast of California, where her parents met and Jones was born. Another series of
photographs on silk picture the artist, her mother, and her sister as they perform
the Japanese Buddhist ceremony of hatsubon, marking the first anniversary
of a loved one’s death — the three women wade into the sea to release a small
bamboo boat into the vast expanse of water. Hatsubon lies within the liminal
space between image and object, performance and ritual, life and death.
4