JULIE LIBERSAT
MALL MANDALA 

OCTOBER 20 - NOVEMBER 17, 2018
​​RO2 ART | 1501 S. ERVAY STREET, DALLAS TX

October 20 - November 17, 2018
​Ro2 Art | Dallas, TX

Ro2 Art is proud to present ​Mall Mandala, a solo exhibition featuring new works by artist Julie Libersat. The show will run from October 20 through November 17, 2018. There will be an opening reception held Saturday, October 20, from 7-10pm at Ro2 Art located at 1501 S. Ervay Street, Dallas TX 75215. 

New media artist Julie Libersat is interested in the social and cultural relationships between people and the spaces they occupy. Libersat describes her experiences during travel as feeling both at home and out of place. Using these ideas of transportation within spaces as a process and a metaphor, the artist seeks to illuminate new perspectives on how built environments shape our mindsets and values. By designing interactive games and structures that invite the viewer to participate, Libersat creates spaces meant to reorient the viewer within the landscape, free of distractions or blemishes, abraded down to clean lines, matte colors, and uniformity. The outcomes of the viewer’s participation to her work is fluid and undetermined, and intended to inspire critical reflection on the impact of environment. 

ABOUT THE ARTIST 

Julie Libersat is an intermedia artist and art educator born in Kerala, India and raised in Philadelphia PA. Libersat received her BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2003 and earned an MFA in New Media in 2016 as well as a Masters in Art Education in 2017, both from the University of North Texas. Libersat has exhibited in the US and abroad including shows at the Dallas Contemporary Museum, School 33 in Baltimore, The Center for Art and Culture in France, Currents International New Media Festival, Paseo Taos and Museo de la Cuidad de Mexico. She has received a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Grant, the 2014 CADD FUNd grant, the Velma and Davis Dozier Travel Grant from the Dallas Museum of Art and the Onstead Masters Fellowship. Her work has been reviewed in The Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun, and Sculpture Magazine online. Her research connects spatial theory, locative media technology, and contemporary art practice to provide new connections with art education and mobile pedagogy. She has presented at the 2014 National Art Education Association Conference and published in the 2016 July issue of Studies in Art Education. Libersat is currently Assistant Professor of Art Design and Technology at Texas Woman’s University.

ARTIST STATEMENT 

Through the concepts of home, transportation and belonging, I explore the human relationship with the built environment. We navigate public spaces designed to control our behavior as consumers, employees, and citizens. Our relationships with our homes is mediated by a visual culture that orients us towards normative social and consumer roles. We anthropomorphize spaces, clothing them in wallpaper, moldings, curtains and flooring surfaces to communicate identity, status and values.

Buildings and places are occupied in memory, dreams and imagination. We construct spatial meaning collectively; our cities, neighborhoods and buildings reflect our personal, cultural and political histories and imaginaries. Through architectural interventions, installations and interactive projects, I investigate our embodied perception of space: its lived, perceived and conceived experience.
I experiment with the possibilities for aesthetic experience through navigation, narrative cartography and controlled disorientation. Getting lost allows us to see our surroundings with fresh eyes, challenges us to connect with the unfamiliar and has the power to transform our perception of our communities, spaces, and selves. I use transportation as a metaphor and process, a device to assist in time or space travel, making it possible to have a spatial exchange or new perspective. I utilize games and play to create space that welcomes participation and experimentation with roles that are fluid and outcomes, undetermined. Using an interactive game structure disrupts and reorients viewers to take on new roles within the landscape and seeks to assist them in finding a critical and reflective perspective.