9.3.12 Featured Artist: John James Anderson

DC Murders 2006-2010: A visual timeline of homicides in the Nations Capital

For the months of September and October, Locust Projects is partnering with the roving curatorial initiative site95, who will present the first installment of their multi-city series City Limits in the Project Room. The exhibition consists of three projects by the Washington, DC-based artist John James Anderson. Organized by curator and site95 founder Meaghan Kent, the series focuses on the influence of the urban environment on contemporary practices. Considering and questioning site-specifity, artists in each exhibition present ideas that are progressive, reactionary, and often poetic with regards to their own urban environment.

Anderson’s projects engage current cultural and political issues that are endemic to, but resonate far beyond, Washington, DC. For “Maintenance Required,” the artist mapped broken fire hydrants throughout the city, spurred into action by hydrant failures during the 2007 Eastern Market and Georgetown Library Fires. For “Hours of Labor,” the artist investigates the current politics of economics and immigration by hiring day laborers to create objects with him. The installation juxtaposes the tools and objects with documentation from his conversations and experiences with the laborers. “JOB Creation Project” is an effort to inspire ideas for job security. For this performative action, Anderson disseminates literature in the form of buttons and quote cards that will be on view in the gallery. Further documentation of the performance will be featured in the site95 October Journal.

In conjunction with the Project Room exhibition, Anderson’s work will be featured on over 30 bus shelters around Miami in September 2012 for the Bus Shelter Project, part of Locust Projects’ public art initiative “Out of the Box,” which commissions artists to create new work for public spaces in Miami.

Originally from Iowa, John James Anderson has lived in Washington, DC for the last eight years, completing an MFA in painting at American University in 2005. His work has been exhibited at Corcoran Gallery of Art and Washington Project for the Arts in Washington, DC; Arlington Arts Center in Virginia; and Adah Rose Gallery in Maryland. Anderson was a fellow for the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, Washington DC, in 2010.

johnjamesanderson.com