Opening Reception

Friday, 10.10.2025
5:00 – 9:00 p.m.

gallery hours

Thursday – Saturday
1:00 – 4:00 p.m.

Disclaimer

This exhibition contains artworks that address sensitive political themes. While the gallery does not take a political position, we are committed to supporting artistic and intellectual freedom of expression.

AREA 405 is thrilled to present Pitted: Home at the Heart of an Empire, reflecting the feeling of impermanence that grasps the Gen Z generation raised online. The show, created by PULP Collective, will be on view from October 10 to November 21, 2025, with the opening reception coinciding with the Station North October Second Friday Art Walk on October 10, from 5:00–9:00 p.m.

A ship of technological innovation has been foaming through the ocean of information. Sailing into the 2000s, its accelerating speed leaves waves peaking higher and shorter in intervals: in “A Long-Term Timeline of Technology,” published by Max Roser on the World Economic Forum, a spiral chart shows centuries between early innovations collapsing into mere decades of transformation in our times. Born aboard this rocking ship, Gen Z is the first to come of age entirely online, where reality refreshes every second. As the vast ocean of information floods into vessels of glowing screens, this generation is swept by tides of unbearable velocity that would easily wash them away, were they not striving to stay grounded on land; a land everchanging amidst the current climate crisis.

It is here that Pitted: Home at the Heart of an Empire finds its metaphorical center. Humans aren’t naturally aquatic. We ride the ship because of technology, often overlooking the solid ground where growth occurs slowly: from seeds in pits, through drizzles or rains, into fruition.

Twenty young artists in the exhibition, all recent graduates of the Maryland Institute College of Art, explore a shared anxiety about the rapidly expanding capitalistic empire and the resulting neglect of the physical relationship between body and mind. Emerging from the undergraduate school program, the artists formed a collective called PULP, which meets virtually every two weeks for cross-critiques, reading discussions, and communal support.. In their artistic practice, they collectively turn toward craft and material-based work, resisting the rush that dominates the internet and systems of capital.

The artists also draw on personal histories of activism. Curator Nadia Nazar reflects on her experience with climate activism, noting the tension between the urge to protest and the understanding that meaningful change requires time, patience, and candid conversations with others. Similarly, curator Mina Sarfaraz’s work sparks dialogue within the collective by addressing the helplessness of witnessing ongoing crises across the global south  and the suffering broadcast online. Both curators recognize that activism, like finding land within the fast-pacing environment, demands careful cultivation despite its urgency. 

Exhibiting Artists wonder how to root themselves in a foundation that bears constant extraction, extinction, and exploitation. In an age of ecological and social precarity, Pitted seeks to counter anxiety by slowing down through craft and communal practice. It calls for a return to slowness, to the earth, to the body. It invites viewers to steady themselves amid the churn, to find grounding not in permanence, but in the act of staying present.

The exhibition Paradise Portals is made possible by the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation. Public programs are sponsored by the Free Fall Baltimore Grant Program.

Opening Performance

Friday, 10.10.2025
5:00 – 9:00 p.m.

The reception will be a chance to meet the artists and curators and participate in the small-works fundraiser, raising donations for Dahnoun Mutual Aid.

World-Building Workshop
Imagining Otherwise: from Mantis Harper-Blanco and Alberto Garaulet

Saturday, 10.11.2025
12:00 – 1:30 pm

Imagining Otherwise is a playful and collaborative workshop exploring how worlds—real or imagined—are made and remade. Drawing from Odyssey Works’ four foundational elements of worldbuilding, we will join in groups to discuss and respond to an imagined scenario. Together, we’ll shed light on the power of collective imagination, and rekindle the agency we all have as active contributors of larger narratives.

Workshop
GRIOT GENDER by Oreoluwa Akinyode

Saturday, 10.25.2025
12:00 – 3:00 pm

GRIOT GENDER is a workshop that invites individuals to pass a story to one another within a communal learning and sharing space. Participants are invited to come to this workshop with a short story about themselves, their life, their community, where they come from, and truly any niche story one wants to live through the passing of stories. Oreoluwa will invite participants to demystify archival methods and exalt the history of traditional oral storytelling with them. In this writing and performance based workshop Oreoluwa will also be sharing writing, short film, musical and sonic examples of the storytellers who paved the way for them to think of the ways a story can take shape and morph into something new everyday.