on view: Violette Bule
Someone in my car
Violette Bule
On View: February 24 - April 22, 2023
Opening Reception: February 24, 2023 | 6 - 8 PM
Artist Talk: 7 PM, Thursday, March 30, 2023 | Main Gallery
Art League Houston (ALH) is proud to present Someone in my car, an exhibition by Houston-based artist Violette Bule. Someone in my car invites the viewer to consider the duality of the usually anonymous interactions of ride-sharing from the perspectives of both passenger and driver. In a car-based city like Houston, residents and visitors without a personal vehicle rely more and more on strangers to drive them to and from their destinations. This installation of work captures Bule’s year-long performance as a ride-share driver, transforming her lived experience as a contemporary flaneur into works of art for an exhibition that includes photographic portraits of her passengers, videos of the city, and audio clips of conversations she overheard while driving.
Bule is interested in pushing the boundary between art and life, amplifying vulnerability as a potential form of empowerment. Starting the job out of economic necessity, she began photographing her passengers. This work takes those interactions as a point of departure and invites the viewer to add their experiences to the project by signing up to schedule a ride-share with the artist, extending the participatory nature of the exhibition.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Violette Bule is a Venezuelan-Lebanese conceptual artist. Her work engages with a wide variety of topics—migration, identity, memory, violence, community engagement, digital technologies, the politics of space, and the social and political reality of contemporary Venezuela—and has been exhibited nationally and internationally at the Tokyo Art Center, Tokyo, Japan; Ante America, Bogota, Colombia; Museo of Contemporary Art, Caracas, Venezuela; Transart Foundation for Art and Anthropology, Houston, Texas; and Lite-Haus, Berlin, Germany, among others. She was selected for the Insta11ations public art initiative founded by MOCA, Art League Houston, and Houston Arts Alliance, Houston, Texas. She was also the recipient of a SOMA SUMMER - MEXICO CITY grant awarded by the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, and the artist residency awarded by Cornell University.
Instagram: @violettebule
ADDITIONAL WORKS ON VIEW
We invite you to visit the Blanton Art Museum’s current exhibition, Day Jobs, a group exhibition that features work by Violette Bule. The exhibition will be on view through July 23, 2023.