The Ides Of March, Selected By Jenni Crain (online exhibition)
About the exhibition
Ides, an ancient calendrical measurement used by the Romans to compute time according to the lunar cycle, referred to the first full moon of a given ‘month’. In the earliest examples of the Roman calendar, the Ides of March marked the first full moon of the new year. The occasion was celebrated with the Festival of Anna Perenna, goddess of the ring or circle, thus alluding to annual revolution, as the Latin reading of her name ‘per annum’ or ‘for each year’ suggests.
In its contemporary context, the Ides of March has become more directly associated with ominous connotations of tragedy and deceit. On the Ides (15th) of March in 44 BC, Julius Caesar, dictator of the Roman Republic, was assassinated by three conspiring members of the Senate. Shakespeare’s dramatization of this event circulates itself in popular culture as protagonists are warned to “beware the Ides of March."
These conflicting, dual significations of the single date congregate in an allusion to repentance. In the order of evolution, change is a processing and adaptation of the past. In Roman tradition, the Ides of March was an emblematic deadline for the settling of debts. Advance is an acceptance of permutation. To move forward, we must acknowledge that progress is nonviable without an embrace of difference.
About the selector
Jenni Crain (b. 1991, New York) is a Brooklyn-based artist and curator. Crain’s work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at Gordon Robichaux, New York (2018); Baba Yaga, Hudson, New York (2018); 321 Gallery, Brooklyn (2017); KANSAS, New York (2016); Y Gallery, New York (2015); and Artist Curated Projects, Los Angeles (2014), among others. Crain will present a two-person exhibition with Miles Huston at Gordon Robichaux, New York this January 2019. Crain co-founded and co-directed Topless, a seasonal gallery based in Rockaway Beach, New York, from summer 2014 – 2016. Recent curatorial projects include exhibitions at 55 Walker, New York, NY; Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY; Clifford Chance, New York, NY; Chicken Coop Contemporary, Portland, OR; Roberta Pelan, Toronto, ON; Shanaynay, Paris, FR, among others. In March 2018, Crain will curate a solo exhibition of works by March Avery at Barnard College’s Louise McCagg Gallery, New York, NY. Crain is the director of kaufmann repetto New York and the founder/organizer of O.O. & M.M., an ongoing curatorial project that encourages adaptability and deviation from standardized models of exhibition making.
