Date of Submission

Spring 2021

Academic Program

Studio Arts

Project Advisor 1

Kenji Fujita

Abstract/Artist's Statement

“And we: spectators, always, everywhere,

turned toward the world of objects, never outward.

It fills us. We arrange it. It breaks down.

We rearrange it, then break down ourselves”

  • Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies

“Honesty is Unbelievable”

  • A Bumper Sticker I Saw

For my senior show I used collected materials, found objects, personal ephemera (both genuine and fabricated), paintings and sculpture to make installations that I would change every night of the show’s duration. Each morning the installation would be photographed, left for only a few hours, and then would be uninstalled to make way for creating a new iteration. All the objects not in use in the gallery were visible to the public, stored in the hallway on the other side of the gallery wall. There was no wall text, visible name or title, but everything that went into the show was in public view.

The show aimed to blend installation art with performance. Each day there was a new installation, however the majority of the actual time of the show the installation was in a state of flux. I would be in the gallery, deinstalling and then assembling the next show. The installations only being visible for a limited time combined with the artist creating the installations on site in real time asks the question of what the audience is really supposed to see. The process and product of the art making were equally visible, blurring together.

Behind all of the concepts and mediums entangled in this project there is a battle against fear, for personal expression and vulnerability. On the one hand, the project expressed this fear: Each installation in it’s finished state was barely seen by the audience, as the time span it existed in was so short. At the same time, the materials and construction of each installation happened publicly. There was nowhere to hide that process, and for me as an artist there was no possibility of either remaining satisfied with what I had or succumbing to anxiety that would block me from making something new: each day the installation had to change.

This was a year-long project. Materials and objects were sourced from home, borrowed from friends, found in the Hudson Valley, saved from cyclic waste in everyday life, or created. Some objects held loads of personal meaning, some just resonated aesthetically. Everything existed in equal value: paintings I spent a semester making were shuffled just as much as used water filters I had saved and displayed.

In addition to the installations, there was also a show of paintings made during the winter and spring in the lobby of the building, and a poetry reading with Lis Sundberg, featuring original poems and “Blinding, The White Horse in Front of Me” by Alice Notley.

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