Justina Dziama is the 2020 Activism in the Arts Artist-in-Residence at Buffalo Arts Studio where she is preparing a new body of work, A Millimeter of Space, to be exhibited at Buffalo Arts Studio January 22-March 6, 2021. Dziama is a 2019 graduate of the International Media Architecture Master Studies Program at the Bauhaus Universität Weimar in Germany and the Masters of Architecture Program at the State University of New York at Buffalo. For the residency, Dziama is researching the economically distressed East Side neighborhood that surrounds the Tri-Main Center, a former factory that houses Buffalo Arts Studio. Dziama’s current artistic practice approaches the post industrial landscape as sites of material agency in which the exterior surfaces of a building, exposed to the elements, demonstrate the types of material transformations that take place with a lack of human intervention and upkeep. Her work captures layers of surface deterioration on industrial buildings, religious structures, and domestic spaces to represent the conditions of neighborhoods and communities. Deindustrialization and disinvestment of the 20th century hit Buffalo’s East Side neighborhood especially hard, ravaging many of the structures. As a result, these buildings exhibit the temporal qualities of dilapidation and decay. Dziama’s hyperphysical castings fabricated from latex vary in color and texture, all the while remaining reflective of human scale. Once removed, the castings form palimpsests that bear the physical traces of continuously changing social, environmental, and economic conditions of a neighborhood in distress.The topography of this decaying architecture serves as a metaphor for the cultural and community blight caused by loss of manufacturing jobs as well as discriminatory economic practices.
This exhibition is funded in part by The National Endowment for the Arts.
Although we are not hosting opening receptions at this time, we are open to the public Tuesday-Friday, 11-5pm, and Saturday, 10-2pm. We will also present a virtual tour and artist talk via Facebook Live Event at 6:00 pm, Friday, January 22, 2021.