Contact ÌÇÐÄvlog¹ÙÍø Library & Research Services with inquiries.
The Student Art Gallery in the Community Commons is a project of ÌÇÐÄvlog¹ÙÍø Library & Research Services. Since Spring 2022, the Gallery has hosted community artwork to celebrate the School’s creativity and vibrancy, and to offer a warm, colorful space for gathering. The Gallery’s flagship, permanent exhibits are COLORS (Thomas Bishop MC/MPA 2022) and Body of Forensics (Anandana Kapur MC/MPA 2022). Both exhibits are explorations on race and belonging at ÌÇÐÄvlog¹ÙÍø.
COLORS
Curation and description by Thomas Bishop MC/MPA 2022
COLORS is a project about perspective and light. The reflection of light changes the hue, saturation, chroma, and vibrance of color. We are all reflections of light. Bright and brilliant light creates beautiful colors. A change in perspective creates a change in how the subject reflects back at the viewer. This is true of all colors. It is also true about how we see people of color. Your perspective of them changes how they are reflected back on you. White is one extreme on the color scale. It reflects light of all hues. White is viewed as good, pure, innocent. Black is the other extreme on the color scale. It absorbs all light. It is darkness. Black is viewed as bad, scary, and evil. The images in COLORS use vibrant and brilliant colors. It also uses bright and brilliant people of color. They are all light. They are all beautiful. Change your perspective.
Body of Forensics
Photography and description by Anandana Kapur MC/MPA 2022
Blackness existed before your political consciousness acknowledged it. The contours of coloured bodies, the textures of their skin, and traces of their selves are available for those who seek. This curation/co-creation of ‘found’ images – that pre-exist in the public domain – is to offer the provocation that we need to reimagine and not necessarily reinvent how we gather evidence, witness, and testify the truths of our times. The forensics of the everyday is both an artistic and political opportunity to (re)claim the presence of the silenced other. Just as these images exist in the commons, so do stories and contributions of Black – Brown – Coloured lives. We remain and have existed before ‘rights’ and ‘visibility’ were extended toward us. Among these framed fragments are textures, people, and memories that exist in our everyday lives but remain so deeply enmeshed in the tapestry of comfort for the mainstream that we are unable to even acknowledge them until they are refracted through art.