Usable Pasts 2009-10 Artists in Residence: Mequitta Ahuja, Lauren Kelley and Valerie Piraino

In this year’s installment of the much-anticipated Artist-in-Residence exhibition, Mequitta Ahuja (b. 1976), Lauren Kelley (b. 1975) and Valerie Piraino (b. 1981) present diverse projects in a range of media, which together address the construction of history and memory. Ahuja makes lush paintings in which mythological warriors and demigods move between landscape, self-portraiture and abstraction; Kelley crafts stop-motion animations, photographs and sculptural installations that speak to notions of material and emotional excess; Piraino repurposes family artifacts to create installations drawing attention to the metaphorical frames that shape experience and memory. A full-color brochure with scholarly essays by Rina Banerjee, Naomi Beckwith, Pradeep Dalal and Carol Ockman accompanies the exhibition.