Seed, 2021, Oil on board, 36 x 24 inches unframed, 40 x 27 1/4 inches framed
Second Street Gallery is pleased to present Daughterland, a solo exhibition by Meesha Goldberg, held in the Dové Gallery from April 1 - 29, 2022.
Watch our recent Artists in Conversation virtual artist talk with artist Meesha Goldberg and her close friend Seo Choi HERE.
Meesha Goldberg’s Daughterland experiments with how one can create spiritual kinship with the Earth despite dislocation from the waters and cultures of a motherland. Born of a Korean mother who married an occupying American soldier, Goldberg rejects nationalism and declares her body the Daughterland, a sacred site from where to deepen relationships with the sources of life. The resulting artworks are an activation of ancestral consciousness born of the reclamation of diasporic shamanic culture, the integration of family and transnational histories, and a life in nature. Goldberg uses film, performance, painting, and poetry to ritually process the grief of a multiplicity of matrilineal wounds and express a nuanced land ethic of belonging.
This exhibition includes the film Daughterland created in collaboration with Michael Jones, which documents the enshrining of an ancient oak located on the 38th parallel in ancestral Monacan territory. Goldberg performed a thirteen hour continuous walk encircling the tree in devotion to the artist’s mother, a fractal of Mother Earth. The film is layered with vocal harmonies by Sumvivus, which loop through stanzas of Goldberg’s poetry, and with the recitation of her mother’s deathbed journal, which the artist had translated after a wait of thirty-two years. Artifacts from the ritual are displayed in an installation titled Anima Mundi, which includes a white dress inscribed with her Mother’s journal; a cord of wheat planted, harvested, braided, and used to tether to the tree; and a tassel of the artist’s hair, cut to mimic her mother’s wig as she underwent chemotherapy.
The paintings within the exhibition are ceremonial dresses based on Obangsaek, the five elemental colors in Korean cosmology. Each painting illustrates the artist’s experience living within nature’s cycles, constellating seasonal, cultural, and historical correspondences of Korea and Turtle Island. These multidimensional costumes of the Daughterland are invitations to listen for ancestral voices, to awaken intuition of our interdependence with the living Earth, and to dream a pathway through this season of catastrophic change.
Meesha Goldberg is an artist and farmer living in a secluded valley on ancestral Monacan territory. She uses a variety of mediums including paint, ritual performance, and poetry, to speak to humanity’s belonging and responsibility to the Earth. Her experiences journeying through monocultures, standing on frontlines, and living off the land have all served as inspiration throughout her evolving work. Goldberg has exhibited in galleries across the country with solo shows in Portland, Los Angeles, and Seattle.
This exhibition is generously sponsored by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Apex Clean Energy, Crutchfield, and an Enriching Communities Grant from the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation (CACF).
Anima Mundi, 2022, Installation of ritual artifacts from the film Daughterland: wheat rope, cloth, paint on dress, artist’s hair, oak branch, and deer hooves
All installation photography courtesy of Derrick J. Waller
To inquire about pricing and purchasing work from the exhibition, please reach out to the gallery by email (info@secondstreetgallery.org).
Korean American Root Work, 2021, Oil on board, 36 x 24 inches unframed, 40 x 27 inches framed
Bearing Woman, 2021, Oil on board, 36 x 24 inches unframed, 39 1/2 x 27 inches framed
Going to the Water, 2022, Oil on board, 36 x 24 inches, 40 x 27 inches framed
Foraging Dress, 2021, Oil on board, 36 x 24 inches unframed, 39 3/4 x 27 1/4 inches framed
Watch Daughterland:
For this exhibition, artist Meesha Goldberg and filmmaker Michael Jones developed a documentary, Daughterland, which is an experimental film charting a land ethic of the Korean Diaspora, in which artist Meesha Goldberg walks for thirteen hours encircling an ancient oak tree costumed in her mother’s deathbed journal. The film seeks to transmute spiritual dislocation from a mother/motherland through the honoring of the land and the reclamation of creative ritual arts.