The Protection of Lowly Gods: MJ Neuberger Exhibition Opening

View Online: COMING SOON

A body cast aside in cultures of abuse returns to its ground and remembers its spirit.

Bodies challenged to find safe spaces need access to ground. Restoration from the ravages inflicted requires connection with an ever resourceful earth mother. A practice of returning to itself.

Earth is always beneath our feet. The sky is always above us. If we can find our way to our ground, there is only belonging. With practice, we sense the wisdom of indigenous ways and honor the spirits deemed lowly by those unable to imagine ways of being beyond their own.

About the Artist
MJ Neuberger’s work arises from ritual attempts to return to a body abandoned in trauma that she traces in part to colonial history in her mother’s native Philippines. Referencing indigenous ceremonies and elemental processes and incorporating found and organic materials, including her hair, Neuberger’s interactive and light-based installations and sculptural and image-based works acknowledge shared vulnerability and suggest reconnection with an indigenous, nature-based self as a path toward integrating trauma stemming from race and gender-based violence and broader cultural aggression.

Neuberger has presented work at multiple national and regional venues, including Swale House on Governor’s Island, New York City, Art Resources Transfer, Gathering of the Tribes and Nuyorican Poets Café in New York, the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture, the Center for the Arts, Spark at Light City, Pascal and Cade galleries, and VisArts in Maryland, as well as in exhibitions in North Carolina and Indiana. She has received multiple awards, including the Fleur and Charles Bresler residency in sculpture and installation at VisArts in 2019 and fellowships at the University of North Carolina and Taleamor Park. Neuberger curates the Great Wide Open art/performance series in Baltimore, MD, Cambridge, MD, and New York City, and her writing and criticism have appeared in SPIN, The Nation, and the Village Voice.