As the guest curator for the SA+AH MFA Thesis Exhibition, Untitled 1, I sought 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. This was a process that

involved studio visits; ongoing dialogues around the presentation and framing of

their work, including conversations regarding the history of the media in which

they work and the themes that they were addressing; and finally, a search for 

connections between all their projects that would produce a coherent exhibition,

while respecting their distinct points of view by not forcing them into a prescribed

theme that would reflect my current interests more than theirs. If there was a 

didactic dimension to the exercise it arose from placing the students in a situation

that mimics what will soon become a central part of their work life: exchanges with

curators, which require a set of skills that are applicable to similar exchanges with

other institutional figures, art writers, and collectors.

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Although an overarching theme wasn’t established for the exhibition, there

certainly were points of intersection to highlight between the works presented,

particularly around interrogations of identity and the pervasiveness of consumerist

drives. Both Vahid Valikhani and Foad Seyed Mohammadi, explore the alienating, if

generative in their hands, condition of having to engage an unfamiliar landscape

(thinking here of landscape not only as a physical territory, but of also as a matrix

of cultural habits and expectations). In the process, they recalibrated their use and

understanding of documentary photography.

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Emmanuel Opoku recodes geometries and semantic systems usually associated

to particular geopolitical contexts through an unexpected entangling of consumer

objects and, perhaps more interestingly, with some of the “substrate” materials—

roofing materials, plumbing, bathroom fixtures - that give shape to American

suburbs and cities.

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Parisa Nabiyouni, immersing the viewer in a virtual reality environment, impels a

consideration from the other side of things: rather than celebrate the appropriation

of mass-produced objects so as to imbue them with new meanings and narratives,

she explores how consumerist logic, as it becomes ever more woven into our lives,

tied into our very nervous systems, turns us into particular kinds of subjects,

imbuing us with artificial desires and drives.

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Andrew Stephen Norris explores how what are the often-disparaged forms of

Americana and heartland kitsch can be recharged as instruments through which

to generate and explore queer identities. Lastly, also dredging things from 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.

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Gean Moreno, Guest Curator

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The exhibition 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.