Surpik Angelini and the Transart Foundation for Art and Anthropology in Houston, Texas, are delighted to present Vulnerable by Vicki Meek.
Dates: Sunday, November 17, 2019 - Sunday, January 5, 2020.
Hours: Wednesday to Sunday -- by appointment only.
Artist Statement
I rarely create work about myself. My personal angst has always been mine to work out other ways than in my art. However, for the first time since my divorce 25 years ago, I experienced a personal crisis that I felt a need to document in a creative conversation.
I could never imagine myself falling victim to my body. Up until the age of 66, I never had to take a single pill, nor had I experienced any major illness. Having a body that was running out of control because of illness never crossed my mind. But yet in 2016, there I was, inside a body that due to the loss of one small body part, a thyroid, was out of control, or at least that’s how it seemed to me.
Vulnerable is a body of work that examines what it feels like to lose control of one’s body once the main “regulator” of that body goes kaput. The kinds of thoughts one has are very interesting when they’ve lived their entire life being a control freak and in the blink of an eye, they must relinquish control to a little tiny pill. Erratic pains (in places you never had pain before); fatigue that attacks your once boundless energy (putting an abrupt halt to all plans you had for that day); appetite loss (something you never thought possible being the foodie that you are!) is simply baffling to someone who’s been the picture of health her whole life.
So in essence, a simple loss of a little body part triggered the need to totally re- examine what really matters in my life. The body is truly only a vessel that houses the soul; the soul is the most essential element of one’s being. So I’ve documented parts of my body that went haywire and combined the images of these parts with images of various kinds of regulators to visually talk about this phenomenon of a changing body that I no longer control. The use of a shower curtain as one of the elements in the show is a metaphor for being stripped naked as one is when in the shower, leaving me bare and vulnerable to the vagaries of illness. The small repetitive images of body parts with the control mechanisms signifies how the size of an organ isn’t necessarily proportionate to its importance given that the thyroid is tiny in comparison to, let’s say, your liver or your lungs. Yet it regulates the function of every organ, every sensory element, every emotion, in short it regulates you! I complete this body of work with images that represent my surrender to the Universe’s plan for my new life, one that releases my attachment to vanity and focuses on my spiritual being since that is who I am in the abstract and that is the “me”who ultimately connects with my fellow humans.
~Vicki Meek, 2019
Biography
Vicki Meek
Vicki Meek, a native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is a nationally recognized
artist who has exhibited widely. Meek is in the permanent collections of the African American Museum in Dallas, The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, and Norwalk Community College in Norwalk, Connecticut. She was awarded three public arts commissions with the Dallas Area Rapid Transit Art Program and was co-artist on the largest public art project in Dallas, the Dallas Convention Center Public Art Project. Meek was selected as the only Dallas artists of ten national artists to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the Nasher Sculpture Center which resulted in the commissioning of a site-specific installation that is now permanent at Paul Quinn College.
In addition, Meek is an independent curator and writes cultural criticism for Dallas Weekly with her blog Art & Racenotes (http://art-racenotes.blogspot.com). She has curated over 100 exhibitions for institutions like the Arthello Beck Gallery, African American Museum and D-Art Visual Art Center in Dallas, Project Row Houses in Houston, Carver Cultural Center in San Antonio, Kentucky State University Gallery, The Black Arts Festival in Atlanta, Treme Museum in New Orleans, and C3 Gallery at Dallas Museum of Art.
With over 40 years of arts administrative experience that includes working as a senior program administrator for a state arts agency, a local arts agency and running a nonprofit visual arts center, Vicki Meek retired in March 2016 as the Manager of the South Dallas Cultural Center in Dallas, Texas, a full-service African-centered center that is a division of the City of Dallas Office of Arts & Culture. She served on the board of National Performance Network 2008-15 and was Chair from 2012-2014. Meek is a voting member of Alternate Roots and currently serves as a Mayor appointed Commissioner of the Arts & Culture Advisory Commission for the City of Dallas.
Vicki Meek is currently working as a full-time artist in Dallas. She also serves as CFO for Usekra: Center For Creative Investigation, a Costa Rican creatives retreat founded by acclaimed performance artist Elia Arce.