Mikki Yamashiro’s The Mall and Amanda Reichert’s It’s hard to stay mad when there’s so much beauty
June 3 – June 24 | Opening Reception June 3, 1pm-9pm
COOP Gallery is pleased to present The Mall, an art installation by LA-based artist Mikki
Yamashiro along with dance performances by Amanda Reichert. Mikki Yamashiro’s installation explores a time before Zoom, TikTok, and Amazon Prime. A time when there was a common place to gather, shop, and be perceived: The Mall. In this body of work, Yamashiro recalls the nostalgia of the 1990’s and early 2000’s mall culture with hand-crocheted pieces that reference iconic logos and familiar brands. Yamashiro identifies the crocheted works as the antithesis of fast fashion, creating a parallel-universe Mall where there is value in the handmade and the imperfect.
COOP Gallery will also premiere ‘It’s hard to stay mad when there’s so much beauty’,
developed by Amanda Reichert in collaboration with McKay House, Joi Ware, & Alex Winer. This piece examines the complexity of our emotional states through the dispositions of four characters living together but separate in their own vivid worlds. Inspired loosely by the work of Brené Brown’s Atlas of the Heart, the characters explore themes of isolation, connection, care, and how the stories we tell ourselves impact our ability to perceive what is real. Performances will be held Saturday, June 3rd @ 7 pm and Sunday, June 4th @ 2 pm.
It’s hard to stay mad when there’s so much beauty was made possible with support from Metro Arts THRIVE, Metro Parks Dance Division, Animata Arts, The COOP Gallery, and DancEast. Entry is free! Space is limited. RSVP at www.eventbrite.com/its-hard-to-stay-mad-when-theres-so-much-beauty-tickets
More about the Artists
Mikki Yamashiro is a self-taught artist, performer, and professional wrestler based in Los Angeles. Working at the intersection of craft, pop culture, and queerness, her irreverent hand-crocheted pieces often use cartoon figures like Bart Simpson, Bevis, and Butthead to highlight contemporary issues. In reinterpreting identifiable products, emblems, and iconography from popular culture through an outsider lens, her fiber practice challenges mainstream culture. Yamishiro envisions a hyper-saturated reality powered by radical energy.
Amanda Reichert is a freelance dancer and choreographer originally from Lawrence, KS. She received her BFA in Dance Performance from Chapman University, where she was awarded the Donna Cucunato Award for outstanding contribution to dance. In 2014 she moved to New York City, where she worked with Mike Esperanza, Suku Dance Lab, Stefanie Nelson Dancegroup, and MersihaMesihovic/CircuitDebris, among additional collaborations with freelance artists throughout New York City and Nashville. She credits them with both the brief and deep influence they’ve left on her own creative process. She has had the pleasure of presenting work for the Young Choreographer’s Festival at Symphony Space and Center for Performance Research in NYC, the Kindling Arts Festival and The Barbershop Theater in Nashville, TN, at Festival Nómada in El Salvador, and b12 Dance Festival in Berlin. She moved to Nashville, TN at the beginning of 2019 to focus on developing her own ideas as a dancemaker, and currently teaches contemporary dance to students at Franklin School of Performing Arts and Harpeth Hall. She is a recipient of the Metro THRIVE program funding for a new project to premiere in June 2023.
More about COOP
COOP is a curatorial collective made up of artists, curators, thinkers, and professors who are committed to expanding Nashville’s dialogue with contemporary art by presenting challenging new or under-represented artists/artworks to our community. COOP is committed to exhibiting art of diverse media and content, with a goal to provide an alternative venue for artists free from the constraints of the retail market. COOP seeks to initiate a discourse between Nashville and art scenes across the country by inviting artists to show, develop projects and interact with the Nashville community.
Website: coopgallery.org
For questions contact:
info@coopgallery.org, Sai Clayton, saimuraiclayton@gmail.com