Untitled: MFA Candidates Exhibitions I and II, 2021

These exhibitions will be guest-curated by Gean Moreno, curator and director of the Knight Foundation Art + Research Center at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami. Moreno says that he hoped to “involve the Art and Art History Department’s graduating students in a process very similar to the one that they will be involved in as they begin to interact with institutional curators as their professional careers unfold.” The exhibitions will feature work in a diverse array of media, including graphic design, ceramics, installation, painting, printmaking, sculpture, and video.

MFA Thesis Exhibition I: March 19 — April 2, 2021
University & Gary R. Libby Focus Galleries
Curatorial Statement: MFA Candidates Exhibition I

MFA Thesis Exhibition II: April 9 – April 23, 2021
University & Gary R. Libby Focus Galleries
Curatorial Statement: MFA Candidates Exhibition II

MFA Candidates Exhibition I Artists

PARISI NABIYOUNI

Parisi Nabiyouni’s video installation seeks to explore how consumerist logic, as it becomes ever more woven into our society turns the consumer into particular kinds of subjects, imbuing us with artificial desires and drives.

ANDREW NORRIS

With his large-scale oil paintings, Andrew Norris explores how the often-disparaged forms of Americana and heartland kitsch can be recharged as instruments through which to generate and explore queer identities.

EMMANUEL OPOKU

Emmanuel Opoku recodes geometries and semantic systems usually associated to particular geopolitical contexts through an unexpected entangling of consumer objects with some of the “substrate” materials—roofing materials, plumbing, bathroom fixtures—that give shape to American suburbs and cities.

CHAD SERHAL

Dredging notions mid-American sensibility and landscapes, Chad Serhal turns his raw materials into unexpected and uncanny media artifacts by cutting up films, sound tracking animations through feedback looping, and arraying collages to function almost like animation storyboards.

FOAD SM (SEYED MOHAMMADI)

Foad recalibrated his use and understanding of documentary photography to explore the often-alienating condition of having to engage an unfamiliar landscape, thinking of landscape not only as a physical territory, but of also as a matrix of cultural habits and expectations.

VAHID VALIKHANI

Through a series of photographs taken from suburban areas in the United States, Vahid forms an overview of landscape construction, altered natural landscapes, and everyday scenes. Through this overview he attempts to represent landscape as a notion driven by structures of power and ideology and calls for a greater awareness of human impact on the environment.

MFA Candidates Exhibition II Artists

MONSUR AWOTUND

Monsur Awotunde’s work recasts remnants that index the global flow of goods, and the movement of foodstuffs on the African continent in particular into sprawling paintings and painterly accumulations.

ERIN HOLMES

Erin Holmes’ ceramics explore the connection between biomorphic forms and feminist discourses. Holmes sculpts numerous vessels, bottles, decanters, and cups, intended to challenge our understanding of gender, sexuality, and the stigma often associated with alternative sexual behaviors or relations.

CINDY LEUNG

Cindy Leung’s works utilize ceramics and textiles in combination to explore concepts of cultural hybridity and the effects of colonialism on personal identity. In doing so, she draws upon her own daily experience, which involves constant code switching within a network of Chinese, British, and American cultural influence.

CLAIRE LENAHAN

In Claire Lenahan’s ceramics standard elements of everyday receptacles are given mutant traits and placed on “misused” tables, inviting viewers to engage with them and their queer formality. These seemingly familiar, functional objects change their expected design to challenge the user.

AIMEE MARCINKO

Aimee Marcinko creates an immersive and responsive installation of ceramic sculpture and dramatic LED lighting that serves as a striking reminder of nature’s intelligence and its symbiotic relationships with human kind.

JASMINE RAMOS

Asking, “How can I use materiality to allude to the construction or fabrication of queer identity?” Jasmine Ramos examines feminist dialogue through embroidery and other textile-based practices. Her work consists of two-dimensional wall-hung fabric pieces concerning her own bodily experiences as a queer person.