Guichelaar Gallery

Within the brief window of our human existence, the ability to come together, protect, and care for one another has allowed us to evolve into a complex, beautiful species. But have we lost these vital sensibilities? Collectively, we have forgotten how to connect with others, provide comfort, empathize and sustain community.

A FORCE TO BE RECKONED WITH is an exploration of the friction, the barriers, and distance between the relationships we create with one another and how they are inevitable yet necessary to our growth. Through a combination of sculptural, textile, and print work Nazarinne Ahmed & Colleen Gross explore the labor involved in cultivating these complicated, intimate relationships.

About Nazarinne Ahmed

 Nazarinne is a multidisciplinary artist, whose work is the result of an obsessive search for balance, security and comfort. Through the use of textile, printmaking, and tactile processes she creates a space to process, make sense of the past and untangle the complexity of her religious upbringing, cultural and racial identity. Through her work, she examines the way these facets have shaped the manner in which she moves and makes sense of the world around her.

Nazarinne’s mother is of Caribbean descent and her father is of South Asian descent. They both immigrated to New York, where they met and started a family, eventually moving to Indiana, where Nazarinne is currently based.

About Colleen Gross

Darwin’s Theory of Female Sabotage

400 chemistry vials, 400 hollow point boat tail bullet wax castings, 800 sewing pins.

Certain types of relationships prove that our isolation is not permanent. That one person in the entire universe recognizes your humanity means that you yourself can, too.

“Female sabotage is an evolutionary theory regarding the propensity of certain females to select “burdened” males of their species for mating. This ensures that as the males die, more food and other resources will remain for females and their young.”

Colleen is a sculptor from Indy exploring the stages of grief through their personal experience with loss and seeks to create environments for people to feel understood.They investigate the fundamentals of science to aid in the process of ending negative social cycles and introducing new, more inclusive ways of being. By imbuing these concepts into sculpture, they suggest forgetting the learned and inherited ways of survival based on biological phenotypes, and instead seek connection, strength, and longevity.

Curated by Jane Sun Kim / / Big Car Collaborative’s Artist & Public Life Residency