Topographies of Memory | Masters of Fine Arts Candidates Exhibition

March 27, 2026 from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.: MFA I Opening Reception
March 27 to April 10, 2026 : MFA I Exhibition Open for Viewing
April 17, 2026 from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.: MFA II Opening Reception
April 17 to May 1, 2026 : MFA II Exhibition Open for Viewing

Topographies of Memory
Masters of Fine Arts Candidates Exhibition

Exhibition Dates:
MFA I : March 27 – April 10, 2026
Opening Reception: March 27, 5:00-7:00 PM

MFA II: April 17 – May 1, 2026
Opening Reception: April 17, 5:00-7:00 PM

Artists
Aurora Pavlish Carpenter [I]
Nicholas Phitides [I + II]
Hannah Shipley [I]
Kyle Selley [I]
Lainie Ettema [II]
Benedicta Opoku-Mensah [II]

The University Galleries at the University of Florida presents Topographies of Memory, Master of Fine Arts Candidates Exhibition.

According to art history graduate student and curatorial assistant Rónan Shaw from the School of Art and Art History at UF, the exhibition title comes from a series of conversations with professor and curator Jesús Fuenmayor about the bilderatlas (“image atlas”) created by the pioneering art historian Aby Warburg (1866–1929). Between 1924 and 1929, he developed his image atlas, organized in 63 panels encompassing around a thousand individual pieces with reproductions of Renaissance, Baroque, and Enlightenment artworks. Warburg hung each panel, says Shaw, “on a wall in a deliberate topographic configuration, using the collective images to map the repetition of certain motifs and ideas across the ages. In doing so, Warburg hoped to find and communicate visual and iconographic affinities he saw occurring and persisting throughout time in the work of different artists across cultures. He christened the project Mnemosyne, after the Greek titaness of memory and the mother of the muses and borrowed the title of his project from mythology in particular because he saw the presence of Greco-Roman themes in the Renaissance as a sign of cultural awakening, that after centuries of dormancy, the Greek gods were ready to imprint themselves onto the cultural landscape of sixteenth-century Europe. Their resurrection from iconoclasm, to Warburg, was a sign of cultural memory and proof that certain images, ideas, and stories persisted in the imaginary of Europeans as they entered a new age.” As Shaw elaborates on his curatorial introduction, “in borrowing from Warburg’s idea of the bilderatlas Mnemosyne, we have gathered images and objects that evoke the idea of memory, questioning the pathways of cultural knowledge, embodied making, and image survival.”

MFA I

In this first part of the 2026 Master of Fine Arts Exhibition the visitors will appreciate the work of Aurora Pavlish-Carpenter, Nicholas Phitides, Kyle Selley and Hannah Shipley. Shaw describe these works in the following paragraph. “Using repurposed materials such as plastic, Pavlish-Carpenter crafts an island as a space of survival and transmission of organic life. Fission (or: Don’t Worry, It’ll Only Cost You an Arm and a Leg and Your Unborn Child evokes the fluid environment of an island as a space that shifts—subject to the tides and whims of the ocean. She implies a sense of hostility in the spiny starfish that populate the constructed landscape, forcing viewers to carefully consider how they move about and engage with her ambitious installation, a diorama of sorts that implies a mnemonic reconstruction of a bygone natural environment. Phitides conjures the sublimity and uncanniness of memory in his two paintings titled Final Autumn and Hot October, respectively. In both he draws equally from the language of mass media and the collective unconscious; things that we’d never think to notice—an abandoned house, a backyard conflagration, a throughway—are made monumental and confrontational in their isolating and eerie environmental storytelling. As time progresses, all things leave a mark, or a residue. In his installation Contemplating Residue, Selley explores residue in his indexical works involving ash and combustion. The audience witnesses the aftermath of fireworks in his paintings, but not necessarily the pyrotechnics themselves. In a Warburgian way, he engages with aftermath as a form of recall, the implication of an event rather than the event itself. The happening lives on in the presence of the ashes and marks, prolonging its occurrence. Shipley, whose work is presented in the Focus Gallery, brings the wall itself as the locus of her mnemonic experiment. Titled The Way We Were, Kind of, her crafted wallpaper’s surface replicates images of childhood characters as a metaphor for scattered, imperfect remembrance and familial ties. By indicting memory itself as an unreliable narrator, Shipley challenges viewers to confront their own sense of memory via the symbolic and literal construction of domestic space in the gallery.”

MFA II

In this second part of the 2026 Master of Fine Arts Exhibition, the visitors will appreciate the work of Benedicta Opoku-Mensah, Lainie Ettema, and Nicholas Phitides. The work of Opoku-Mensah speaks to the idea of inherited memory and cultural practice via her convening of African women in the act of macramé. In Weaving Our Haven, the artist comments on histories of gender and colonial violence in Ghana. Opoku-Mensah literally and figuratively weaves a tapestry of memory and survivance, grounded in the ideas of Africana Womanism that locates itself in the specificity of the global Black experience. Nicholas Phitides conjures the sublimity and uncanniness of memory in his paintings Faultlines and Vandals (red sky) that draw equally from the language of mass media and the collective unconscious; things that we’d never think to notice—an abandoned house, a backyard conflagration, an eerie throughway—are made monumental and confrontational in their isolating and eerie environmental storytelling. In Slippage, Lainie Ettema brings the liminal space of a restroom to the gallery. Her work uses a drain as her canvas, onto which a feminine body is abstracted and dismembered. By using the mundane site of the drain as the ground of such vibrant abstraction, Ettema teases the boundary between individual and collective experiences with body, hygiene, and gender using the bathroom as a battleground of societal regulation.

Shaw concludes his curatorial statement with a suggestive idea: “Memory is circuitous and unreliable, yet beautiful and profound to the human experience” inviting the visitors to bring their “own memories to the works and the gallery as you explore, however fleetingly, [the] Topography of Memory.”

About University Galleries
The University of Florida University Galleries’ mission is to be a platform for relevant and experimental art research and a place where pressing contemporary conversations are amplified and shared with the university and expanded communities. The UG advances the School of Art + Art History’s commitment to the visual arts by offering an experimental space to bring people together around art and ideas, improving accessibility and inclusivity through direct student and community engagement; increasing the school’s visibility as a center for critical discourse around artistic research, production, and scholarship, leading with preeminent programming.

University Galleries are comprised of three art galleries. Gary R. Libby University Gallery (GRLUG) provides the greater Gainesville community with a contemporary venue that explores new directions in visual art, incorporating historical perspectives. Exhibitions feature nationally and internationally known artists, studio art faculty, and MFA graduating thesis projects. The Gary R. Libby Focus Gallery and the Constance and Linton Grinter Gallery of International Art present art exhibitions that are organized by graduate student curators, in conjunction with the director of the galleries, allowing students to learn experientially about curation, organization, and exhibition making.

Gary R. Libby University Gallery is located at the intersection of SW 13th Street and SW 4th Avenue in Fine Arts Building B on the University of Florida campus. Map There is a reserved gallery parking spot located behind the main Gallery (Gary R. Libby University Gallery). From SW 13th Street, enter campus via Stadium Road, then take into the Gallery’s driveway to your left. A temporary parking permit can be retrieved at the Gallery’s reception desk.

Daytime Parking

Monday through Friday, from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. are the normal hours of restriction when an appropriate permit is required to park for most areas of campus. However, many areas are enforced differently, so always check the signage at each location where you park to determine the specific hours when a permit is required for that area. Please check the following link for more information: https://taps.ufl.edu/customer-resources/parking-restrictions/

For more information, please contact the University Gallery at (352) 273-3000 or visit our
website at https://www.universitygalleriesufl.com/

Additional information
Directions & Accessible Parking:
Gary R. Libby University Gallery is located at the intersection of SW 13th Street and SW 4th Avenue in Fine Arts Building B on the University of Florida campus. Map

Accessible Parking

There is a reserved gallery parking spot located behind the main Gallery (Gary R. Libby University Gallery). From SW 13th Street, enter campus via Stadium Road, then take into the Gallery’s driveway to your left. A temporary parking permit can be retrieved at the Gallery’s reception desk.
UF Parking Map

Reception Parking
The closest parking to the Gary R. Libby University Gallery is the lot behind (to the west of) Tigert Hall. From University Avenue, enter campus via Buckman Drive and turn left onto Union Road. Follow Union Road through the 4-way stop. The parking lot entrance is on the right just past Walker Hall. Parking restrictions for this lot are lifted at 5:30 p.m.
Questions? Contact us at (352) 273-3000.

Gary R. Libby University Gallery
400 SW 13th Street
Fine Arts Building B (FAB)
Gainesville, FL 32611

About the College of the Arts
The College of the Arts is one of the 16 colleges and more than 150 research centers and institutes at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida. The College of the Arts offers baccalaureate, master’s and Ph.D. degree programs in its three institutionally-accredited schools — the School of Art + Art History, School of Music and School of Theatre + Dance. The college is home to the Center for Arts in Medicine, Center for Arts and Public Policy, Center for World Arts, Digital Worlds Institute, University Galleries and the New World School of the Arts in Miami. More than 100 faculty members and approximately than 1,200 students work together daily to engage, inspire and create. The college hosts more than 300 performances, exhibitions and events each year. Faculty and students also exhibit and perform at other local, national and international venues. To learn more, visit www.arts.ufl.edu