Betelhem Makonnen
Rock Standard Time (RST)

Tito's Prize Exhibition
March 6 – April 4, 2020

Opening Reception
Friday, March 6, 7 – 10pm

Member Preview
Friday, March 6, 6 – 7pm

Big Medium is pleased to present the third annual Tito's Prize exhibition featuring winner Betelhem Makonnen. The solo exhibition will open with a special reception on Friday, March 6 and run through SXSW.

Big Medium partnered with Tito's Handmade Vodka to create the $15,000 award; intended to help grow the recipient’s artistic career and support their life in Austin.

Makonnen was selected by a curatorial panel that includes Florencia Bazzano, Assistant Curator, Latin American Art at the Blanton Museum of Art (Austin); Annette Lawrence, Artist, and Professor of Studio Art at the University of North Texas (Denton); and Rigoberto Luna, Director and Curator at Presa House Gallery (San Antonio).

Rock Standard Time (RST) is an invitation to res(e)t our current climate of temporal anxiety. Feeling exiled from time, rather than being in and of it, it seems everyone is continually chasing after it and never catching up. How can we have time outside of imposed standards and within our best interests? Can we rush, if we must, but slowly? Works in photography, video, text and installation made through, with, and just in time ask us to shift our perspective and consider multiple scales and registers for time accounting.

Born from continuing conversations, correspondence and collaborations, the exhibition is a meditative resistance to the internalized ticks and tocks that assert we have no time to respond to ourselves, to each other, nor our world. Time in all its conjugation and tenses is inseparable from the human experience – we are time and time is on our side, yes it is.

Betelhem Makonnen researches questions on perception, presence, and place within a trans-temporal and trans-locative topology that operates on the relational dynamics of diasporic consciousness. In addition to her artistic practice, she is on the curatorial team of Fusebox Festival and co-editor of the online arts periodical Written & Spoken. She is also a founding member of the Austin-based contemporary arts collaborative Black Mountain Project.

Happiness is a Journey chronicles the daily life and art of Bear Lopez, East Austin resident of 60 years. Artists Ivete Lucas and Patrick Bresnan met Bear at the Austin American Statesman’s printing warehouse where Lopez has been working for over 20 years without a single day off, delivering papers. 

Bear’s paper route cuts through the heart of East Austin, traversing César Chavez from I-35 to the Holly Power Plant. Watching alleyways and business districts that define everyday life, he is a steadfast witness to the transformation and gentrification of East Austin. With Happiness is a Journey, Lucas and Bresnan seek to bring the home and works of Bear Lopez, while recording the resilience of those who like Bear remain faithful and proud of their East Side roots.

Sanctum brings together a collection of international artists to present work in conversation around the concept of genetic memory. Long fascinated with the idea that we inherit not only DNA but fear, habits, triumph, trauma and love—among other things from our ancestors—Wendt has gathered these artists to explore how this affects our collective cultural consciousness. Hailing from diverse practices and working in video, installation, photography, painting and sculpture, this group of work includes an excerpt from Wendt’s latest film The Memory Inheritance, which she filmed this past summer in Detroit.