FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Surveillance features the work of Mauro Altamura, Melanie Baker, Kabir Carter, Carlos Motta, Justine Reyes, Roger Sayre, Merle Temkin, and the Surveillance Camera Players.

Today's concerns with safety (communal and personal) have given rise to a host of problems surrounding public space.

Surveillance hopes to explore various facets of the contemporary blurring of boundaries between public space and private life, between what is visible and invisible, between the observer and the observed. Installations excavate layers of photographed and re-photographed images, produced and re-produced identities. Objects that have recently become bearers of fear and the unknown become the subject of art. Overheard (and secretly recorded) conversations become intertwined into an audio piece. As part of a larger discussion around the erosion of privacy during a period of increasing fear, the works in this exhibition have the opportunity to be a part of this public dialogue.

Group Show featuring Mauro Altamura, Melanie Baker, Kabir, Carlos Motta, Justine Reyes, Roger Sayre, Merle Temkin
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about the artist: Justine Reyes lives and works in New York. Reyes' work revolves around issues of identity, history and time; and our relationship to these themes in a post 9/11world. Using photography and installation, she examines family, the idea of leaving and returning home, and the longing to hold on to things that are ephemeral and transitory in nature.

about the museum: The mission of the Jersey City Museum is to present, collect, and interpret American visual art and material culture of the highest quality. The museum places particular emphasis on exhibiting and supporting the work of contemporary artists who represent the diversity of our society, and on preserving and making accessible the art and the historical and industrial objects of significance to the region in its collections. Through its exhibitions, educational initiatives, and public programs, the museum serves as a center of cultural life for the people of Jersey City, Hudson County and the region.

about the curator: Rocío Aranda-Alvarado, Ph. D., is currently Associate Curator at the Jersey City Museum. She organizes exhibitions of historical and contemporary art, based on the permanent collection and on work by both established and emerging artists in the New Jersey and New York region. She is currently working on a mid-career retrospective of the work of Chakaia Booker in addition to several other group exhibitions. Her writing has appeared in Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art and in Part, an online journal of art history and in Jersey City Museum publications.