The Sesnon Gallery at the University of California Santa Cruz organizes exhibitions to travel to other university galleries and museums. We are currently offering: Some Assembly Required: race, gender, culture. The exhibition was reviewed in the May issue of Artweek and notes, "Curator Shelby Graham poses the idea that concepts of race and gender are complicated by globalization. Taken as a whole, the exhibition does brilliantly demonstrate the power of assemblage to tap the well of iconography wherefrom artists tell tales." Some Assembly Required will travel to the Craft and Folk Art Museum in Los Angeles in May of 2010 but is available from September 2009 - May 2010 or in 2011 (please contact Shelby Graham for details: <sesnon@ucsc.edu>).

How are issues of race, gender and culture assembled in a world complicated by globalization? Some Assembly Required: race, gender culture examines found or recycled objects of identity arranged by artists from diverse backgrounds who are willing to construct a story. Every exhibition is an assemblage: a collection of persons or things, a gathering. This gathering seeks to offer more than a collection of compatible objects; these assemblages allow for deep stories to be exposed, charged with memory, contradictions, stereotypes, and questions.

Artist Willie Little reactivates discarded objects from material culture, constructing gritty totems of memento mori representing memory and autobiography. He writes, “My work seeks to bridge the divides of race and class in America while exposing the ‘privileged conversation’—intra-racial prejudices/notions rarely spoken in ‘mixed company.’”