As part of the opening celebration for Stone Soup: Santa Rosa, everyone
is encouraged to bring a vegan ingredient for a Stone Soup, which will
be made and served. Weather permitting, Vadim will host Firebar Vadim,
a story-telling performance around Labor is a Medium's very small fire pit.
Visitors are invited to bring a piece of wood-with-a-story to burn.
The roadways from Santa Rosa to San Francisco were once lined with basalt pavers
and blocks. Mined from local quarries around the Sonoma Mountains and Annadel
State Park—primarily relying on the labor of Chinese and, later, Italian
immigrants—this basalt was also used in construction of historic Santa Rosa
structures such as the St. Rose Catholic Church, the Western Hotel, the La Rose Hotel,
the Carnegie Library, and the Railway Express Office. This stone geologists
classify as the "Sonoma Volcanics" laid a template for modern infrastructure
and trade. Lichen and mosses have since reclaimed these mines, and the andesite
that used to line streets and buildings from Santa Rosa to San Francisco has been
replaced by concrete and asphalt.
Stone Soup: Santa Rosa, [Basaltic] Andesite conjures the ghosts of this
volcanic landscape, reconstructing Labor is a Medium's exhibition wall out of images
of basalt extracted from local mines. The project extends a line of questioning Annie
began with the first iteration of Stone Soup in Chisinau, (aka "The White City"),
Moldova, prodding the links between human labor, landscape, and urban environments; the
ways in which natural histories resurface in the materials of commerce and capital;
and how we might begin to reach into Deep Time from the present.
Annie Albagli's work pays particular attention to our entanglements with landscapes
molded by power—be it government, military, or industry. Through archival and field
research, play, and community-engaged projects, she offers new ways to witness
landscapes and their relationship to human and nonhuman worlds, examining the
cultural contexts from which they are born and the layers of manipulation that shape them.
Her work has been shown nationally at such venues including the Headlands Center for the
Arts, YBCA, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and the Art Museum of the Americas, and
internationally at Muzeul Zemstvei in Chisinau, Moldova; Art Prospect in St. Petersburg,
Russia; The Trash 3 Festival in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan; and Beita Gallery in Jerusalem.
Her videos have been screened as part of the Imagined Biennials Project at the Tate Modern
in London, UK; the Bavarian Film Festival, ZWICKL in Schwandorf, Germany; and Artist
Television Access in San Francisco, CA. She has participated in residencies throughout the
U.S. and internationally including Fondazione Antonio Ratti in Como, Italy; Oberpfälzer
Künstlerhaus in Schwandorf, Germany; Art East in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan; and The Headlands
Center for the Arts in Sausalito, CA. She has contributed to various artists' land project
s such as AZ West, Mildred's Lane, and Salmon Creek Farm. Between 2017-18, Albagli was
a YBCA Truth Fellow. She is a co-founder and editor of the publication, WHIZ WORLD, and
former Co-Director of the Royal Nonesuch Gallery. She teaches at the University of Nevada
MFA-IA program.