Handwerker Gallery at Ithaca College is pleased to present up in the air, in deep water, on shaky ground, a solo exhibition by Susanne Slavick. The show will be on view from August 29th – October 13th, and we will host an opening reception on Thursday, August 29th from 5 – 6:30 p.m. Slavick will offer an artist talk in the Gallery on September 12th from 5:30 – 6:30 p.m.
up in the air, in deep water, on shaky ground Susanne Slavick
The news in those days was full of war and migrants and nativists, and it was full of fracturing too, of regions pulling away from nations, and cities pulling away from hinterlands, and it seemed that as everyone was coming together everyone was also moving apart. Without borders nations appeared to be becoming somewhat illusory, and people were questioning what role they had to play.
—Mohsin Hamid, from his novel Exit West
up in the air, in deep water, on shaky ground are all precarious conditions, conditions that often propel people to leave all that is familiar to them. Driven or displaced, cut loose or set adrift, confined by or crossing over borders—the decision to leave home may be voluntary or involuntary, arising from desperation or anticipation.
We are all from somewhere else. All of us have ancestors who have crossed borders, even if before they officially existed. Escape, expulsion, exile, exodus and emigration are integral to human history. Today, there are an estimated 130.8 million forcibly displaced and stateless people around the world, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. They are forced from their homes by persecution, conflict and violence, or human rights violations.
We who no longer need to flee are often unable, or unwilling, to identify or empathize with those who must flee. Instead, many feel invaded or threatened. Some fear a dilution or even contamination of their culture.
There is real fear and fabricated fear. Both are fierce and ubiquitous, and often expressed as hostility. There is the natural fear of the unknown, shared by the vulnerable and those made to feel vulnerable. Fabricated fear fomented by demagogies demonizes immigrants and refugees, as does the media that amplifies them. Alarmist claims of invasion and infestation distort perceptions of immigrants, transforming them into the monstrous “other” who looms larger than life but is still regarded as inferior. Those considering them worthless feel somehow worthier themselves.
Embedded in such assumptions and attitudes is the idea that this “monstrous other” must be criminalized and punished—with deportation, incarceration, and separation from those they love. They must be dehumanized and denied rights to asylum and autonomy. They must remain in limbo and invisible.
The works in up in the air, in deep water, on shaky ground reject manufactured imperatives surrounding xenophobia, inviting us to probe our resentments and fears of “the stranger.” The works in this show present images of red carpets, sailing ships, and more prosaic turnstiles—vessels and devices for transport and transition, real and imagined escape and warm welcomes. As beautiful as the dreams associated with them are, practical and political realities intervene, raising or sinking hopes. Through these works, we imagine floating or losing ourselves, and hovering, falling, and passing between radically different worlds—between security and insecurity.
Susanne Slavick is an artist, curator and University Professor of Art Emerita at Carnegie Mellon University where she served as Head of the School of Art from 2000-06 and taught from 1984-2022. In 2019, she was awarded the Distinguished Teaching of Art Award from the College Art Association.
Slavick’s work has probed human conflict and environmental destruction, pursuing empathic unsettlement.Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in museums and galleries in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, North America, and Oceania. Awards have included a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and four grants from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Getting There, an exhibit with her husband and colleague Andrew Ellis Johnson, explores our response to immigrants and refugees. It has toured to four museums and galleries and will open next at SUNY Fredonia in 2026.
Slavick’s traveling curatorial projects have created forums for dialogue and advocacy around war and its aftermath (No Glory, Cutting Losses and Out of Rubble) and gun violence (Unloaded and Up in Arms). When the Bough Breaks and Family Tree visualize the tree under assault and triumphant, as historical record and harbinger of things to come.
Slavick’s articles have appeared in books and journals including Art, Advocacy, and Sexual Violence (University of Washington Press); Journal of Visual Culture; Technology and Culture;Cairo: Images of Transition (Verlag); Hyperallergic; and Cultural Politics. An essay she co-wrote with Andrew Ellis Johnson will be published this fall in Interrogating the Visual Culture of Trumpism (Routledge).
