Sonya Rapoport FF Alumn in UC Berkeley Alumni Exhibit, Sept. 3rd-27th, 2002.
UC Berkeley Art
Alumni Group Juried Exhibition 2002
September 3-27 2002
Sonya Rapoport will exhibit ARBOR ERECTA: A Botanical Concept For Masculinity.
It is an art work created from her internet project and printed on computer
forms. Interrelated cross-cultural and scientific botanical concepts project
the work's intent to promote tolerance of differences. ARBOR ERECTA reflects
on sexual preference, tribal initiation, and intangible but real communication
with the indigenous Pandanus tree of New Guinea.
The work fancifully interweaves the steps of the transsexual change of James from female to male as he re-enacts the New Guinea tribal initiation rituals which purge the female pollutants from his body acquired from the mother. As James grows from his female to male body he masters the tree's species with tree bonding rituals: touching and shaking the tree, chewing its leaves, drinking its sap, and burying pubic hair in its trunk.
Presently, neuro-pharmacologists from the National Institute of Mental Health are investigating Ayurvedic and Chinese herbal claims for barks, roots, leaves and other botanic provisions.
This exhibition
will showcase 15 UC Berkeley Art Alumni from the Department of Art Practice.
The exhibition contains artist from every decade starting with 1949 to the most
recent graduates. The jurors for this exhibition are Barbara Rogers; an artist
and Professor at the University of Arizona, School of Art; Dorothy Goldeen,
a dealer with her own Art Advisory Firm in Los Angeles; and Heidi Zuckerman
Jacobson, the MATRIX Curator at the UC Berkeley Art Museum.