Current exhibitions - Joëlle Kem Lika

I am honored to curate an exhibit in such a wonderful venue full of talent, creative force and solidarity.
The title « Flight of the Monarch » was born from my personal experience having visited the Monarch Sanctuary in central Mexico. It is amazing what these small insects achieve, some of it comes from their perseverance and sense of mission, however much of it comes from their action as a mass. I hope this exhibit reveals the power of the artist as an individual and as a whole without limitations and restrictions. I asked Mark Ross to write the text with his intuitive and eloquent style and thank every one involved in tis beautiful exhibit. With these notions in mind we welcome you to the International Art Biennial-Houston

Yvonamaor Palix

“Each year an amazing movement occurs. From the Great Lakes, clouds of Monarch butterflies move
south perpetuating the fragile process of metamorphosis; from egg, to larvae, to chrysalis, to butterfly.
The butterfly: a song of vision, ethereal and temporal, perhaps five weeks of life, is a feast for poets and
a muse for metaphorical excess. The process of life repeats itself with no regard for human observance,
en route to Michoacan, Mexico and a renewal unlike anything. The gathering in Mexico defies adequate
description. To see the butterflies come together in swarms and make the mighty tree branches of the
Oyamel sag and at times break, reminds us that even the most tenuous of beings, together, can act with
great force. (This reminder is always a timely notion but perhaps now more than ever.)

It is always left to the artist to interpret and expose. If something is too delicate to approach, it is the
artist that creates the tactile, the elaborate, or the simplest of connections to it. Generating a higher
plane of thought, being more aware of who we are, and exposing what we are not, are themes abundant
in art. To decipher the connections we take for granted and expose in their unique manners, the beauty,
the vile, the sorrow and the stillness of form are the aspirations of the artist.

To varying degrees, artists simultaneously inhabit the stages of metamorphosis. The finished art work,
like the mature Butterfly, is bound for another place, and to the artist is left the task of a totally new
form; new ideas and a renewal of process. The butterfly is the artist and the form. What sense of
thought, what level of “consciousness” does this “artist” bring? Is the highest from of expression something
divorced from the notion of thought? Is our highest self, our most creative moment, something
occurring absent of thought and hence, absent of time?”

Mark Ross