We Do Not Spring Up From Nothing
Local Projects Art Space, Long Island City
May 30th - June 15, 2019
“The work in this exhibition explores the intersection of family history and personal experience as photographers Makeda Flood and Matt Scheffler address how their ancestry informs their own perception of self…
…Scheffler’s photographs document a motherland foreign to him. During his 2018 trip, he experienced China as both a visitor and a native, having never returned since his adoption as an infant. Scheffler captures photos that teeter on the edge of being touristic, while simultaneously taking snapshots that would not feel out of place in a family photo album; they are all seeped in a distant nostalgia, especially his images of children and families. Scheffler is not only perceiving a new place but also projecting himself into a life that could have been.
As Liam Callanan aptly put it, “we all carry inside us, [the] people who came before us.” It is the inherited stories from our parents, grandparents, and ancestors that help shape the narratives that compose our identities. And yet, these narratives are incomplete…”