Exhibitions

ISZAF TREASURE

Exhibtion Dates:
September 19 - October 11/2019

Opening Event:
September 19- 7pm - 9pm
Opening Remarks @ 7:45pm

Where:
ISNS Exhibition Space
International School of Nanshan Shenzhen
11 Longyuan Road, Shenzhen - Basement Level
深圳市南山区桃源街道龙苑路11号,深圳南山国际学校

Visit: www.isnsz.com

Metro: Line 7 (Dark Blue) Taoyuancun Station - Exit C
桃源村站C出口

Curated by: Gloria Carnevale, DP Y2 Visual Arts Students @ International School of Nanshan Shenzhen

Produced by: ISZAF

Press Links: TBA

Curatorial

ISZAF is proud to present “Treasure”, an exhibition featuring 15 artists who have taken the challenge to take photographs of sceneries or objects of any kind that are considered treasures in their definition and in their very own cultural backgrounds. Specifically, all photos are taken with a mobile phone in which artists are encouraged to capture moments. Being genuine, eternal and swift concurrently, the photos selected are expected to inspire you with some sense of your own treasures. 

ISZAF将于ISNS举办其“宝藏”摄影展。此次展览有15位艺术家受邀,他们用记录属于他们生活与文化中珍贵的点点滴滴。与众不同的是,此次展览要求所有作品均由手机拍摄,要求艺术家们在捕捉美好瞬间的同时免去后期修图与加工。真实、永恒且稍纵即逝,我们希望这样的展览也能让您慢慢品味您人生中宝贵瞬间。


Meet The Artists

Amy Atkinson

Amy Atkinson, a Canadian living in Shekou, I am an Art Teacher at SIS and an artist working primarily in paintingng, digital and mixed media. I love being part of the ISZAF community as it challenges me to explore avenues of thought and inspirationfor my art that I hadn’t considered.

Artist Statement:

My resilience is my humanity. My story has value. My body is my treasure. There are so many pieces of me that are scarred and bruised and seen a lot of adventures with me. I find myself obsessing about their strangeness and cringing at their overfamiliarity but without them I wouldn’t have the pleasure I have in my life. For this challenge, I took photos of my parts with my iphone then edited them digitally.

WeChat: clarencenova
Instagram: clarencenova
Website: https://atkinsonteachingportfolio.wordpress.com/

Alexei Chernock

Alexei Chernock is an International teacher of design.

Artist Statement:

This collection of photos are a glimpse of my family’s summer in America. We road tripped from Lawrence, Kansas, to Neosho Missouri, to Nashville Tennessee, to Ashville North Carolina, to Norfolk, Virginia, to Washington DC and then flew back to Central Oregon. Since we have lived abroad so long I truly treasure sharing these experiences with my children and giving them an appreciation for the beautiful and diverse country that I love. It is important to foster a connection with their homeland and focus on the positive attributes that makes America what it is. At the same time, acknowledging things about our country that we are not necessarily proud of and understanding the things we do not agree with also shape the country in ways that cannot be ignored.

WeChat: LexBubbles

Andrya Pérez

She is a Venezuelan artist who is constantly seeking for new, unusual and fascinating sensations through art and photography.

Admirer of figurative and minimalistic art. Andrya has got quite an open view towards art and mostly enjoys painting intense, linear abstract works with oil and/or acrylics.

Artist Statement:

The Ping An IFC has proven to be one of the best modern treasures we can find in Shenzhen. Andrya feels pleased to share some photographs of this wonderful architectural skyscraper.

Email: andrya.jpr@hotmail.com
Instagram: andrya.jpr

David Sheppard

David 'Shep' Sheppard has been living and working in Shenzhen for the past four years. He is currently the Primary Learning Innovation Coach at Shekou International School. He has been a professional educator for the past thirteen years. He subscribes to the expression "a picture is worth a thousand words" and invites you to imagine the story behind each of his photographs.

Email: shepps63@gmail.com
Twitter: mr_shepps63
Instagram: shepps63
Gloria Carnevale

Gloria Carnevale is an artist, designer, educator and speaker who has lived and worked in Shenzhen for the past seven years. She is a founding member of ISZAF and is currently the Co-Chair. Gloria works as the Head of the Arts Department for Visual Arts and Design at the International School of Nanshan Shenzhen (ISNS). She teaches senior level visual arts courses and is also qualified to teach design and technology.

Gloria holds degrees in visuals arts (BFA, Mount Allison Unversity), Design (Sheridan Institute of Technolgy and Advance Learning) and education (B.Ed, Brock University), and has worked as an educational and design industry professional for years. 

Artist Statement:

The concept of “Identity” is commonly described as “the fact of being who or what a person or thing is.” I believe that it gives meaning to an object or person that makes it different from everyone and everything else: it is seen as an independent variable that belongs to a certain person, or to a group of people. My work explores many themes surrounding the concept of identity, such as how relationships and surrounding collaborate to identify a person. The photographs in this exhhibition focus on the treasure of reclaiming one’s life at a time of transformation. Specifically, it focuses on the transition of being dianosed with an illness, and the process of maintaining who we are while we face it.

WeChat: gloriacarnevale
Instagram: gloriacarnevaleart
Website: https://www.gloriacarnevale.com/

Guntur Timur

Guntur Timur is an Indonesian painter who reside in Southern China. He holds a Master degree on Visual Art from Bandung Institute of Technology, Indonesia. He works as an art teacher at Meisha Bilingual School in Yantian district of Shenzhen, now. After a group show at Vanesha Art-Link Gallery in 798 Art Zone, Beijing (2010), he continuously looking to stay and work in Mainland, China. After 8 years, he finally managed to make it happened. His artistic exploration began when he was invited as a visiting artist by the University of Karachi, Pakistan, through an artist in residence program in 2007, continued by several exhibitions in Jakarta, Bandung, Bali, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Seoul, later.

Artist Statment:

Once, Jalaluddin Rumi wrote; “Did you know, your suffering is your treasure? Alas, you are the veil covering your treasure”. I refer a lot to Rumi’s ideas on treasure for this TREASURE challenge. My exploration on capturing what I see through a pinhole-camera was an attempt to reveal the veil covering the treasure between what my eyes sees and what my eyes does experience.

WeChat: GunturTimur
Instagram: guntur_timur  and gunturtimur_pictures
Email: timur.guntur@gmail.com

Jennifer Nicklas

Jennifer Nicklas is intrinsically fascinated with the intersection of art, creativity, education, and community. While she originally hails from Kansas City, Jennifer has been living and working in China since 2012.

Artist Statement:

This series examines the complex relationships among ourselves, nature, and human imposed restrictions. While some of these may be explicit and readily observable, others are subtle and, at times, hidden. Elements of consumerism and insecurity are often at odds with what we believe we treasure and this is reflected in our interactions with our surroundings.  

WeChat: jennyjaguar
Instagram: jnick623
twitter: jnicklas8
Website: http://nicklasart.com/

Luiza Naslyan

I’m Luiza Naslyan from Armenia, currently living, working and creating in China. Art developed as a hobby in me, then became an inseparable part of me, my character, my life, my way of expression. I have established my brand and logo on May the 2nd, 2019. My life plan is to keep my thoughts pure, my will and soul free and serve humanity with my art, mostly do art for people’s souls at their homes, and in public places, like metros, squares, at last earn my freedom with my art without having to work as a full time someone in a company, tho each job I do, I do it with care and responsibility.

Artist statement:

Treasure
neither gold nor silver
heroine, survivor
ever-present savior
...mother.

My mom has been the reason and supporter of the turning points of my and my family’s life. She was the biggest drive through the survival journey first for my father, next for her as a cancer survivor, and for my sister and me who were forced to face those situations.

Through my mom I represent mother’s care and love in general, their importance in our lives and choosing her as a theme of treasure I  say thanks for her presence in my life, and in general Mothers’ presence in our lives.

Treasure: neither gold nor silver

I’m fascinated with the idea of landart; it’s such a non-selfish form of art, meaning to say, an artist creates a landart and leaves that part of nature in nature. In contrast with other forms of art, where you physically possess your work, mostly in landart you can’t physically possess it, you leave it to the sun, the wind, the snow, the rain… to melt back into the Nature.

Email: luizanaslyan@mail.ru
Facebook: Luize Naslyan
Facebook artpage: LuizA art&design

Maja Zoric

I was born in 1991. in Cacak, Serbia.I hold both Bachelor and Master’s degree with major in painting. I have graduated from Faculty of Fine arts in Belgrade in 2015. I had worked as an
art teacher in Serbia for two years, and in March 2018. I have moved to Shenzhen, China where I worked as an Art teacher. Apart from teaching and painting I also do design. I have my own line of handcrafted journals with my patterndesign which started in 2016. The product line is very successful and I have received positive feedback from my clients.

Artist Statement:

MY PAST IS MY TREASURE
I have South European roots. We often don' t consider us as Europeans but Balkan people. History is very important to our l ives since our tough past created our presence in which we have lost our homes, and it's constantly shaping our future as well. My past created my personal i ty. Wars that I 've survived, homes I have changed, people that went through my l i fe as a gi ft or loss gave me love, passion and sadness, those things gave me myself ! Some people would cal l that simple exper ience. I t wasn' t so simple for me. I've l ived through every single moment of my life wi th my lungs and hear t deeply embracing those exper iences. I 've real ized that only some moments were important, that only a few moments make us remember our past, or someone else's life. Here they are. Without any esthetic value. Moments as they were. Pure, simple, chaotic, dark and innocent. My whole life is on the wall in front of you. My past is my treasure since it made me ME.

WeChat: mayawanderer
Instagram: maja_artist
Email: makisha.z@gmail.com

May Wang

May Wang is a Chinese artist, born in Gui Yang, Gui Zhou Province, who lives and works in She Kou, Shen Zhen. Having no background in art, she has worked as a middle school English teacher, an English  translator for companies, insurance sales representative, and more. Finally at the age of 34, she began worked as an art assistant in the high school of Shen Zhen QSI International School. This became the start of her art journey.

Artist Statement

My theme of treasure is focused on “freedom.The way to show freedom is very valuable which can be called a treasure is through transitioning it into a tangible form- looking up at the sky. So I focused on taking photos of looking up at the sky. Hope we all appreciate and enjoy our freedom in our life time no matter it is a rainy day or a sunny day.

WeChat: 爱画画的魚

Michael Williams

Michael Williams is an artist that expresses himself through photography and paint. He is originally from the US and has started his 5th year here in Shenzhen. 

Artist Statement:

The Treasure Challenge offered a lot of ways for interpretation and was a welcome addition to this summer. Some ideas were seen to fruition but many others just evaporated like the summer months themselves. 

The first series is a set featuring my son. Because how could I not with a theme like treasure.

The second series is about food.... Originally I had planned the entire treasure focus to be food but I had phone issues and got distracted.

My 3rd series is about travel. I love traveling and every place explored brings new sights and experiences. It was not something I could afford to do when I was younger so I feel very lucky. 

WeChat: spaceman_mike
Instagram: crazedlunatik

Savo Vujičić

Savo is from Belgrade, Serbia. He studied at the College of Fine and Applied Arts in Belgrade. He works as an artist and an Art teacher in Shenzhen.

Artist Statement:

Each piece consists of two photos made with a smartphone. They overlap, and are desaturated. Then, the colors are brought back in certain areas following the shapes and lines created by the combination of the two images. These signify the revelations that arise in-between different moments of experience. Something has happened, but only when another thing happens, we realise something from the first experience. Between the lines, intersections, and beyond.

WeChat: savo-art
Instagram: sav0art
email: savvoart@outlook.com

Tishaba Harris

Tish Harris is an American from Denver, Colorado who currently lives and works in Shenzhen, China. She is an art dabbler, eco-adventurer, and international educator.

Artist Statement:

One of my passions is observing the natural beauty that surrounds us. Digital photography has enabled me to capture those moments I may have lost in my pre-cellphone days. This summer I noticed, as I tried to capture the moment; it required spontaneous courage. Editing photos then required a creative focus which proved to be quite calming. I tried to take photos that combined natural beauty with national pride. I did not succeed in breaking away from stereo-types. I was surprised how the view from my “lense” has changed, as an expat living abroad. The ISZAF Treasure Challenge has helped me self express what I treasure “newly.” 

WeChat: Tishaba
Email: tishazam@gmail.com

Kirenna

Kirenna is a Russian born and raised artist, based in in Shenzhen, China. Self taught photographer, she is currently exploring drawing with regular and digital pen. Curious about
digital tools and social media, Kirenna captures colours, textures and lines to express moods and reflect on ways digital world frames our behaviour.

WeChat: Kirenna
Instagram:
yelenakirenna
Email:
kirenna@yahoo.com
Website: https://kirenna.com/on‐display

Yvette Stride

Yvette Stride is an Australian artist and educator, drawing inspiration from her surroundings, especially in her homes of Hungry Head Beach (Australia) and Baishizhou (China). Holding a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Art (Queensland University of Technology), and a Masters of Education (Arts) from Southern Cross University, she has directed collaborative Murals in Australia and Malaysia and has co- created many sketchbooks as part of the Brooklyn Library’s Sketchbook Project (New York). She completed an artist residency at Guanlan Printmaking Base in China (2019) and shows work locally through ISZAF in Shenzhen.

Artist Statement

Scuba City

The work is about falling into the deeper depths of yourself through reflection. Shimmering your soul into a new horizon from the underbelly within.

In my previous life, 15 years ago, I was a scuba diver. I taught diving, and/or did underwater video work in Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea. The feeling of dropping down into the silence of the underwater world, accompanied by long, deep breathing is a peaceful feeling that can overcome me still when I am near large bodies of water. It probably won’t ever leave me. I hope the photographs I took all around Baishizhou give you the same sense of being between worlds, because sometimes in the city I miss my underwater home, my treasure.

Water has a playful quality on the surface, dancing and warping reflections into intricate organic shapes, but when you are immersed, many meters down it is very still and quiet. You can only hear your breath. In and out. Passing by a body of water, you can sometimes glimpse a mixture of the surface reflections with the scene below. It is intriguing, and I imagine, even when the water is shallow, that the depth extends as far down as the reflections of the upside-down buildings do. And in those moments I am transported by my own reflections into my treasured underwater world, exploring a peaceful inner bliss.   

Instagram: yvette_stride
Email:
yvette_stride@yahoo.com
WeChat:
eviespeedy142