Block Museum mounts IF YOU REMEMBER, I'LL REMEMBER exhibit

Do you remember?

This question reverberates through the Block Museum’s latest show titled If You Remember, I’ll Remember. Curated by Janet Dees, this exhibition at the Mary & Leigh Block Museum of Art in Evanston invites viewers into a room of precious objects, each handcrafted with care. The exhibition draws us into narratives of sorrow, mourning, healing, and hope. Though the show only features works by five individual artists and one artist pair, it’s a marathon. Poeticism abounds and each piece lingers with the viewer long after leaving.

Block Museum Mounts Exhibit Review — Dario Robleto, No One Has a Monopoly Over Sorrow, 2004-2005, 11” x 10 x 8”, Men’s wedding ring finger bones coated in melted bullet lead from various American wars, men’s wedding bands excavated from American battlefields, melted shrapnel, wax dipped preserved bridal bouquets of roses and white calla lilies from various eras, dried chrysanthemums, male hair flowers braided by a civil war widow, fragments from a mourning dress, cold cast brass, bronze, zinc, and silver, rust, mahogany, glass. Photo Credit: Ansen Seale

THE NAIL THAT STICKS UP THE FARTHEST

Kristine Aono’s installation is a haunting highpoint of the show and a museum rarity—you can touch it. The artwork asks us to place a nail in one of the thousands of holes on the board, representing every Japanese-American interned. Drawing towards the work to place a nail, you are engulfed by memories—letters from her Japanese American grandfather who had been interned during World War II and the testimonies from other internees cover the board. On either side of the American flag made with nails, reads the ominous phrase “The Nail That Sticks Up the Farthest, Takes the Most Pounding.”

PRAYERS FOR OUR CHILDREN

Midway in the exhibition, baskets carefully woven by the Eastern Cherokee artist Shan Goshorn pepper the open floor plan. One basket shimmers in shades of blue and turquoise. In this sea of blue, white star-like shapes pattern the basket and a large sepia square is featured on one side. Taking a step closer, the blues, turquoises, whites, and sepia colors come into focus. Upon closer inspection, this bright blue basket is made up of various historical documents: the sepia rectangle is an image of Native American children attending a boarding school that aimed to forcibly assimilate them and words on the woven strips of blue bear prayers of healing for these children.