Wavelength Space

Wavelength Space is an artist-run gallery operated by a curatorial collective in Chattanooga, TN. We focus on the creation of exhibition opportunities which feature challenging works by area and nationally based artists. Our mission is to provide local and Southeastern artists opportunities to exhibit work in conceptually based shows alongside artists who reside outside our region. This coming together of local and expanded networks broadens community and facilitates bridges between works and practices which might not otherwise take place.

For the TN Triennial, Wavelength has invited two installation and performance based artists to collaborate in a two-person show titled Apothecary. In connection with the Triennial theme of Re-Pair and the belief that art can be used as a vehicle for healing, positive societal change, and love, Ali Waller (based in Chattanooga, TN) and Ayo Janeen Jackson (from NC but based in NY) share practices that focus on the exposure and healing of trauma, rebirth, transition, & transformation. Ali and Ayo collaboratively view their role as artist’s to be like that of a birth or death Doula - seeking to insert themselves into challenging societal and personal transitions to forge paths to empowerment and growth. These artists base their work upon sites of trauma- whether that be from personal experiences of survival or through a desire to mend generational and systemic wrong. Utilizing the visual language of sculpture they draw out emotional, physical, and spiritual wounds from within the body, into the air, and into communal view. Ali Waller states, “Although our wounds come from different sources we are both working to heal them.” Over the next months, Ayo and Ali will be working collaboratively to locate areas of connection between their practices and to realize installation and sculptural works in the space that will bridge gaps between the varied contexts of healing that their works address.

Ali Waller works primarily with casting methods and natural materials to produce installation and sculptural works that have direct connection to the body. For the past three years, Ali has been working on a communal project titled “Weight” in which she creates body casts of survivors of sexual assault. To date, Ali has created a total of over 1,300 chest casts and she plans to continue this outreach for years to come. Ali’s practice requires the creation of safe spaces where she leads survivors through an intimate process in which they can literally and metaphorically ‘get something off their chest.’ Ali says, “While individual casts carry deeply personal meaning, the piece as a whole emphasizes a broader mission: autonomy. ‘Weight’ is just as much about the process as it is the final work. The act of casting offers people, whose mind and body may be at war in the wake of an assault, a chance to reclaim their voice and ground themselves in their present growth. It empowers survivors to see their bodies as art, to take hold of their own narratives, and to bear witness that they are not alone.” Ali also engages in works that relate to self-portraiture, family dynamics, purity culture, and religious trauma.

Ayo Janeen Jackson has a background as a dancer and choreographer. In recent years, she expanded her movement-based practice to create body-based visual work with a mission to ‘heal the fantastic black body’. Her work takes form via texts, sculpture, image and video, satire, and healing practices. Ayo utilizes folklore and fantasy references such as a black unicorn in her work as a vehicle to “transform ideologies and reconfigure history to resolve urgent concerns of the current racial climate.”