Dreams of Unknown Islands: St. Augustine

Dreams of Unknown Islands: Saint Augustine is a multisensory exhibition of work by New York-based visual artist and filmmaker Sasha Wortzel. A walkthrough of the exhibition with the artist will be held on Friday, March 3 at 5pm, followed by an opening reception.

Dreams of Unknown Islands is a love letter to the “ecological dreamscape” of Florida, where the artist was born and raised. Through an immersive installation that encompasses sound and projected film, Wortzel harnesses our state’s particular beauty. Aural ruminations emanate from four functional sculptures, or “listening islands,” summoning diverse ecosystems– coastal waters, animal migrations, and the rich aquatic life of the Florida’s interior springs.

Sasha Wortzel is a visual artist and filmmaker using video, installation, sculpture, sound, and performance to explore how this country’s past and present are inextricably linked through resonant spaces and their hauntings. Raised in South Florida and based in New York City, Wortzel specifically attends to sites and stories systematically erased or ignored from these regions’ histories. Projects examine queer place-making, ecology, and the systems that marginalize, extract, and erase communities, peoples, and histories.

Dreams of Unknown Islands: St. Augustine, was organized for the Crisp-Ellert Art Museum by Julie Dickover, Director, and curated by Stephanie Snyder and Kristan Kennedy in 2022, for the Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College. The original exhibition was curated by Kristan Kennedy, for Oolite Arts, in 2021. Kristan Kennedy is the Visual Art Curator at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art; Stephanie Snyder is the director and curator of the Cooley Gallery, Reed College.

This exhibition is generously supported through grants from The Community Foundation for Northeast Florida and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

For more information about this exhibit and the Crisp-Ellert Art Museum, click here.