(PDF) (DOC) (JPG)August 21, 2018

MAHWAH, N.J. — Anonda Bell: The Suburbs at 4 a.m., a one-person installation by Anonda Bell, opens on Wednesday, September 12, in the Pascal Gallery of the Berrie Center for Performing Arts.  There will be an opening reception from 5 to 7 p.m. with an artist’s talk at 6:30 p.m. The exhibition continues on view through October 19.

This paper-based exhibition was inspired by Giacometti, and explores an experience of women.

Bell makes the following statement about the exhibition:

“In 1932 Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti create a work titled The Palace at 4.a.m.  This piece drew heavily on the artists personal experience (a brief, sex-laden encounter with a woman known only as Denise), and automatic art making techniques gleaned from association with the Surrealist movement. The work reads as a dream sequence – there is a stage like scene, with a suggestive narrative and clues indicating the presence of people of privilege engaging in the activities at a luxurious palace in the middle of the night. My work has been made in response, and it is not intended to be a linear, illustrated story. It is instead a deliberately ambiguous and rambling mess of complicated impressions that may come from the mind of a suburban insomniac at 4 a.m. The work references ideas about gender, labor, witchcraft, and the current climate in the United States (where women continue to be relegated to retrograde stereotypical roles, and at a time when women’s work outside the home is still only valued at 80% of their male counterparts). For the women depicted in these works there is a niggling sense of impending doom associated with the threat of diminished rights over their own bodies; the future is anything but bright and shiny.”

Anonda Bell is a New York- and New Jersey-based artist working a variety of media, including drawing, painting, printmaking and installation. Her work engages with psychology and the motivations, desires and innate qualities of the human mind. Her work has been shown in group exhibitions and solo shows in the United States and Australia. She has a Master in Fine Arts from Monash University (Australia), a Post Graduate Diploma from R.M.I.T University (Australia) and a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Psychology and English from the University of Melbourne (Australia). Bell is the Director and Chief Curator of the Paul Robeson Galleries at Rutgers University – Newark.

This project at Ramapo is funded in part by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts. The Pascal Gallery is located in the Berrie Center for Performing and Visual Arts on the Ramapo College campus. Gallery hours are Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday from 1 to 5 p.m. and Wednesday from 1 to 7 p.m.

For more information, please contact Sydney Jenkins at 201-684-7147.

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About Ramapo College

Ramapo College of New Jersey is the state’s premier public liberal arts college and is committed to academic excellence through interdisciplinary and experiential learning, and international and intercultural understanding. The comprehensive college is situated among the beautiful Ramapo Mountains, is within commuting distance to New York City, was named one of the 50 Most Beautiful College Campuses in America by CondeNast Traveler, and boasts the best on-campus housing in New Jersey per Niche.com. Established in 1969, Ramapo College offers bachelor’s degrees in the arts, business, data science, humanities, social sciences and the sciences, as well as in professional studies, which include business, education, nursing and social work. In addition, the College offers courses leading to teacher certification at the elementary and secondary levels, and offers graduate programs leading to master’s degrees in Accounting, Applied Mathematics, Business Administration, Contemporary Instructional Design, Computer Science, Creative Music Technology, Data Science, Educational Leadership, Nursing, Social Work and Special Education, as well as a Doctor of Nursing Practice.

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