Rachelle Dang

Gallery II

A.I.R. Gallery is pleased to present Couroupita/Corpus, the first institutional solo exhibition by 2019-2020 A.I.R. Fellow Rachelle Dang. Born and raised in Hawaii, Dang considers transoceanic colonial histories and intertwined legacies of control over environments and populations. Through her work in sculpture and installation, she interprets the significance of historical source material and natural forms while emphasizing the shared vulnerabilities of environment, body, and matter.

Couroupita/Corpus, the central work in Dang’s exhibition, addresses artificial displacements and haunted social and natural histories. In the center of the gallery, viewers encounter a narrow, perforated chamber encasing the upright form of a truncated rainforest tree. This structure is based on an eighteenth-century French drawing of a punctured tower designed to convey valuable tree species within and between tropical regions and Europe. Inside, Dang’s sculpted version of couroupita guianensis appears frozen in a peak state of abundance: long vine-like stems, blossoms, and rotund fruits envelop the trunk, yet these rigid forms resemble bones and evince an unexpected brittleness. A curtain partially surrounds the encasement, alluding to historical forms of museological display. The sculpture, curtain, and surrounding gallery walls comprise an enveloping monochromatic field—gray, petrified, and still.

A 1922 Field Museum publication makes note of a couroupita guianensis (cannonball tree) that was felled in Guyana, its trunk sent on to Chicago to be “restored to life-like appearance.” Negatives, samples, and plaster molds facilitated the replacement of “perishable parts” with wax leaves, flowers, and fruits. One of many anthropological, botanical, and geological projects undertaken by institutions during a period of American imperial expansion, the Field expedition amassed a trove of data related to the economic potential of Guyana’s forests, along with prized trees intended for exhibition. Installed in didactic displays, the preserved specimens contributed to an implicit demonstration of a Western order of power, governance, and knowledge.

The extraction of couroupita guianensis and the distribution of its parts and seeds across geographies echo the historical dispossession of Indigenous land and sovereignty in Guyana, Hawaii, and elsewhere. Colonial networks of seed exchange first brought the cannonball tree to Honolulu, where Dang was raised. These displaced giants tower over the city’s botanical gardens and university campus, evoking for Dang complex and unsettled notions of home. Her family resides on a street named in Hawaiian for cannonballs of a different kind—the projectiles fired from the U.S. artillery batteries once staged nearby. Dang has long imagined an impossible inversion: a street named for these magical trees and not for weapons of war.

Rachelle Dang (b. Honolulu, Hawaii) has exhibited her work in New York at Socrates Sculpture Park, Fergus McCaffrey, Nathalie Karg Gallery, Lesley Heller Gallery, Motel, and MH Project NYC. Additional exhibitions include the Honolulu Museum of Art, Hawaii Pacific University, and the Haverford College Art Galleries. Her residencies include Shandaken: Storm King Art Center, the Smack Mellon Artist Studio Program, the Studios at Mass MoCA, Cooper Union, and Sculpture Space where she received an Emerging Sculptor Fellowship. She was awarded a 2019-2020 Fellowship with A.I.R. Gallery and will participate in a 2021 residency at Yaddo. Her solo exhibitions have been reviewed in the Brooklyn Rail and Hyperallergic. Dang received her M.F.A. from Hunter College and her B.A. from Wellesley College. She is an adjunct faculty member at Hunter College and based in Brooklyn, NY.