¡Buen Vivir! Gallery for Contemporary Art
148 Elmwood, Buffalo, NY (Allentown) 14201
Langelle Photography and the ¡Buen Vivir! Gallery for Contemporary Art are part of the Social Justice Media Program of Global Justice Ecology Project
One World: Issues Across and Through Skins
and
The Story of a Forest “private showing”
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(Slider photograph by Johanna C. Dominguez)
One World: Issues Across and Through Skins
Premier Solo Exhibit by Johanna C. Dominguez
Opens: Friday, September 14, 6 p.m.- 9 p.m. with a wine and hors d‘oeuvres Reception
Closes: Friday, November 2
Where: ¡Buen Vivir! Gallery for Contemporary Art – 148 Elmwood Avenue – Buffalo, NY
After the November 2016 election, Johanna Dominguez felt compelled to do something. Something ended up picking up her camera and documenting the different local rallies and efforts of activists across Western New York. She has combined these images with images she has taken abroad to bring together this show. The series of photographs have been taken between 2016 – 2018. There are many threats facing both people and animals today, and while these threats may seem specific, Dominguez’s work shows that the world is a lot smaller than we think.
Many may think “Water is Life” is specific to Standing Rock, but through Dominguez’s lens we see that this issue spreads far beyond the Dakota Access Pipeline. Energy corporations are capitalizing on and suppressing people across the globe. Habitats and ecosystems are also under siege both locally and abroad. It is not all doom and gloom though. There’s people and efforts out there to try and reclaim what was lost. One World: Issues Across & Through Skins shows the many positive efforts to make a space for life.
Dominguez wishes to point out that her camera is simply a vehicle and that the true stars are those within the photographs. They are the warriors. They are the changemakers. They are the ones on the frontlines fighting every day.
Free and open to the public
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The Story of a Forest “private showing”
Directed by Suki deJong and Co-produced by GJEP’s Ruddy Turnstone (who will be present)
Saturday, September 15, 6 p.m. with a wine and hors d‘oeuvres Reception
Where: ¡Buen Vivir! Gallery for Contemporary Art – 148 Elmwood Avenue – Buffalo, NY
The party continues on Saturday, September 15 at 6 p.m.with a “private showing” of the yet-to-be-released film of director Suki deJong’s The Story of a Forest. Co-producer Ruddy Turnstone, who staffs GJEP’s Florida office, will be on hand to introduce the film and answer questions afterwards.
The Story of a Forest is a half hour documentary of the ten-plus year campaign that started in 2004 to stop the development of a Scripps Biotech campus in the middle of the biodiverse Briger forest and wetlands. The film features direct actions to save the forest, accompanied by the deep analysis of the global justice movement that swept the world a decade prior. The activists in The Story of a Forest waged a local campaign that exemplified the threats of corporate globalization worldwide.
The film will be shown at the ¡Buen Vivir! Gallery and followed by a second wine and hors d‘oeuvres reception. The film is free and open to the public.
GJEP’s home office has been in Buffalo for the past six years with priorities ranging from international forest protection and advocating for Indigenous Peoples’ rights, to the International Campaign to STOP Genetically Engineered Trees, and Orin Langelle’s Concerned Photography program. GJEP was founded in Vermont in 2003 by Orin Langelle and East Aurora native Anne Petermann to explore and expose the intertwined root causes of social injustice, ecological destruction, and economic domination.
GJEP has a satellite office in Lake Worth, FL and their Press Secretary is based in St. Louis, MO.