Walk With Us

Walk With Us is an international, juried exhibition of walking-based art presented in the non-gallery spaces (elevators, hallways, alcoves, etc.) of the Rochester Art Center. Jurors Zoe Cinel and John Schuerman (curators, as well as artists with walking-based artistic practices) selected 16 artists, from a pool of 87 international applicants. The selected walking projects expand our ideas about art, place, mapping, culture, inner and outer experience, and generally honor the simple act of walking. 

Visitors will receive a map to locate artworks and move from one atypical exhibition space to the next. At the end of the self-guided tour, they will be encouraged to take a walk outdoors and develop their own creative responses. The non-uniformity of the exhibit spaces will inspire related events and programs to take place inside and outside the Art Center and in a variety of public spaces around Rochester, MN.

Walking is an activity. So much of the artwork in Walk WIth Us is documentary, but the forms are wide ranging, from a collection of water-absorbed colors gathered on walks by Olle Helin (Sweden), to Minnesota-based artist Alonso Sierralta’s recreation and abstraction of walking-found objects into a sculptural installation, and Modelab’s Ghost Walker, a curatorial project that documents an attempt to follow a street in Mexico City that disappeared over 100 years ago. Several artworks, such as a performative walk led by Anastasia Polychronidou (Greece), and the show itself, encourage visitors to wander, gather, and reflect, and thereby participate in the art-making. 

The Walk With Us exhibit draws from a common and collective knowledge – when walking becomes an intentional activity, more than utilitarian movement, the world opens up. Artists and exploratory thinkers have been aware of this gateway to creativity for centuries, and so there is a deep history of writers, visual artists, entrepreneurs, scientists, philosophers and other creative thinkers engaged in this practice. Aristotle is famous for his peripatetic style of teaching, where his students walked about in the lyceum while he taught. This exhibit aims to share this pathway (so-to-speak) to creativity with audiences both inside and outside the walls of the Rochester Art Center.

ARTISTS

• Abbey Paccia, Amherst, MA
• Alonso Sierralta, Minneapolis, MN
• Anastasia Polychronidou, Greece
• Ben Moren, Minneapolis, MN 
• Ellen Mueller, Minneapolis, MN
• Jess Witte, St. Louis, MO 
• Martin Presley, Minneapolis, MN 
• Meagan Marsh Pine, Pullman, WA
• Modelab, Mexico City, Mexico
• Nicholas Bauch (Experimental Geography Studio), Minneapolis, MN 
• Olle Helin, Malmo, Sweden
• Sage Dawson, St. Louis, MO
• Sarah Nassif, Minneapolis, MN
• Yiannis Pappas, Berlin, Germany
• Yumi Roth, Boulder, CO

RELATED PROGRAMMING

• Sunday, May 22 Reading & Discussion with John Schuerman, Author of “Unstillness” & Co-Curator of Walk With Us  11:00 AM - 12:15 PM on Zoom [REGISTER]
• Thursday, August 18 Walk With an Artist: Sarah Nassif | 7:00 PM
• Thursday, August 25 Walk With an Artist: Jessalyn Finch | 7:00 PM
• Sunday, October 2 Closing Reception with Panel Discussion 

Image: Meta Mapa, 2007 by Yumi Roth (in collaboration with Andrew Blackstock and Casey McGuire), Pilsen, Czech Republic