2023-24 Season: ELEMENTAL
A NOTE FROM ARTISTIC DIRECTOR, MARLA BURKHOLDER
When I first read one of Frida Kahlo’s love letters to her husband Diego Rivera, I felt like I had happened upon a whole new world of her art. With her words she paints complex landscapes detailing the interior experience of being intertwined heart and soul with another being. They are not sappy. They are alive with the tangle of emotions and thoughts that feed a deep love.
This season at IJ an array of fierce artists bring the full force of their creative powers to a love letter to our planet. Like Frida, they are channeling a relationship so deep it can only be described as elemental.
This rock, the earth, is the only certain connecting throughline between every culture that has ever been. We are made by earth, our distinct cultures formed by our communal responses to her bounty and barrenness, gifts and cruelties. We are all elemental, but share unequally in the burden of the elements.
Who could ever unravel this complicated love story?
These questions about the very ground of life are so awesome that we turn to each other. To face them together. We look to art to translate and transmute the fears, griefs, and joys inspired by this home we share.
This is an open letter, an invitation, forward-facing and rooted in the deepest love. We’re so glad to share it with you.
