Museum Projects

Gayle Clemans for The Seattle Times: "...with the 10th anniversary of the Northwest biennial, Rock Hushka, TAM’s curator of Contemporary and Northwest Art, and Renato Rodrigues da Silva, a Vancouver-based curator and art critic, have done something a little different and quite effective. They’ve narrowed the focus of the exhibition to feature “interdisciplinary work” that explores identity and community.  The show features artists who work with different media and forms of expression. You’ll see a lot of photography, film, and mixed-media installations. There are pamphlets to take away, places to sit and watch, listen, or participate, and videos, photographs, and found objects that serve as evidence of performance art or social, interactive art.  Because of the nontraditional nature of a lot of the work, the guards have their hands full with this exhibition: Yes, you can sit on the Oriental rug and pillows that are part of Reza Michael Safavi’s meditative and witty installation. Yes, you can insert a quarter into the video game by Paul Kuniholm (the quarter activates a haunting video of homeless people’s signs), but, no, the joysticks do not actually do anything (perhaps suggesting a lack of control over these people’s circumstances?).

Jen Graves for The Stranger: "Standing in one corner of the gallery, Paul Kuniholm's arcade game Cardboard Commandments solicits your quarter. When you pop it in the slot, you're rewarded with a slide show on the screen of pictures of handwritten panhandlers' signs asking for money...".

Paul Kuniholm, Seattle, USA, är Artist in Residence i Smedbyn, Huskvarna, vintern 2016/2017 och medverkar i utställningen ”Konst enligt Ö.K” på Österängens Konsthall. I en föreläsning på Österängens Konsthall kommer han att att berätta om flera av de konstnärliga projekt han genomfört – vilka material, tekniker och berättelser de innehåller och omgärdas av. Föreläsningen avkodar ett nät av familjehistoria, arv, samtida paradoxer, social rättvisa och miljöfrågor som tillsammans utgjort inspiration för de färdiga verken. Föreläsningen kommer att hållas på engelska. Och eventuellt pyttelite svenska. Fri entré!

Paul Kuniholm is an artist from Seattle and artist in residence in Huskvarna, Sweden, during the winter 2016/2017

Paul Kuniholm presents a lecture on his art, using images of successful projects he has completed for museums and governments, providing descriptions of materials used, technique, concept and narrative. The lecture decodes the complex inspirations for the depicted artwork, by way of connecting the artists family history and heritage with contemporary paradoxes, social justice and ecological issues.The lecture will be held in english. And maybe a little swedish. Free entrance!

Jeremy Buben for Vanguard Seattle: "... his newest body of work, which includes large and playful hoop skirts inspired by traditional Northwest native spruce root hats. As we walked through the rooms of avant-garde ensembles, Paul explained how he was particularly captivated by the work of designer Junya Watanabe. When conducting initial research for this body of work, he was unaware of the work of these Japanese artists. During his first run through the exhibit, he was surprised and somewhat taken aback when at the very end of the show an innovative hoop skirt appeared in the Watanabe collection. This gave Kuniholm the impetus to delve deeper into his take on the hoop skirt, choosing wicker work and parting from metal hoops, such as the one he noticed in the show. Aesthetically he has found some resemblance, but conceptually and narratively his work stands apart.  The wicker in Paul’s work is his way of investigating his own heritage. It’s a physical tie to the wickerwork of his great grandfather, whose wicker furniture is in the permanent collection of Ballard’s Nordic Heritage Museum and an inspiration to him in creating objects that last the test of time. However, this leads the artist to wonder if wearable art is indeed meant to last the test of time. So far, Paul’s ‘Wearables’ have been used twice and are now on display in the windows of an unoccupied retail space of the Panama Hotel in the International District, somewhere between art and relic of past events, these wearable interventions have not been scripted or formalized. He draws inspiration from performance art pioneer Allan Kaprow, whose mid-century ‘happenings’ incited spontaneity and redefined the genre. Paul explains that “once you formalize it, then it becomes a piece of theater and a costume.” Paul admits that his work is not practical. The wearables make it nearly impossible to get into a car and they create a physical space around the wearer that can limit interaction depending on the wearer. At the recent CityArts artwalk awards party where Kuniholm was nominated for his intervention at Seattle Art museum, his model Ashley Komoda wore Kuniholm’s hoop skirt design and did an outstanding job of electrifying the space while weaving through the crowd with a performative and playful nature.

Curator Lizette Graden created inclusion for Paul Kuniholm  to participate in Graden's Dressing Swedish exhibition 2013.  The curator was present for a  showing from the permanent collection of the National Nordic Museum July 3, 2013, where Johan Emil Kuniholm's wicker, conserved by the museum, was juxtaposed with the fiber arts "Dressing" of the great-grandson, uniting three generations of the Kuniholm family with art.  A heritage narrative was intended by this juxtaposition.

Premise: Future Seattle: A People’s Forum, Saturday, October 31, 2015.  "Cities make and remake themselves. Future Seattle: A People's Forum is a big loud civic conversation, a pragmatic first attempt to understand Seattle's current flux. The goal of the forum is to assemble a shared vision via moderated discussions around five key questions: how to make Seattle a city that is welcoming, diverse, inclusive, creative, and committed to shared prosperity.  In each session a group of thirteen invited guests, representing a diverse cross section of Seattle, will discuss in front of an audience how to achieve the shared vision of a better Seattle. The audience will not participate in the discussion but will listen and bear witness. Note takers for each group will record the discussion and provide the moderators with a detailed summary. At the end of each session, audience members may share ideas and observations with the group."  SESSION 2 PARTICIPANTS: Lola Peters, Erin Jones, Paul Kuniholm, Andy Fife, Spencer Williams, Mares Asfaha, Jim Lauinger, Amanda Townsend, Nikki DeCaires, Don Blakeney, Shurvon Haynes.

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