Rhonda Holberton: A Knotted World

Rhonda Holberton: A Knotted World

“And in a knotted world of vibrant matter, to harm one section of the web may very well be to harm oneself.” – Jane Bennet, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things

We are on the brink of a technological and biological revolution that will change how we live, work, and relate to one another. In a Knotted World asks us to question the current state of technology that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres. The work in the exhibition builds upon four series by Bay Area artist Rhonda Holberton that explores the militarization of land and the technology that both protects the soft animal of our body and extends violence outward to places we cannot see or imagine.

For Holberton, we are already cyborgs– hybrids of organisms and machines. In our digital age, we rely so heavily on electricity, the internet, subsidized solar energy, and global distribution and communication that many of us may not survive if it all ended today. In this sense, we are truly dependent on both the butterfly flapping its wings a continent away and the wires deeply beneath the ocean floor. Though technology is not inside the body yet, we are phenomenologically connected and enmeshed in a symbiosis between microorganisms, the products we consume, and the land we stand on. 

Programs and exhibitions at the ICA are made possible with thanks to generous support from the City of San José’s Office of Cultural Affairs; along with significant support from Applied Materials, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; along with additional support from SVCreates. Curated by Zoë Latzer, Associate Curator and Director of Public Programs. 

About Rhonda Holberton

Rhonda Holberton (b. 1981 Falls Church, VA USA) utilizes technology as a medium to reconcile the biological body with geologic time, revealing their material and environmental impacts both on individual entities and on a planetary scale. Her subtle animations, digital interventions, sculptures and installation pieces move between the material and the immaterial, the authentic and synthetic, and pay special attention to the phenomenology of climate change in order to imagine ways we might collectively write more inclusive rules for digital platforms. Holberton has exhibited widely, including at CULT Aimee Friberg (San Francisco), RMIT Gallery (Melbourne); La Becque | Résidences d’artistes  (La Tour-de-Peilz, Switzerland);  FIFI Projects (Mexico City); Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco); The Contemporary Jewish Museum (San Francisco); San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art (San José); and the San Francisco Arts Commission (San Francisco). She was awarded the Fondation Ténot Fellowship in Paris and the CAMAC Artist in Residence at Marnay-sur-Seine, France. Holberton’s work is included in the permanent collections of SFMOMA and the McEvoy Foundation, as well as various private collections. She holds a MFA from Stanford University and is currently Assistant Professor of Digital Media at San José State University.