Review: Two solo art exhibitions in Minneapolis ponder past, present and future

A slab of gray clay with various pulsating lines, pokes and deep cuts carved into it wraps around the corner of a gallery wall. Elsewhere, a smooth yet jagged piece of blue hand-crafted glass, covered with similar carvings, hangs from the ceiling. In the middle of the gallery is an aluminum tray filled with ocean salt created through the process of desalination. It’s been transformed into solid slabs and loose chunks.

Did someone find these objects on an archaeological dig, or did they appear at some weird antique shop in the middle of nowhere?

New York-born artist SaraNoa Mark evokes such questions with their exhibition “Evaporated Hours” at Dreamsong Art Gallery in Minneapolis. Years ago, the artist started looking at cuneiform tablets, Assyrian reliefs, calcified rock formations, ancient cave paintings and rock carvings, and contemporary sidewalk graffiti.

“I’m really excited about sidewalk graffiti because it’s like this urban pictograph and shows this continuation of this impulse that humans have to carve into place,” Mark said in a recent artist talk at the U.

The artist is, perhaps, most fascinated with traces of human existence.

Becoming a security guard at the University of Chicago’s Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, West Asia and North Africa gave them more time to stare at ancient stone reliefs. This was followed by a Fulbright fellowship to Turkey, where they had more time to experience living rock monuments, or rocks that are still being transformed by the elements, from the Hittite, Roman, Byzantine, Seljuk and Ottoman empires.

The work in this show seems to be the culmination of a deep examination of time, memory, place and history, bringing it into the present moment. The ritualized objects in this show create a vocabulary of their own. They ask the viewer if they’d like to ponder the unknown, the passage of time. In doing so, one must ultimately face their own mortality, which raises the question: Which objects will remain after we are gone?

Mark’s show is at times so philosophically and existentially intertwined that it’s hard to see that in the objects on view. But if you can let the objects take you there, they will lead you to the bigger questions.

(Ends May 3. Hours: Noon-5 p.m. Wed.-Sun., 1237 NE. 4th St., Mpls., free, dreamsong.art)

Multidisciplinary artist Karthik Pandian — a professor at Harvard University who has won a Creative Capital grant and exhibited at the Whitney Museum of Art — doesn’t attach himself to one medium, place or time. He calls himself a conductor of energy, an artist who works on developing ceremonial technologies and unsettles the ground of history.

His video installation “Surrendur” at Midway Contemporary Art encompasses several parts, all of which feel like a call to action and an immersion into the world he has created and inhabits.

In the space between the gallery and the entrance, there’s a table filled with information about Indigenous treaty rights, actions to stop the Line 5 Oil Pipeline, histories of Anishinaabe and Lakota tribes, and copies of the monthly Indigenous newspaper “The Circle.”

Get familiar with everything there before entering the second space, the main gallery that functions as a theater and a space for ritual gathering and healing. An 80-minute looped video plays simultaneously on either side of the gallery. Its dreamy editing makes it feel like a visual collage, combining conversations about Standing Rock, the ongoing land back movement, and George Floyd; footage from marches held by water protectors; spiritual narratives about life; imagery of an ultrasound and a pregnant woman lounging near a bright open window. Visitors are invited to sit on one of the two large platforms, which have candles, bags of rice and other objects scattered around them.

The show is vibrant and active, nothing like the static space of a white-walled gallery show. Pandian refers to this work as “a machine for homecoming ― a platform to gather, find our relations, receive light and feel the vibrations of a liberated future.” Indeed, it feels like a transformative portal and is the result of his ongoing collaboration with American Indian Movement activist Mike Forcia (Bad River Anishinaabe) and many other activists and artists.

In today’s political climate, this space for solidarity feels crucial, especially as the current administration tries to erase diversity, equity and inclusion, slashes funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities, National Endowment for the Arts and Institute of Museum and Library Sciences and cracks down on free speech at universities around the country.

At a time like this, Pandian’s work is a hopeful and powerful call for the future. It brings to mind a Martin Luther King Jr. quote: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” Because focusing on the present is simply too bleak.

(Ends June 10. Hours: 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Wed.-Sat., 1509 NE. Marshall St., Mpls., free, 612-605-4504 or midwayart.org)