Exhibition - Conjuring Cruelty - Amy Yoshitsu and Johannah Herr

Presented in Gallery 3

Inherited and Re-made by Amy Yoshitsu (she/they) brings language, as an articulator of internalizations, persuasions, fears and assumptions, to human body scale. This new work is a deeply personal approach to the many ways she seeks to get at collective and unique experiences, and how we understand and reflect on positionalities dependent on time, culture, and family conditions.

Quotations from family members are visually signaled through machine-sewn, single-use plastic detritus textile. With radiant barrier insulation to reflect our distorted world, they incorporate quotations from documents and speeches that have contributed to the birthing and entrenchment of capitalist machinations, racial hierarchy, climate denialism and forever chemicals.

All words are based on Yoshitsu’s handwriting, in different shades of yellow. In the built environment, yellow is a common color associated with caution, emergency, wait, construction, maintenance—something out of the ordinary or between the binary. They embraces yellow to reclaim the color assigned to me by the bio-racist bucketing system.

In 1957, early television magician John Mulholland, known for sleight-of-hand magic and author of magic how-to books, retired from the stage. But his “retirement” was itself an elaborate illusion, covering that he was actually recruited by the CIA to author The CIA Manual for Trickery and Deception.

Johannah Herr uses this primary text as a launching point for a body of work, Collateral Magic, conceptually revolving around performative “magic” as an aesthetic, material vocabulary and metaphor for how propaganda is used to deceive the public.

The exhibition includes a satirical ¡AGITPOP! Press publication (created in concert with writer Cara Marsh Sheffler) which subverts a mid-century how-to magic book, a series of “magic kits,” and six lenticular prints. The work is a speculative analysis of magic in the field, tips and tricks on maintaining the illusion of democracy, and a friendly reminder that one cannot spell magician without the CIA.

This project was supported, in part, by a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant.

About the Artists
Amy Yoshitsu (b. 1988), she/they, is a sculptor, designer, and socially engaged artist living and working in her hometown, Berkeley, CA. Yoshitsu’s work has been shown across the US and internationally in solo and group exhibitions. Their solo exhibition, “Amy Yoshitsu: Hedges and Ledgers,” at Satchel Projects (Chelsea, NY) in 2023 earned them a Must-See by ARTnews. Yoshitsu’s work has been included in group shows at Manifest Gallery (Cincinnati, OH), Pyramid Atlantic Art Center (Hyattsville, MD), Herter Gallery (UMass Amherst), and Berkeley Art Center (Berkeley, CA). In 2010, Yoshitsu received an A.B. in Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard University and later attended the MFA Art program at California Institute of the Arts. Yoshitsu has been in residency at the Vermont Studio Center (Johnson, VT), the Artist Residency Project at the School of Visual Arts, Esalen Institute (Big Sur, CA), and Kala Art Institute (Berkeley, CA). In September-October 2024, Yoshitsu will present a solo exhibition at Gallery Route One (Point Reyes, CA) and be featured in a two-person exhibition at Vox Populi (Philadelphia, PA). Yoshitsu is a co-creator of Converge Collaborative, a POGM (people of the global majority) digital creative workers co-op and artist collective.

Johannah Herr (b. 1987), she/her, is an interdisciplinary artist whose work uses subversive, colorfully patterned objects and maximalist installations to critique state-sanctioned violence in America. Herr holds an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art (2016) and BFA from Parsons School of Design (2009). She has had solo exhibitions at Shirley Fiterman Art Center, SPRING/BREAK, Geary Contemporary, Elijah Wheat Showroom, and BRIC (all New York City), GAA (Cologne, Germany), Fjord (Philadelphia), Untitled (San Francisco) and Red Ger (Ulaabaatar, Mongolia) and group exhibitions at Pioneer Works (Brooklyn, NY), Visual Arts Center of New Jersey (Summit, NJ), Center for Contemporary Art (Warsaw) and DADAPost (Berlin). She is a Fulbright Scholar (Mongolia) and attended residencies at the Museum of Arts and Design (New York, NY), Wassaic (Wassaic, NY), IEA Experimental Projects Residency (Alfred, NY), Oxbow (Saugatuk, MI), Vermont Studio Center (Johnson, VT), BRIC (Brooklyn, NY), SIM (Reykjavik, Iceland) and Arctic Circle Residency (Svalbard, International Territory). She was featured in the New York Times, Curbed, and VICE. She teaches at Parsons, Pratt, and NYU. Additionally, she is the Co-Founder of Daughters Rising, an anti-human trafficking NGO in Thailand. Together with writer Cara Marsh Sheffler, Herr is one half of ¡AGITPOP! Press, an artist book collaboration.

!AGITPOP! PRESS is an artist book collaboration between artist Johannah Herr and writer Cara Marsh Sheffler. Their books subvert mid century publications to critique US consumer culture, and how it enabled the collusion between the government and large corporations that fueled the American Century. This interrogation aims to explore how Americans are complicit in state-sanctioned violence wittingly and unwittingly as consumers.!AGITPOP! has published four books to date: “Domestic Terrorism,” “The Banana Republican Recipe Book,” “I Have Seen the Future: Official Guide,” and “White Flight!”—which subvert the forms of a Sears Catalog, Chiquita Banana recipe book, New York World’s Fair Guide, and Levittown circular, respectively. Their work has been featured at solo exhibitions at the Shirley Fiterman Art Center BMCC, SPRING/BREAK, Field Projects, NADA Governors Island (with the support of Geary Contemporary) (all New York, NY), Elijah Wheat Showroom (Newburgh, NY), and GAA Gallery (Cologne, Germany) and within group exhibitions at Van Every/Smith Gallery, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, Frieze New York, Fortmakers (all New York, NY) and NADA Miami (Miami, FL). Their books are stocked by Printed Matter, Mast, Perrotin Bookstore, Karma Bookstore (all New York, NY), Exile Books (Miami, FL), and Skylight Books (Los Angeles, CA).