Blooming in the Whirlwind

Opening Nov. 13, 2021, Blooming in the Whirlwind at Durden and Ray takes a creative journey through the pandemic. 

A collaboration of the Level Ground and Durden and Ray collectives, the project began early in the pandemic with Level Ground inviting poets to write poems about the moment. Level Ground then paired those poets with filmmakers. Now, Durden and Ray has paired installation artists with the films to create an exhibition that takes us from early in the pandemic to our pandemic/post-pandemic world through three forms of art. 

At the show, visitors can pick up booklets that contain the poems, watch the videos on a monitor, and explore the art installations. 

Poets: Christina Brown, Daniel Binkoski, DeiSelah, Jireh Deng, Karly Kuntz, Madeleine St. John, Noor Jamal, Simone Tetrault, and Tamisha A Tyler

Filmmakers: Andrés Vazquez, Anthony D. Frederick, Andrew Neel & Alex C. Smith, Ilgın G. Korugan, Labkhand Olfatmanesh, Leila Jarman, Meredith Adelaide, Rich Johnson, and Taree Vargas

Installation artists: Arezoo Bharthania, Ismael de Anda III, Dani Dodge, Kiyomi Fukui, Sean Noyce, Tina Linville, Reed Van Brunschot, Flora Kao, and Ricardo Harris-Fuentes

Level Ground curators: Andy Motz, Rebekah Neel, Samantha Curley, and Simone Tetrault

Durden and Ray curators: Arezoo Bharthania, Ismael de Anda III, Sean Noyce

“Blooming in the Whirlwind” takes its name from a line found in the poet Gwendolyn Brooks’s 1968 classic, “The Second Sermon on the Warpland.” In that year that also contained upheavel, Brooks encouraged readers to “conduct your blooming in the noise and whip of the whirlwind.”

This exhibition explores the COVID-19 pandemic in a unique and moving way through three different forms of art created in three different points of time. And through this process it proves, there can be blooming in a whirlwind.