ASC Live Residency III: Geri Montano /// March 2 – April 5 *Extended through April 13th*

/// EVENTS

• Residency: March 2 – 13
• Public hours for live residency: 12–5pm, Sunday & Monday March 2, 3, 9, & 10, and by appt.
• Solo Exhibition: March 14 – April 5 *Extended through April 13th*
• Reception for solo exhibition: Friday, March 14, 7–9pm
• Flogger-making Workshop: Saturday, March 22, 2–4pm

ASC Projects is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new works by Geri Montano, following a 2-week live residency in the project space where she created the majority of the works. The residency runs from March 4 through April 5, 2014, with a reception opening the solo exhibition on Saturday, March 14, 7 to 9pm. The artist will also run a “Make-Your-Own-Flogger” workshop on Saturday, March 22 at 2pm to bring awareness to the issues discussed in the show in a sex-positive way. $5 minimum donations will go to Sage Project, a local non-profit improving the lives of persons who have experienced or are at risk of sexual exploitation, human trafficking, violence and other forms of trauma (sagesf.org).

For her residency and solo exhibition, Geri Montano continues her Traded Moons series—a community engagement project dealing with the topic of sex trafficking of Native American women and girls—creating three large-scale works on paper and an installation titled Traded Moons Dreaming. Rendered as silhouettes, referencing the graphic style of advertising, the female “commodities” hold strong postures that negate the idea that their body or nudity make them vulnerable or weak. Montano incorporates symbols such as floggers for prostitution and slavery, poppies for the female organ as well as the drug-induced dreamscape, and circles meant to allude to the moon, femininity, and dream catchers and medicine wheels; the incorporation of which furthers the importance of Native women in the struggle to escape modern-day slave trades and the heritage and community of Native Americans as a whole.

Geri Montano, born in Colorado, is a multiracial contemporary artist influenced by her Native American heritage. Her current work takes the form of mixed media drawing, collage, and installation using acrylic, ink, graphite, and magazine clippings; and is inspired by both personal experiences and those relating to socio-political and feminist themes. Montano impresses powerful emotional ideas on her viewer through subversive imagery displayed within the aesthetic qualities of her art. She received her BFA in interdisciplinary arts which included drawing, painting, and sculpture from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1997 and has worked as an artist in a variety of practices including political street theater with Praxis Artists. Her work has been exhibited at the SF Arts Commission Gallery, Diego Riviera Gallery, among others. She was awarded a second Native American Arts & Cultural Traditions grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission which helped to support her expanding Traded Moons project—which debuted in the spring of 2012 at Galeria de la Raza and continues with this show. She currently lives and works at Project Artaud in San Francisco.

The exhibition is supported in part by the San Francisco Arts Commission