JAUS

JAUS

What was your motivation?
Directors, Ichiro Irie and Chris Tallon have been organizing artist run projects for over 10 years.
JAUS is an extension of these activities.

Do you accept proposals/submissions?
No.

Although overall press has been decent, It has been difficult to receive the kind of critical review of our exhibitions in the major publications and/or from the more recognized art writers.

Most of our patrons are fellow artists and curators.  It would be nice to generate a wider base of critics, dealers and collectors to visit our space on a regular basis.

It is much more difficult to get people to come to the international exhibitions.  Working on this.

In 2014, I would like to begin doing more solo and 2 person exhibitions, and I would like to have a curator organize a show about Iran, Iranian artists, Iranian / Iranian Artists living in L.A., or artists from the Middle East.  As a cultural promotor in the United States, it is important for me to shed light on cultural production of under-represented communities.  The Middle East, in particular Iran, has not necessisarily been under-represented, but has definitely been negatively represented in the media and the news.

I realize the pitfalls of shows organized around race/nationality/ethnicity/gender etc. As a Japanese-American artist, I had for years avoided shows about Japanese-Americans.  Now I’ve been in enough exhibitions with a variety of thematics, that I’ve lost the fear of being marginalized as I did earlier in my artistic career. I hope JAUS is a small enough space with a diverse enough program, that enables us to somehow transcend these pitfalls by doing focused shows that do not pretend to be encyclopedic, and deconstructs and contradicts stereotypes instead of reinforcing them. Perhaps, this is why past projects have featured of Philippine-American artists, Mexican artists, Japanese artists, French artists, German artists, Australian artists, and 4 exhibitions featuring exclusively women. As a gestalt, I would like to think the totality of JAUS as one big project that helps dissolve borders instead of fortifying them.

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Images courtesy of JAUS.