2022 Sound Art & Visual Art MFA Thesis Catalog

Sound Art Visual Arts MFA Thesis 2022 Exhibition

Sound Art Visual Arts MFA Thesis 2022 Exhibition

Published on the occasion of the Class of 2022 Columbia University School of the Arts Sound Art and Visual Arts MFA Thesis Exhibition The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery Lenfest Center for the Arts April 23–May 22, 2022 © 2022 The artists and Columbia University Columbia University 310 Dodge Hall, MC 1806 2960 Broadway New York, NY 10027 arts.columbia.edu/visual-arts Design: Cowbird Creative (cowbirdcreative.com)

CONTENTS From the Curator

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Joseph Liatela

84

About the Curator

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Lyn Liu

88

Xinyi Liu

92

Raphaela Melsohn

96

Keika Okamoto

100

Mimi Park

104

Júlia Pontés

108

Jeremy Z. Qin

112

Abby Robinson

116

Christen Shea

120

Kelsey Shwetz

124

Ryan Muchen Wang

128

Elzie Williams III

132

Yixuan Wu

136

Lizzie Zelter

140

From the Dean

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From the Chair

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About the School of the Arts

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About the Sound Art Program

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About the Visual Arts Program

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Appendix

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SOUND ART Anthony Sertel Dean

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Jonathan Harris

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John Thomas Levee

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Typefaces: Queens Neuzeit Grotesk Karla

VISUAL ARTS

Printing: JS McCarthy

Katherine Blackburne

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Linus Borgo

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Kaela Mei-Chee Chambers

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Hyoju Cheon

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Alejandro Contreras

40

Hilary Devaney

44

Fadl Fakhouri

48

Linnéa Gad

52

Danielle Gottesman

56

Amada Gris

60

Jacq Groves

64

Erin Elise Holland

68

Julia Jalowiec

72

Sophie Kovel

76

Breeze Li

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FROM THE CURATOR The 2022 Columbia MFA Thesis Exhibition

Introductions to catalogues of this sort often try to comment on the moment in which the exhibition is taking place and has been organized, noting key geo- and sociopolitical events that have shaped the time leading up to the show. Alongside that summary, they also frequently attempt to find throughlines between the disparate artists’ work, pointing out shared themes, concerns and ways of working amongst the group.

There are a lot of reasons to do both of those here; these students have completed the entirety of their MFA during the global coronavirus pandemic. Some of them are returning for their second year after taking time off due to the lockdowns and remote instruction. During these years, in addition to the pandemic, we have collectively been through uprisings for social justice, increased economic insecurity and disparity, environmental catastrophes, and more. As I write this, the Russian attack on Ukraine has been underway for over a month, with an uncertain future for the citizens of Ukraine, the region, and the world. This is all in addition to all of the individual joys and tragedies, triumphs and struggles that have continued in day-to-day life.

With all of that as background, there are of course many overlapping interests amongst the group, be it content that is often reflective of this moment—the systems and institutions that shape our society and reinforce inequity, identity position and personal history, environmental precarity and the relationship between humans and the non-human natural world, or disorienting and uncanny investigations of architecture and private space—or formal inquiries into abstraction, materials and artistic histories, amongst many myriad and overlapping others.

But, despite the fact that I have just done what I intimated I might avoid—as these tropes are in fact useful and hard to avoid in a moment as densely layered as this one—as the outside curator invited to work with these students on their thesis exhibition, it is the individual artists themselves, rather than any connection between them, that feels most important to address here. For these thirty-three individuals, this exhibition marks the beginning of the threshold between their lives as students and the future that lies ahead. They have spent the last two or three years reimagining themselves as artists, being challenged and pushed from every direction by the rigors of this program. In some cases, it has reaffirmed for them the kind of work that they want to share with the world, for others, it has afforded them the opportunity to try on new modes and paths of inquiry.

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No matter where they stand, they have each approached this exhibition with openness and generosity. They have engaged in a dialogue with me, despite the limited time we have known each other and had together, and allowed me to play a small part in guiding them through this monumental task of presenting one idea, in a crowded, group exhibition context, as a representation of themselves as artists in this moment.

This has been an exercise in faith, collaboration, compromise and risk for each of them. I hope that this catalogue, and the resulting exhibition, stand as a testament to both their monumental efforts as well as all of their potential. As I said to many of them when we first met, from my perspective, a thesis exhibition should not be a final presentation of a body of work absolutely perfected, but rather a celebration of a goal realized and a marker in time along what I know will be a long journey of artistic pursuit for each of these artists.

Elisabeth Sherman

ABOUT THE CURATOR Elisabeth Sherman is an Assistant Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art. She has curated and co-curated numerous exhibitions at the museum, including: Dawoud Bey: An American Project (20192022), Making Knowing: Craft as Art, 1950-2019 (2019-2022), the Whitney’s presentation of Zoe Leonard: Survey (2018), and Between the Waters (2018). She has worked with artists such as Trisha Baga, Bunny Rogers, Torbjørn Rødland and Michele Abeles on solo projects at the Whitney and has written for numerous exhibition catalogs and artist's monographs. She is a board member of Burnaway in Atlanta.

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SOUND ART

ANTHONY SERTEL DEAN My sounds and artworks have been experienced in theater (Kennedy Center, New Victory Theater, Public Theater, The Kitchen), film (Film at Lincoln Center, Busan International Film Festival), radio (WNYC, Night Vale Presents) and installations (Fridman Gallery, City of Middletown, CT). My use of synthesis, digital fabrication, oral history, and light appear throughout my practice, and they can be found in multiple pieces around the gallery—thanks to the many lovely artists I get to share stories with.

embrace openness and experimentation in communications through culture and technology. These works exist as publicly as radio broadcasts and as privately as personal messages sent through a telephone, sharing amongst them a common motivation to bring listeners together. There is an intention of support that carries throughout my practice: the support of others, joy, exploration and revelation, for I believe that collaboration is innate in cultivating a greater community.

I am a New York Neo-Futurist, the company’s technical director, and creator/producer of our podcast Hit Play.

anthonydean.org Instagram: @anthonysdean

Anthony Sertel Dean is me: hello! I am a sound artist, composer, and media maker focused on telling stories of community and self. My works start in conversation—a mutual curiosity or fascination with a topic, one that may carry us closer together. From there, we play, in the hope that play sets forth a place of good. I call myself a hyper-collaborator, in part because of the relationships I’ve formed while making art as a means of discovery and joy. The sounds generated in these collaborations often center the voice intertwined with electroacoustic compositions, resonating outwardly to help shape space and resonating internally to help find self.

My work thrives when intimate connections are made internally and collectively; I

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RIGHT: phonework, 2016-2022 Found and hacked phones

mothbox, 2021 Wooden box with four speakers, resin cocoon, LED, moth sounds and human voices 17" x 14", 21 minutes

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TOP On Our Block (Bowery & Delancey), 2021 Wood, LED lights, four-channel sound 40 minutes, 30 seconds

BOTTOM vocal letters, 2021 3-channel video with stereo sound 25 minutes, 5 seconds

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JONATHAN HARRIS Jonathan Harris is an artist whose work uses objects, sound, and space as tools to explore psychological and perceptual phenomena.

This work typically involves the creation of environments that embrace sound as a physical medium and investigate its engagement with architecture and the listener. It often takes the form of site-specific installations whose sonic elements evolve without notions of beginning and end, allowing audiences the freedom to engage with a given composition as one might with sculpture or image, with the belief that spatial composition—given sound’s constancy, and the way we use hearing as a means of making sense of the physical environments we inhabit—has the unique ability to provoke listening practices that can facilitate reengagement with our real-world habitats.

Jonathan has presented this work in group shows and at gallery spaces in greater NY, the Hudson Valley, and the Catskills, including Fridman Gallery, Wallach Art Gallery, Mount Tremper Arts, various ChaShaMa exhibition spaces, and the Neuberger Museum. Recently, Jonathan completed a large-scale public sound installation, Sunpath, currently on display under the campus arcades at SUNY Purchase in Westchester County, NY.

lostlanguag.es Instagram: @iwoulddyne4u RIGHT Sunpath, 2020-21 Electronics, solar position data (azimuth, altitude), sound Public installation, campus arcades, SUNY Purchase (ongoing)

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Placeling, 2021 Mixed hardwoods, poplar, beeswax, gouache, stone, rubber, felt, silicone, wax paper, ink, acrylic, spackling compound, waxed cord, sound 108" x 84" x 84"

TOP Study, 2021 Milled birch, cotton, beeswax 74" x 60" x 54" (approx.)

BOTTOM Untitled (Giving in to the hurricane), 2021 Steel, silicone, rubber, acrylic, tie wire, clamps, bone conductors, electronics, white noise (40" incl. electronics, variable)

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JOHN THOMAS LEVEE John Thomas Levee is an artist and composer whose work often involves sound, installation, video, performance, and sculpture. He was born in 1998 in Jacksonville, Florida and attended Stetson University in DeLand, Florida, where he studied audio recording, music composition, and video production. His research in spatial audio has been presented both domestically and internationally, and his artistic work has been exhibited at a variety of galleries in New York City (notably the Jewish Museum and Fridman Gallery), as well as in other states across the country. He is currently pursuing an MFA in Sound Art at Columbia University, where he also teaches in a variety of topics pertaining to music technology.

VHS tapes, CRT TVs, and cameras which record to outdated media formats. Not only do these provide constraints to the process of artmaking, which is integral to Levee’s artistic production, but also point to technology as a thematic element of the work. Levee believes that using obsolete, recycled, often landfill-bound technology in the production of the work draws a connection to the relationship between everadvancing technology and human destruction of natural spaces.

www.johnlevee.com Instagram: @johnthomaslevee

John Thomas Levee is an artist and composer working at the intersection of a variety of mediums. His work often examines notions of human interaction with the environment and with technology. Often site-specific, Levee’s work strives to ask of the viewer: “How does this work relate to its surroundings? To you? By extension, how do you relate to your surroundings?”

These questions are meant to drive dialogue regarding humanity’s influence on the natural world and on ourselves, specifically in regards to industrialization and technological advancement. Obsolete technology, field recordings, and found objects are all integral to Levee’s work. For him, all of these components are evocative of specific places and times, and function as transportive tools. In regards to obsolete technology, his video work tends to use

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RIGHT Est. 1909, 2021 Found objects, found sounds 72" x 96" x 48"

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TOP Entropy, 2021 John Thomas Levee, Trevor Hamlin Video with color and sound on VHS tape 5 minutes, 20 seconds

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BOTTOM When Life Gives You Lemons..., 2021 Lemons, found objects, electronics, sound 146" x 121" x 186"

TOP Re-Authoring Event #1 (Columbia University), 2021 Graphic scores, kazoos, electronics Pictured, Rirkrit Tiravanija

BOTTOM Fever Dream, 2021 Video with color and sound on VHS tape 5 hours, 51 minutes, 14 seconds

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VISUAL ARTS

KATHERINE BLACKBURNE Katherine Blackburne was born in London, spent her formative years in Australia and currently lives and works in New York City.

Her practice spans the media of painting, video art, installation, performance, printmaking and dance. With a primary concentration in painting.

In recent years her paintings were selected for participation in Art fairs such as Art Basel, Miami, Scope Miami, The Dublin Biennial and Art Melbourne, Australia. Her paintings are held in private collections in Australia, France, United Kingdom, United States, Italy, Germany and Sweden.

of transformative play and connection, that the human becomes most effaced and most itself. Summoning a variety of figures which invoke both polytheistic ritual and images of ‘nature’ read in straightforwardly more scientific terms, this work moves towards suggesting a fascinating imbrication—if not dissolution—of nature and culture, and the species distinctions upon which this polarity usually subtends: of knowledge and story, of what is given and what is created, of the secular and sacred, the Christian and ‘pagan’, of science and myth, and of ostensibly ‘hard’ scientific fact and freewheeling metaphysical speculation.

Her current paintings are an investigation of ‘nature’ and human constructed landscape as socio-cultural imaginary.

www.katherineblackburne.com Instagram: @katherineblackburne

These paintings reflect ongoing preoccupations with the non-human world—our human embeddedness within it, our various alienations from it, and to the extent to which we can and might belong to it. In engaging these ideas, my current work attempts to test the provenance and durability of certain motifs about femininity, particularly motherhood. Moving simultaneously within and against traditions of landscape painting and religious art, I train my eye on those moments during which certain kinds of erasure signal intensifications, where landscape becomes abode and the intensity of subjective ecstasy engages a forgetting of the self. It is in these moments of intensity, of metanoia

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RIGHT The Crying Dancers, 2022 Oil on canvas 94" x 66"

Oblivion Dance, 2022 Oil on canvas 72" x 60"

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Verdant Dancer, 2022 Oil on canvas 78" x 54"

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LINUS BORGO Linus Borgo (b. 1995 Stamford, Connecticut) is a New York based painter who works primarily with large scale oil paintings, focusing on self portraiture and autobiographical narrative scenes. Most of his work deals with a life altering accident that he experienced as a teenager, and explores metaphysical questions of time, gender, history and the limitations of canonical definitions of nature through personal storytelling. Borgo presented his debut solo show at Steve Turner LA in January 2022.

linusborgo.com Instagram: @linusborgo

In 2014, when I was 18 years old, I was in an electrical accident where I was shocked with 11,000 volts, resulting in 11 surgeries to treat the third degree burns all over my body and the amputation of my left hand.

All of the subsequent work I have made is an attempt to grapple with the new physical and metaphysical limits of the body I live in.

Working through self portraiture, I study my own body as one might study a mathematical problem, searching for what was subtracted or rearranged, what is hidden, what is imagined, and what is a memory. What new boundaries has the surgeon’s incisions drawn on my body, and how does this manifest in the boredom of every day life. I draw heavily on my childhood fascination with Italian Renaissance paintings, from which I learned to draw when I was still in strollers, as well as my years of classical training in figure drawing and anatomy. I believe my work lies somewhere in the gap between quotidian and trauma.

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RIGHT Autotomy in the Liminal Realm: Splitting Time with a Scalpel, 2021 Oil on canvas 103" x 64"

Noli Me Tangere (Nick ties my shoe), 2021 Oil on canvas 66" x 52"

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Bed of Stars: Self portrait with Elsina and Zip, 2021 Oil on canvas 68" x 46"

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Kaela Mei-Chee Chambers (b. 1993) is an interdisciplinary artist born and raised in New York City.

kaelachambers.com Instagram: @kaelachambers

Play is a method of working-through; making what is serious more pliable, so that it may be approached, and held in the hand. In my practice, I use play to get at something graver: breakdown, in all senses of the word—as collapse, crisis, or failure; but also as analysis or classification, dividing something vast and unknowable into smaller, more manageable pieces. In the tension between these two forms of breakdown is a site of healing.

My work examines an absurdist desire to define and quantify healing; a frantic need for—and failing of—structure in times of personal and family crisis, and the language constructed around that need. I am interested in the futile: the yearning and searching for solutions to unsolvable problems; the attempts we make at imposing order on situations that are inescapably messy; the inevitable and necessary failure of such attempts.

I play within rhetorics of instruction, drawing from multiple pedagogies to build an autofictional archive. This is a framework for coping that is also a record of coping. These are portraits of my own striving.

RIGHT Worksheet No. 102, 2022 Inkjet print on paper, pen, marker, stickers 11" x 8.5" NEXT SPREAD Don't Go to the Hardware Store Looking for Oranges, 2020 Silkscreen print on paper 9.5 " x 3.75" folded

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HYOJU CHEON Hyoju Cheon, (b. Korea), now lives and works in New York. She is an explorer and researcher who collects movements. Hyoju's work is a process of recording movements and capturing or analyzing the moment to explore the outcome of those movements. Through this, she hopes to find a greater understanding of society and how people change based on their lived experience.

hyojucheon.com Instagram: @hyo_ju_cheon

My body moving in the house, my body moving in the studio.

My body taking up space in spaces.

My body is mechanized by repeated actions, drawing a certain trajectory.

My body is automated, but not mechanized, it's somewhere between those two options. My body is not a machine but is like a machine that struggles against the implied boredom of routine.

Through the symbolic actions of my performance I imbue joy into the repetitive movements of my daily tasks. I agonize about the interaction of my body with the soft plastic chair, or squeeze myself through the donut-like tunnel. How is sitting in it different or similar to sitting in a “real” chair or walking through a real tunnel? What is the state of my mind in these spaces? I observe it.

It doesn't matter which specific spaces are represented by the symbolic objects in my symbolic journey. What matters now is the way in which my energy is affected, sometimes positively like the social opening up in a cafe or at times

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negatively like a contamination that comes from a crowded and claustrophobic space. It becomes more important whether there is inward flow of energy or outward and how much energy I am using, how full or how depleted I might become.

In the performance, I grab objects to care for them, to learn, or wear, or nurse… before my body moves to the next performative station.

When I don’t touch the thing it remains as an object. If I hold or wear the objects, they become subjects. The object repeatedly experiences an equivalent of being a subject by interacting with my body in an object state.

I imagine movement with traces of orbit drawn by my body. I consider how repeated body movements are restricted by my thoughts, the language we use. The mundane movements are made absurd within the context of the performance by carrying out the expected repetitive movements of everyday life.

With this performance I seek to go against the limits that we experience, such as social norms, societal shaming and parental control.

RIGHT Trajectory of my body, 2021 Cement, mixed sand casting, moss 20" x 8"

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TOP & BOTTOM Flowing away of words, 2021 Laser cutting plywood with description Dimensions variable

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Trajectory of my body, 2021 Vinyl, plywood, acrylic rod, wheel, plaster, moss, rubber hose with video installation Dimensions variable, performance

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ALEJANDRO CONTRERAS Alejandro Contreras (b.1983 Caracas, Venezuela) is an interdisciplinary visual artist whose practice focuses on process and material experimentation. Formally referencing play and spontaneity, his compositions integrate a manic sense of creativity.

In a constant search for serendipitous results, Contreras starts from a “What if?” scenario that develops through the study of the material and the conditions of production. With an endless flow of line and vibrant color, he creates a symphonic language that explores themes of space, motion and time.

www.alejandroecontreras.com Instagram: @alejo_did_it

RIGHT Study of a LINEar FUNction I, 2021 Mixed media 153" x 84" x 12" NEXT SPREAD Study of a LINEar FUNction III, 2021 Mixed media

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HILARY DEVANEY Hilary Devaney (b. 1992, New Jersey) paints what lingers in the doorway between physical and psychological experience. Her work positions humor with fear in order to show the fullness of living and remind viewers of the many ways we slip out of ordered time.

hilarydevaney.com Instagram: @boiling_time_pudding

Painting is a way of thinking. It's not predicated on words but exists as its own path to truth. It's throwing the stick off the bridge and watching the river's current carry it off. It's drawing a gravestone so many times that it becomes clear that it was never a literal gravestone, just a gesture imprinted in my hand. Like sand through an hourglass, where the bottom half of the glass keeps regurgitating the sand back to the top, my work recycles and collages pieces of time to render a fuller picture of what it feels like to be here. My process is intuitive; I invite mysteries.

RIGHT Projections, 2021 Oil on canvas 60"x 42"

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TOP "Indeed, the Hour of Darkness is Really the Hour of Water," 2022 Oil on canvas 54" x 72"

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BOTTOM (Funeral) Home Intruder, 2021 Oil, charcoal, oil pastel and metal leaf on canvas 48" x 64"

Abundance of Caution, 2021 Oil and metal leaf on canvas 60" x 54"

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FADL FAKHOURI Fadl Fakhouri (b. 1997, San Francisco, California) performs, sculpts and imagines in New York City. Fadl pursued their MFA in visual arts at Columbia University and previously attended the University of California Berkeley where they graduated with a BA in Molecular and Cell Biology (’19).

colonized.info Instagram: @fadlfakhouri

My practice centers on lines, asking what comprises the lines of life, what it takes to cross these lines, how many lines it takes to create a container, and how to redraw these lines. Such lines considered include the borders of nation states, identity, and interpersonal boundaries.

I am curious about the validity of certain lines and traveling across them through various mediums, such as text, image, sense or formats not yet discovered.

RIGHT PALESTINIAN - - - AMERICAN., 2021 Two-channel video installation (color, sound; three minutes, 25 seconds), Dimensions variable

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TOP A Banned Surveillance, 2022 Single-channel video 20 second loop

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BOTTOM Digestion, 2021 Single-channel video with sound 4 minutes, 59 seconds

Blue contained, 2021 Acrylic and pastel on paper 24" x 18"

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LINNÉA GAD Linnéa Gad (b.1990) is an artist from Stockholm, Sweden. Her recent solo shows include Erratics at Spencer Brownstone Gallery in New York (2019), Luster Pit at RØM in Copenhagen (2018), and Mound Remover at New Release Gallery in New York (2018). Her ongoing research and work with lime was part of an exhibition and public program at SixtyEight Art Institute, in Copenhagen (2021). In 2023, she will release her first artist-research book, to be published by RSS Press. Gad is the recipient of several grants from The Swedish Arts Grants Committee and is shortlisted for the Frankenthaler Climate Art Awards.

linneagad.com Instagram: @linneagad

I currently collaborate with limestone, oysters, cardboard, bark, and other shell materials that I happen upon. I work in sculpture, printmaking, and installation to create unexpected conversations that awaken empathy for the ongoing vibrant “lives” of these materials.

relationship with this mineral. To conceptualize my research, I began to make sculptures solely out of lime, guided by its shape-shifting tendencies and its willingness to bind with different versions of itself. The object of this work has not been about communicating something through the material, but rather, letting the material itself be the subject matter.

For me, lime has become a foundation for further material and sculptural inquiries. Expanding on the idea of the shell, I started to work with container materials such as cardboard and bark.

Curious resemblances began to appear between my paper pieces and calcium buildup in the sea.

Processes of transformation that I witnessed in lime inspired me to work in bronze and porcelain, in each case allowing the materials to reflect processes beyond my control. With this body of work, I like to think about time as a substance integral to the material, so that the work is allowed to decompose, evolve, and eventually disappear.

My antidote to the uncertainty of our future is to elevate things that change quietly over a long time span. A spoon rounded from years of scraping pot corners or a fresco transformed by weather into a cryptic object. My approach to climate change is tactile, a counterpoint to the theoretical and abstract visualizations of this global issue.

I recently began investigating the life cycle of lime, a calcium-containing compound that takes a number of forms—from oyster shells to lapis lazuli. I follow humans' creative—and destructive—

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RIGHT Studio November, 2021 Oyster shells, lime mortar, limestone, lapis lazuli, cardboard, paper pulp, metal, bronze, marine plywood, porcelain paper-clay, bark and foam

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TOP Embark, 2021 Cardboard, paper tape, paper pulp, welded metal 14" x 41" x 1.5"

BOTTOM Bluebees, 2021 Onondaga limestone, lime mortar, oyster shells, goat hair, lapis lazuli 50.5" x 12" x 10"

Ultra Elude Fossiliferous limestone, lime mortar, oyster shells, goat hair, lapis lazuli 10" x 10.2" x 7"

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DANIELLE GOTTESMAN Danielle Gottesman (b. 1990, London) was raised in both Israel and France, and is now based in New York. She is a multi-media artist with a concentration in sculpture.

She has exhibited in the United States and internationally, and is currently a Visual Arts MFA candidate at Columbia University (2022). In 2012, Gottesman earned her BA in Fine Art from Central St Martins in London (UK). She has also completed programs at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna (Austria) and the Chelsea College of Arts in London (UK).

objects intend to be both unsettling and satisfying to the viewer who confronts them. Through this process I aim to bring attention to the daily barrage of instructions we are faced with, and to show how technical images that exist to guide us may help us confront deeper, underlying failures.

daniellegottesman.com Instagram: @daniellegottesman

I draw inspiration from our innate relationship with physical tools, as well as the development of technical images (such as architectural notations, digital icons, and public information signs).

At Columbia, it was important for me to better understand my fixations as an artist. I discovered that my fixation on simple, broken tools was in fact a fascination with failure, or with how mutation can occur as a response to failure. To explore this further, I limited my current study to standardized, public information symbols.

Through the study of standardized images of human figures in particular, I chose to hone in on the ones that represented newborn babies. Such signs exist for instructional use and can be seen in countless locations in the public sphere.

In my work, I delve into universally complex and often unresolved themes of daily life by transforming these standardized images into ambiguous, abstracted objects. These crafted

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RIGHT The gift of life is thine, 2022 Carved basswood and HDU foam sculptures, vises, table 36" x 44" x 30"

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TOP The gift of life is thine, II, 2022 Carved HDU foam sculptures, vise, table 36" x 44" x 30"

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BOTTOM The gift of life is thine, III, 2022 Carved HDU foam sculptures (varying sizes) on black MDF surface 16" x 8" x 12"

The gift of life is thine, II (detail), 2022 Carved HDU foam sculptures, vise, table 36" x 44" x 30"

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AMADA GRIS "The rest of us are merely journeymen, planting seed for someone else to harvest." —Wallace Thurman “I disengaged, not completely, not successfully, not definitely, but sufficiently to figure out that this was not my place.” —Nell Painter A typo created Amada. In English, Amada Gris translates to Beloved Gray. Amada Gris is an adventurous soul dancing in New York City. Originally, it was Amanda Gris. An ode to the pen name who wrote romance novels in the film la flor de mi secreto. Amada Gris first fell in love with photography, then they somehow seemed to fall in love with anonymity. They are passionate about lust, history, art, and traveling everywhere.

Since this is a scandalous novela, Amada Gris lives happily and lustfully ever after. There may be other things along the way, but the eyes and the kisses and the shadows and the substance and the stars and the flowers are all that matter.

Yo Yoooooooooooooo Yo, bro, you You who is a boy or a girl or a new world coming and definitely a big ole freak every time you breathe you send the supersonic signal you exist

RIGHT Retrato, 2022 Graphite on paper 16" x 20" NEXT SPREAD Ojos, 2022 Graphite on paper 16" x 20"

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JACQ GROVES Jacq Groves (b. 1987, Denver, Colorado) is a New York-based interdisciplinary artist, educator and arts worker. Informed by scientific inquiry, play and speculative fiction, they create work that investigates the defiance of taxonomic categorization and reductive binaries. Jacq previously holds a BA in Art and Biology from Grinnell College. They have been an artist-in-residence at Vermont Studio Center and were recently the recipient of the Joan Sovern Sculpture Award and of a Dean's Project Grant. When not in their studio, they are avidly foraging and identifying mushrooms.

create forms that uncannily allude to natural structures and systems. From the blue-boned remnants of an otherworldly creature to gradually evolving corporeal forms, I disrupt the legibility of the recognizable. How can we use this shift in perception to objectively rethink what it means to have a body and how it interacts with the environment around us?

www.jacqgroves.com Instagram: @jacqgroves

My process relies on an initial imagining of a symbiotic, community-driven world devoid of unyielding hierarchical structures. Yet inevitably, philosophical questions stemming from our anthropocentric nature seep into and complicate this idyllic world building. This friction is at the root of my practice.

My current practice questions the constrictive nature of European academic sciences and aims to re-envision life for those who defy reductive binaries. I foreground sculptural installations of mythical, not yet known, organisms to make visible alternative modes of being. These transformed morphologies act as metaphors for identity construction at the intersections of sexuality, gender, and disability.

Drawing from my background in biological research and my lived experience, these works explore how we comprehend the unknown. I

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RIGHT Perceptual Inferences: Making of a _______, 2021 Steel, wood, cement, porcelain, mason stain 34" x 60" x 36" 2021 Cyanotype on paper on wood panel 51" x 53" x 0.5"

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TOP JuicyBoy, 2021 Porcelain, silicone, water, moss, wood, water pump, pigment, found stones, mushrooms 20" x 46" x 49"

BOTTOM (un)becoming, 2021 Steel, wood, cement, porcelain, mason stain 39" x 26" x 28"

Perceptual Inferences: Making of a _______ (detail), 2021 Steel, wood, cement, porcelain, mason stain 34" x 60" x 36"

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ERIN ELISE HOLLAND Erin Holland creates relational offerings through photography, video, performance and installation. Her practice weaves silence, touch, absence and presence into deeply personal works, most recently seen in the film Mother Mother, about the hardship and richness of long-term caregiving. Holland formerly worked as an art director and producer for The Museum of Modern Art while engaging in community projects led by MoMA Pop Rally, Creative Time and Public Art Fund. Her work will soon screen at In Response: Jonas Mekas on May 15, 2022, at The Jewish Museum.

brought balance to my frenetic life. Peace folded itself into my daily rhythms and offered healing.

This peace is now the cloak to which I cling. On March 5th, 2022, my mother died unexpectedly at home in Texas. Her absence and presence are felt palpably through the room in this exhibition, which mirrors a studio where she once taught piano lessons, filling our house with classical music and hymns. It is not an exact mimicry of her space, but rather a faint trace of its feeling, where light and silence hold sacred potential.

erineliseholland.com Instagram: @erineliseholland

In 2010, with great encouragement from my mother, I moved to New York City to pursue a job in the arts. That same year, at home in Abilene, Texas, my mother’s health began to decline. Her diagnosis remained unknown for some time. In The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion writes that “Grief, when it comes, is nothing we expect it to be.” The following decade proved magical, unexpected, and devastating: My life as an artist blossomed, while I lost more and more of my mother to dementia.

During the global unraveling of 2020, I returned home to help with my mother’s care. I sat in stillness and solitude with her—a quietude New York had never offered. It nurtured revelation in me. The core elements of her external space— silence, light, and soft domesticity—breathed deeply into my spirit. Living in Abilene, resting on my mother’s furnishings in her airy house,

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RIGHT The Space Between (No. 1), 2021 Archival pigment print 44" x 31" NEXT SPREAD Mother Mother, 2021 Video (color, sound) 5 minutes, 43 seconds

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JULIA JALOWIEC Julia gives no energy to motherfuckers.

She loves people and fights for them. Her sculptures are her best friends, but she’s always happy to be a friend to anyone who needs her.

Named the Mercedes-Benz Financial Emerging Artist in 2019, she lived in residence at Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin. Other awards include a 2020 Nasher Sculpture Center grant and an Engaged Learning Fellowship allowing her to live and study art in Paris. Her work has been shown at the Amarillo Museum of Art, Site131, RO2 Gallery, Craighead Green Gallery, a sub shop and a parking garage in Dallas.

juliajalowiec.com Instagram: @juliajalowiec

Julia Jalowiec opens a portal to environments and humanity, both unseen and invisible, through her sculpture and installations. Their prior imagined existence does not negate the realness of their new physicality in which Julia explores the idea of “the larger community.”

She often addresses what it means to deal with the lines of relationship whether by sociopolitical constructs, familial bonds or those of friendship. In a life filled with her own illness and the loss of those around her, Julia’s work employs both humor and the grotesque as a way to meditate on her own mortality.

RIGHT Now you know what I look like NEXT SPREAD Also, Fuck the police, 2021 Cast iron Smallish to medium size

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SOPHIE KOVEL Sophie Kovel (b. 1996, Los Angeles) is an artist, writer and translator. She has exhibited her work at Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Demark; VERY Project Space, Berlin; and elsewhere. Selected residencies, fellowships and honors include School for Poetic Computation Residency (2020), Vermont Studio Center Residency (2020), Weatherhead East Asian Institute Fellowship (2017) and Andrew Fisher Fellowship (2021).

Kovel has spoken on panels and symposiums at universities and institutions including Columbia University and the Brooklyn Public Library. Her interviews and criticism have been published in Artforum, BOMB, the Brooklyn Rail, Frieze, Spike and elsewhere. Currently, she is an MFA Candidate in New Genres at Columbia University and Assistant Editor at BOMB Magazine.

sophiekovel.com

Gleaning and undermining iconographies of fascism, patriarchy, white supremacy and state power that can take banal and overlooked forms—on flagpoles, doormats, postcards and floral wrapping paper—Kovel reckons with the surfaces and structures that hold up American ideology. Her interventions aim to put a wrench in the spoken and architectural scripts of US nationalism.

RIGHT, TOP Untitled (Welcome), 2018–21 Flocked coir, carpeted rubber-backed, and waterhog doormats Dimensions variable RIGHT, BOTTOM Welcome (USA), Welcome (Nobody thought this could happen) and Welcome (Remedy now or no more Fed payments!), 2018–21 Flocked coir, carpeted rubber-backed, and waterhog doormats 24" x 36" each

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3450–3660 21st Street, 2021–22 Single-channel digital video, transferred from Super 8, black-and-white, silent Dimensions variable

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San Francisco, September 9, 2020 (Portrait After Bierstadt), 2020 (one of a series of three) 15" x 12" each

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BREEZE LI Breeze Li was born in Sichuan China in 1996. Breeze is a painter, and tries to paint as she sees the exterior and interior reality as a harmonious one. In her works, she is pondering on the mystery of things. She tries to embody the experienced reality as a constant disintegration and reformation.

Instagram: @li.breeze

The world we are living in is a mystery. We experience the world as something real, yet we can not comprehend where the realness come from. Despite the lack of comprehension, somehow we know the mystery itself and its significance. I paint to embody this mysterious experience that can only be said in paradox: frailty can be strong, yet being strong is precarious; formation leads to deformation, and deformation is the start of formation of something else. All can be brought to unity in a painting, image and material, external appearance and internal experience.

RIGHT Where are we going?, 2021 Oil on canvas 72" x 48"

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TOP Fountain, 2021 Oil on canvas 24" x 30"

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BOTTOM Track, 2021 Oil on canvas 30" x 40"

Tower, 2021 Oil on canvas 72" x 48"

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JOSEPH LIATELA Joseph Liatela is a multidisciplinary artist based in New York City. Using performance, sculpture and video, he makes work that examines issues of biopolitics, memorial, trans and queer subjectivities, embodiment, institutional power and collective movement.

between the physiological elements of having a body, and the social meaning the body takes on in the context of lived experience. In doing so, my work examines the performative nature of identity, demonstrating how it is perceived and enacted at the level of the body.

He has exhibited nationally and internationally, and his work has been featured in Hyperallergic, Artforum, Leslie-Lohman Museum Journal, SFMoMA Open Space, and Artsy, among others. He has received fellowships and awards from the Zellerbach Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, Wassaic Project, Denniston Hill, California College of the Arts, Banff Centre, Artist Grant and Columbia University. He is currently an MFA candidate at Columbia University.

In my latest work, I have been investigating the material overlaps between grief and celebration, as well as how bodies hold and repurpose history. A gesture can reach across empires and decades. The dancefloor can be a place to move again with the ghosts of friends lost to AIDS, or to pay pilgrimage to queer and trans ancestors. Using the materials of memorial, such as flowers, gesture or the empty dance floor, I orchestrate absence as a way to explore the more expansive modes of knowing and being that these spaces of longing allow.

www.josephliatela.com Instagram: @josephliatela

Our bodies are ours, yet they are not solely our own as they are the medium for our interfacing with the world. As a transgender person, I see the limitations of embodiment, projection and legibility as rife with potential. These elements inform my practice where I question institutional, cultural and medico-legal ideas of what is considered a “complete” or “correct” bodily formation.

My background in printmaking fostered an interest in how the manipulation of a surface— such as scars on skin or embossing on paper— alters how it is perceived, and has informed my approach to creating politically grounded, relational work. Using sculpture, performance, installation and video, I aim to differentiate

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RIGHT & NEXT SPREAD To Move Is To Remember, 2021 Welded aluminum, granite, leds, 49 star gazer lillies, mdf, acrylic, water, necklace chain, soundtrack with recordings Soundtrack by Anthony Sertel-Dean 96" x 47.75" x 120" Dimensions vary with architecture To Move Is To Remember is a work honoring the 49 victims of the PULSE Orlando massacre.

Grief and celebration are necessary human processes for honoring life; and these embodied states are often metabolized through movement. Using sculpture,absence as a space where collective movement, memory, grief, joy, absence and freedom intersect.

LYN LIU Lyn Liu (b. 1993) was born in Beijing, China and, now a New York based artist, works in painting, printmaking and independent publication. She received her BFA from School of Visual Arts, NY in 2016, and attended École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris from 2017 to 2020, then an MFA at Columbia School of the Arts, NY in 2022.

lynliu.com Instagram: @lynlynlliu

Lyn Liu's work addresses the psychological aspects of the absurdness and uncertainness from a disordered reality. By extracting and enlarging the interdependent relationship between individuals, she has created an uncanny cinematic sequence to symbolize her confusion about the contemporary alienation as an outlander. The psychological perspective from which she views sociability and dissociability is closely linked to her biography.

RIGHT Searching, 2021 Oil on linen 40" x 40"

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Traveler, 2021 Oil on linen 33" x 40"

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Act I, 2020 Oil on linen 28" x 36"

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XINYI LIU Xinyi Liu works with mulberry paper and wash cloth, which resonate with the thin and silky quality of human skin. She creates works that metaphorically mimic the processes of treating wounds to heal. Through her “medical” manipulation, they become her “second skin.” Like a doctor, she does surgeries for her work.

She received her BA and BFA from Cornell University, with minors in History of Art and China and Asia Pacific Studies (CAPS).

xinyixinyiliu.com

RIGHT: Untitled, 2022 Mulberry paper, acrylic, gauze 23.6" x 32.3"

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Scar, 2022 Mulberry paper, acrylic, gauze 36.5" x 44"

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TOP & BOTTOM: 2022 Wash cloth, acrylic, packaging bubble, trash bag, staple 130" x 30" x 40"

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RAPHAELA MELSOHN Recent exhibitions include Biblioteca Floresta (SESC Belenzinho, 2021), Bolhas siderais (Marli Matsumoto Gallery, 2021), A margem é mars large que o vão (Central Gallery, 2021), Eco Shifters (Fondazione La Fabbrica del Cioccolato, 2019) and RECIPES FOR B_R_Z_L?, (Spring Break Art Show, 2019). Solo shows include wearing a trap (casamata, 2016), and investigations in VIDEO: register, displacement of view and WAYS OF THINKING (MIS, 2016).

Recent residencies include Kaaysa (Boiçucanga, 2020), Pivô (São Paulo, 2019), AnnexB (Brooklyn, 2018) and Red Gate Residency, (Beijing, 2016).

www.raphaelamelsohn.com Instagram: @raphaelamelsohn

I’m interested in constructing environments from and to our bodies, in opposition to conforming our bodies to an ergonometric standard space.

I believe in constant fluxes, holes and organic shapes that intend to break the space as it is and break our bodies as we normalized them.

I work building things, learning and being affected by the materials. That way, the physicality and relation with others, how we can exist in space and how the space informs our existence is the core to work. Some notes on the notebook say: staying alive requires collaboration, contamination, unsettledunshaped-affected, how to inhabit, soft and wet, body and architecture, negative space— emptiness full of possibilities, like a promise yet to be fulfilled.

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RIGHT Duto-cabana (Flux tent), 2021 Black ceramic and steel 45.7" x 22.8" x 46"

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Poltrona tentáculo de ovo , 2020 Metal, foam, fabric and video on the monitor 48" x 73" x 28" (approx.)

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TOP & BOTTOM enxurrada, goteira, gozo (liquid leaking unable to control), 2021 59.06" x 315" x 196.85" (approx.)

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KEIKA OKAMOTO Keika Okamoto is a Japanese artist based in New York. Through her diverse practice encompassing installation, sculpture, painting and video, she creates animistic and dreamlike imagery drawing on the relationship between humans and the natural world in contemporary life. She explores the scale of time and conjures poetic scenery from micro to macro of everyday life to cosmic perspectives, and sways to and fro between inner and outer worlds to seek how to amplify a sublime feeling and an ephemeral moment in daily life that we may connect to the feeling of eternity.

As she grew up during the lost decades in Japan, she has been particularly interested in the role of spirituality in contemporary life. She received her BFA from the School of Visual Arts and is currently pursuing an MFA in Visual Arts at Columbia University.

keikaokamoto.com

I am interested in the idea of nature. I feel it always acts as a mirror reflecting us like a kaleidoscope, and vice versa. In my works, I explore the scale of time and create an ephemeral moment that we may connect to the feeling of eternity with visual languages.

RIGHT Untitled, 2021 HD video with sound, glass Dimensions variable 10 minutes NEXT SPREAD top left moonlight bath, 2021 Inkjet print, charcoal 10" x 14" bottom left glacial erratic at midnight, 2021 Inkjet print, charcoal 15" x 11" right lockdown central park, 2021 Inkjet print, charcoal 15" x 19"

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MIMI PARK Mimi Park (b. 1996) is an interdisciplinary artist currently residing in New York. Inspired by interwoven patterns around her, which includes the microscopic world, soft circuitry, play therapy and beyond—Park continues her world-building. The sensorial plays a central role in her work, interested in the ways that neuro-atypical forms of communication can often be misconstrued, something that she has experienced firsthand. Mimi has exhibited her work in Chicago, New York, Seoul and Berlin.

www.mimipark.art Instagram: @m1mipark

Electricity flowing in shattered nodes. Swarm of seeds transmitting 1.5 volts of energy. Try licking the sprout, isn’t it spiky? Subtle taste of iron in rainbow radish—it might burn your tongue but don’t worry, the pain will disappear. As soon as pain diminishes, the rusty red mineral dissolves into our body to help us move our fingers, hop like a rabbit and prevent fainting. Let’s mourn for those countless putrefaction happening in every nano-second. Good bye and welcome to me.

Now that line between you and I is gone, I am polluted. Cross-pollination. Cut open. Exposed copper wire. Staticky electrical signals. Blood mineral forming a serpentine in my liver. When the rock is done forming, I will open my tummy and take out the bright chartreuse crystal. Don’t worry I will give it back to you Gaia. Crush the crystal to make them into seeds again. Maybe honeybees will return. We can also create them with toothbrush bristle and vibrating motor. Just make sure to give them enough nectar.

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RIGHT, TOP & BOTTOM Dawning: dust, seeds, Coplees, 2022 Recycled paper pulp, arduino, plaster, vibrating motor, aluminum wire, mica pigment powder, resin, air dry clay, studio debris, dusts, rainbow radish micro green seeds, north eastern Dimensions variable

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TOP Dawning: dust, seeds, Coplees, 2022 Recycled paper pulp, arduino, plaster, compost soil, aluminum wire, mica pigment powder, resin, air dry clay, studio debris, dusts, rainbow radish micro green seeds, Dimensions variable

BOTTOM Dancing Duet, 2022 dancing toy, bell, vibrating motor, mica powder, resin, air dry clay, studio debris 19.5" x 29" x 18.8"

Parachute Test #1, 2022 Wire, fabric, air dry clay, electrical tape 11" x 6" x 3"

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JÚLIA PONTÉS Júlia Pontés is a Brazilian-Argentinian investigative artist, photographer, researcher, and activist. Pontés' work focuses mainly on extractivism and mining exploration in Brazil. Her practice entails deep community engagement, academic and investigative research and documentary practices.

suffer from a genetic disease that prevents the processing of iron from our bodies, which accumulates at excessive levels.

Her mining aerial survey made in collaboration with a pilot has been recognized

by Harvard University's Planetary Health Alliance, Visura and NYFA. It has been published by Bloomberg, Geo Magazine and several other media outlets. In 2020 she was awarded a National Geographic grant to document the effects of the pandemic in mining communities.

Since 2014 I have worked extensively conducting an inventory of mining companies and its tailings (waste) dams, and witnessed the absolute devastation to their surrounding communities and environment. I developed a visceral relationship with the land, becoming one with it; each open pit feels like a wound in my own body.

Her work is frequently displayed in collaboration with social movements, universities and independent exhibition spaces. It has been shown in the US,

Separation from my homeland has allowed me to develop some distance, and a deeply critical view of the world I grew up in.

In my work, which I call, investigative art, I merge investigative journalism techniques, my background in law and economics with academic research and my art practice to shine a light on these poignant issues.

Argentina, Spain, Portugal, Germany and Brazil.

Júlia holds a specialization in Law and Economics from UTDT in Argentina, a certificate in photography from ICP and is currently an MFA candidate at Columbia University with expected graduation in May 2022. www.juliapontes.com

Mining activity is so deeply rooted in my native state that it is included in the name, and runs in the veins of its people, including my own.

For over 50 years, my family's life has gravitated toward the steel industry, with my mother becoming the first woman to run a steel plant in my home state. Ironically, we

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RIGHT, TOP Rock and photographic documentation, 2020 Catas Altas, Minas Gerais Brasil/Brazil RIGHT, BOTTOM , 2020 Catas Altas, Minas Gerais Brasil/Brazil

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BOTTOM

Dona Tereza's gold panning Antônio Pereira, Minas Gerais Brasil/Brazil

Amadei, the gold glittering boy Antônio Pereira, Minas Gerais Brasil/Brazil

TOP Prato 8 - Mapa Geológico de Antônio Pereira, Minas Gerais, Brasil Plate 8 - Geological Map of Antonio Pereira, Minas Gerais, Brazil

BOTTOM

Antonio Pereira, Minas Gerais

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JEREMY Z. QIN Jeremy Z. Qin is a photographer and filmmaker based in Shanghai. In his photographs, water is seen as a metamorphic concept in place of the particular yet ambiguous in the world, such as a sense of belonging, cultural identity, social codes, class and so on.

Instagram: @zimingqin

This loosely narrative short film allegorizes an individual’s mental response to the escalating global economy and its related issues. The story revolves around a character who lives on a production set where people have to work for water. One day he finds himself in a water outage, leading to him leaving the studio with a water hose in hope to find water elsewhere.

RIGHT Derealized Water, 2022 Still from moving image

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TOP Pink House, 2021 Inkjet print 8" x 10"

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BOTTOM Blue Light, 2021 Inkjet print 8" x 10"

Tools & Props of Life Sized Capital, 2021 Inkjet print 10" x 8"

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ABBY ROBINSON Abby Robinson (b. 1984, New Orleans, Louisiana) is a visual artist who lives and works in New York City. She is currently pursuing her MFA at Columbia University and will be featured in the forthcoming Spring issue of New American Paintings (No. 159, MFA Annual Issue).

www.abbyrobinsonstudio.com Instagram: @abigailvrobinson

Abby Robinson is a visual artist living and working in New York City. She makes paintings, drawings and sculptures that operate as experimental sites to explore the formal range of visual experience.

Space, color, scale, and form converse through abstraction and play.

Material improvisations reveal moments of alignment, tension and/or divergence. Metal, plaster, foil, fabric, tape, clay, wood, textiles, oil and acrylic paints and found objects all come into the fold. Focused, intensive working of these materials builds a deep intimacy with each, generating honest questions about visual perception. Visual experience is understood both through the seen and unseen: architecture and light as much as memory and time. Casually bounded with nets, webs or sparse gridding, each composition creates space for multiple ways of being. Joy, beauty and vibrancy are as possible as grit, absence and profundity.

She is currently pursuing her MFA at Columbia University and was recently selected for New American Paintings MFA Annual Issue No. 159 as a Noteworthy Artist.

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Monday, 2022 Steel, wool, plastic, brass, plaster, crayon, and acrylic on wall 87" x 53"

Aerial Drawing (Expanded) 2022 Steel, copper, wool, leather, brass 70" x 55" x 37"

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Abby's studio, 2022

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CRISTEN SHEA Cristen Shea (b. 1986) is an artist and surfer from Indiana who works in sculpture and computer graphics technology to create uncanny interludes between the physical and the virtual. Cristen Shea studied at the School of the Art Institute Chicago and Rhode Island School of Design, is an alum of Vermont Studio Center 2018 and was invited as a visiting artist at Württembergischer Kunstverein in Stuttgart and Hamtramck Ceramck in Detroit, the latter of which culminated in their debut solo exhibition in 2019.

Instagram: @x10shea

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RIGHT, TOP Selected Works, 2021 Digital 3D render

RIGHT, BOTTOM Bypass, 2020 Wood, metal handles, empty votives, sound/vibrations

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TOP Preface Preface, 2021 Digital render, wood, metal, twig, rag, foam, glass, water bottle wrapper

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BOTTOM Preface Preface (detail), 2021 Digital render, wood, metal, twig, rag, foam, glass, water bottle wrapper

Chair Mirror, 2021 Digital render, wood, ceramic, cord,

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KELSEY SHWETZ Kelsey Shwetz is a Canadian born painter who lives in New York. She is a two-time recipient of the The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant, along with grants from Canada Council for the Arts and the Mayer Foundation. She was awarded fellowships by the Vermont Studio Center, The Choy Family, Ellen Gelmen, Columbia University and CanSerrat Residency in Barcelona.

painting has long sought, while describing a world we would mourn for if it were lost.

kelseyshwetz.com Instagram: @kelseyshwetz

My work explores nature and mythology through the lens of our current climate crisis and addresses the concept and implications of the Anthropocene. The world in my paintings is ripe with human presence but unsettlingly empty, a plausible near future where a postAnthropocene narrative is dawning and flora and geological forms reassert their agency.

I often describe liminal or threshold spaces; an atmosphere where an event has just occurred or is about to unfold. I’m interested in materials used to both represent nature (as in kitsch) and allow us to experience it from a protected and idealized vantage point (as in windows). The structures in my paintings are still in mint condition, they have not weathered long spans of time and are still warm with the hum of human residue. I aim to create a psychological space that creates a feeling of intense identification yet ironic distance from the environment on the canvas: a nature that is familiar but not quite right. The world in my work is both lush and thriving yet in an ominous state or at near-destruction. I aim to evoke an aspect of the sublime that the tradition of landscape

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RIGHT Revenge (A Warning), 2022 Oil on canvas 108" x 62"

Plants to Flesh, 2022 Oil on canvas 64" x 64"

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TOP Window III (The Reach), 2021 Oil on canvas 40" x 30"

BOTTOM Window I, 2021 Oil on canvas 40" x 30"

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RYAN MUCHEN WANG Ryan Muchen Wang is a visual artist and filmmaker. His work utilizes a mixture of fiction, documentary and experimental genres to explore issues of memory, while also addressing essential notions of belonging, urban alienation and home.

RIGHT, TOP & BOTTOM Untitled, 2022 Video NEXT SPREAD Untitled, 2022 Video

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ELZIE WILLIAMS III Elzie Williams III is a Baltimore born, New York based artist working in sculpture, and collage.

His work exposes racial and social issues that effect the world globally using collage. In 2015, Williams received his BFA from The Cooper Union School of Art, and is currently completing his MFA at Columbia University. He has exhibited in galleries in New York, Montgomery College (MD) and has shown public sculpture funded by Baltimore City.

elziewilliams.net Instagram: @elzie.williams

Elzie Williams is an interdisciplinary artist who makes work in collage and sculpture centered around racial and social issues. He manipulates magazine spreads as a way to critique consumerism, waste and the dying medium of printed matter. He thoughtfully selects images that provoke the viewer to question consumerism in fact as a colorless concept.

He digests this content compulsively, but in a systematic way, flipping through thousands of pages to fulfill a specific need. There might be a page that has one side depicting an image of a face with the opposite side having only one specific color. The fragility of the magazine textures allows for each swatch to have light to illuminate through. The bulk of his magazine material is collected from the streets of New York, as well as many Craigslist's interactions.

His wish is to bury the overt racial narrative of specific images by literally framing them with samples of the very source of racial confusion, and to expose the underlying racism built into the images consumed and absorbed, without question, every day.

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RIGHT Composition of black swatches with smiling white faces on back. ( Some things in life they just don’t wanna see), 2021 Magazines, clear tape, metal pins, acrylic rod, mirror 70" x 72"

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TOP Objective, 2020 Magazines, clear tape, police zip ties, concrete, aluminum 84" x 67"

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BOTTOM The Village, 2021 Matcha silkscreened on copper plated aluminum, plywood, copper rod, cast matcha + plaster base Dimensions variable

Star Interlude (detail), 2021 Collage of black swatches/black faces, metal pins, matcha powder, plexiglas, clear tape 20" x 16"

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YIXUAN WU Yixuan Wu, currently lives and works in New York.

yixuanwu.com Instagram: @yiiixuanw

Drawing from the ungraspable yet familiar everyday situations, her works reconstruct and reconfigure vignettes of domesticities into substructures. Her multidisciplinary practice addresses the subtle gestures that endow the objects of sensual qualities, the incongruous systems, and the uncanny.

RIGHT Untitled, 2021 Glass, wood, hair, soft tape measure, cotton slippers, concrete, hair brush, rice, enoki mushrooms Dimensions variable

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Untitled, 2022 Glass, desk chair 18" x 18" x 30"

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Untitled, 2021 Glass, wood, lemon cream crackers, faux fur, mop, dust Dimensions variable

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LIZZIE ZELTER Lizzie Zelter (b. 1996) is a visual artist born and raised in New York City. She is currently an MFA Candidate at Columbia University. Her work investigates the process of place-making and explores themes of disorientation and strangeness in the everyday.

lizziezelter.com Instagram: @the_lizard_of_oz

My work aims to generate affective experiences of both familiarity and disorientation, of eerie recognition and the potential to see anew. I utilize fracturing, mirroring and scale shifts to intervene and expose the strangeness of a world we often identify without questioning.

I seek to challenge the processes of naming and classifying and instead unveil echoes and patterns in a state of indeterminacy. Existing between painting and sculpture, imagery and objecthood, my work incorporates division and doubling to express both obstruction and continuity.

Past family and professional experiences in immigration law led me to consider place as both a verb and a noun. I portray the overlooked process of a place being created and made identifiable, isolating its essence so that it may become demystified. This includes an attention to the objects inherent to producing identity. I am drawn to materials that are imbued with temporality and symbolism within the context of a personal or national archive.

My work vigilantly observes the human made in a commitment to questioning and exposing the micro and macro infrastructure that produce our society.

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RIGHT Sunset Blvd., 2022 Oil on canvas 68" x 56"

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Theory of Forms, 2021 Departures, 2021 Oil on canvas 48" x 36"

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painted porcelain, glass, tea leaves, rhinestone 14" x 24" x 10"

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MESSAGE FROM THE DEAN As Dean of the School of the Arts, there is no greater pleasure than to witness the Thesis events for the four programs that comprise the School of the Arts–Visual Arts, Writing, Theater and Film.

As a result of the effects of COVID-19, these annual events have had to be altered, suspended, postponed or reoriented. Like the rest of the world, the School of the Arts has been deeply affected by the immobilizing barriers to movement and production presented by this pandemic. It is therefore even more spectacular that we now are able to exhibit the Thesis Show for the Class of 2022 at the Lenfest Center for the Arts.

This exhibition represents the culmination of two years of hard work. It is the moment when students (soon to be alumni) choose how to represent their creative time at the School of the Arts. And this year, the achievement of exhibiting the work is even more extraordinary because the conditions for production have been intense and less than ideal.

Nonetheless, the creative spirit has prevailed and students have produced remarkable work.

As always, the exhibition will be varied, unexpected, at times profound, and full of exuberance. There will be great interest in the work of this next generation of artists, especially because they have had to produce art under extremely difficult conditions.

We will do everything we can to make the exhibition visible to as many viewers as possible.

I am sure that all who come will find it fascinating and exhilarating—a record of the creative development of these artists at an extremely unique, historical moment.

Carol Becker Dean of Columbia University School of the Arts

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MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIR OF THE VISUAL ARTS PROGRAM I take great pleasure in welcoming you to the Sound Art + Visual Arts MFA Thesis Exhibition 2022. The work here is not only representative of a collection of brave and committed artists coming into their own. It is also a reflection of the journey we have taken together over the last two years. With this in mind, on behalf of the Sound Art and Visual Arts faculty, I would like to extend our warmest thanks to each of the members of our community who has made this show possible.

This exhibition has been produced in collaboration with the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery at the Lenfest Center for the Arts with Betti-Sue Hertz at the helm as Director. Eddie Bartolomei, Exhibitions Manager, Wallach Art Gallery deserves eternal thanks for his endless help. Elisabeth Sherman curated this show with phenomenal generosity and skill, allowing space for each artist’s work to shine on its own and to be engaged as part of a cohesive whole. Lauren Weigel, General Manager of the Lenfest Center for the Arts, and the Lenfest staff have made miracles happen, as they always do.

Our deepest gratitude is owed to our incredible Visual Arts administration and staff who have not only given everything and more to bring this show together, but also have supported and facilitated every step that led up to it: Andrew Brehm, Safety & Shops Manager; Dana Buhl, Photography Facilities Manager; Nathan Catlin, LeRoy Neiman Studio and Project Manager; Nan Collymore, Manager of Academic Administration; Cary Hulbert, Assistant Studio Manager, LeRoy Neiman Center for Print Studies; Julie Malen, Shops Monitor; Laura Mosquera, Director of Academic Administration; Samantha Rippner, Associate Director and Gallery Manager, LeRoy Neiman Center for Print Studies; Sarah Tortora, Assistant

Shops Manager; Rider Urena, Senior Manager of Visual Arts Facilities; Claire Valdez, Program Assistant; Jon Waites, Shops Monitor; Patrice Washington, Prentis Hall Facilities Manager; and Liz Zito, Manager of Visual Arts Instructional Technology & Exhibitions.

None of this would have been possible without Carol Becker, Dean of Faculty and Jana Wright, Dean of Academic Administration and Planning. Also at the School of the Arts, we thank Gavin Browning, Director of Public Programs and Engagement; Sarah Congress, Executive Assistant to the Deans & Manager of Academic Administration; Tiffany Davis, Communications Manager; Julie Dobrow, Dean of Admissions & Financial Aid; Herbert Hugh, Assistant Dean of Student Support; Joel Jares, SOA Photographer; Niquette Johnson, Admissions and Financial Aid Officer; Laila Maher, Dean of Student and Alumni Affairs; Trenton Pollard, Assistant Director of Alumni Affairs and the Artists' Resource Center; Karlee Rodrigues, Assistant Director of Student Affairs; Kristina Tate, Director of Communications; Nicole Saldarriaga, Communications Assistant; Nora Thomas (Dean’s Office Receptionist); and Peter Vaughan, Director of Motion Picture and Information Technology; Kenny Wong, Director of Admissions and Financial Aid. Most important of all, we thank the artists in the show. Not only for the inspired and meaningful work each of you has made and will make in the years to come, but for your presence over these past years as a vital part of our Visual Arts department. It has been a privilege to work with you. As you move on from here, no matter where you go—and we do look forward to seeing where that is—you will always remain a part of our community.

Nicola López Associate Professor of Professional Practice Chair, Visual Arts Columbia University School of the Arts

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ABOUT THE SCHOOL OF THE ARTS Columbia University School of the Arts awards the Master of Fine Arts degree in Film, Theatre, Visual Arts, and Writing and the Master of Arts degree in Film and Media Studies; it also offers an interdisciplinary program in Sound Art. The School is a thriving, diverse community of talented, visionary, and committed artists from around the world and a faculty comprised of acclaimed and internationally renowned artists, film and theatre directors, writers of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, playwrights, producers, critics, and scholars. In 2015, the School marked the 50th Anniversary of its founding. In 2017, the School opened the Lenfest Center for the Arts, a multi-arts venue designed as a hub for the presentation and creation of art across disciplines on the University’s new Manhattanville campus. The Lenfest hosts exhibitions, performances, screenings, symposia, readings, and lectures that present new, global voices and perspectives, as well as an exciting, publicly accessible home for Columbia’s Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery.

SOUND ART PROGRAM, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF THE ARTS Columbia University has been at the helm of sound innovation for over fifty years with faculty specializing in composition, improvisation, music theory, musicology, installation, sculpture, instrument building, acoustics, music cognition, and software development. Faculty from the Computer Music Center, along with colleagues from Music Composition, Visual Arts, Sound Studies, Ethnomusicology, Engineering, Computer and Data Science are all involved in the interdisciplinary area of Sound Art. The two-year program is highly selective, offering admission to only three or four students each year. Students with a deep engagement with sound as a medium join a diverse community of artists and musicians.

VISUAL ARTS PROGRAM, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF THE ARTS The Visual Arts Program attracts emerging artists of unusual promise from around the world. They comprise a vigorous community, working alongside an exceptional faculty at a world-renowned research institution in New York City.

Contemporary art has become increasingly interdisciplinary. To that end, the Visual Arts Program offers an MFA degree in Visual Arts rather than in specific media. The two-year studio program, taught by internationally celebrated artists, allows students to pursue digital media, drawing, installation, painting, performance, photography, printmaking, sculpture and video art.

Visit arts.columbia.edu/visual-arts.

The Sound Art program is a studio-based degree offered by the Visual Arts Program in conjunction with the Computer Music Center. The program provides the opportunity to explore sound in the context of video, installation, and performance, as well as computer programming, historical archival research, and conceptual strategies for the production of creative work. Candidates are encouraged to consider diverse modalities for listening and hearing while developing fluency in the creation and manipulation of sound in the context of environmental, social, and gallerycentered work.

Visit arts.columbia.edu/sound-art.

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COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF THE ARTS’ LENFEST CENTER FOR THE ARTS Columbia University School of the Arts’ Lenfest Center for the Arts is a dynamic hub for cultural and civic exchange in Upper Manhattan. Featuring four flexible venues and a public plaza, this state-of-the-art facility offers unprecedented opportunities for the presentation and generation of contemporary art and ideas across disciplines.

From readings and installations to performances, screenings, and symposia, the vibrant array of activity at the Lenfest Center for the Arts aims to strengthen local partnerships while highlighting contemporary scholarship, global perspectives, and compelling voices of our time.

Recent guests to Columbia University School of the Arts include visual artists Olafur Eliasson, Maya Lin, Doris Salcedo, and Hank Willis Thomas; filmmakers Kristen Johnson, Kimberly Peirce, María Sojob, and Lucy Tulugarjuk; writers Douglas Kearney, Lewis Hyde, Terese Marie Mailhot, and Maggie Nelson; theater artists Ayad Akhtar, Candace Chong Mui Ngam, Pablo Manzi, and Dael Orlandersmith; historians George Chauncey, Margarita de Orellana, and Mabel O. Wilson; designers Michael Arad, Walter Hood, and Meejin Yoon; curators Amalia Córdova, Cass Gardiner, and Denis Pernet; literary critics Homi Bhabha and Farah Jasmine Griffin; legal scholar Kendall Thomas; climate scientist Maureen Raymo; clinical psychiatrist Kay Redfield Jamison. In addition, the School of the Arts has spearheaded universitywide programming around issues of water justice and climate change; commissioned new work by Arturo O’Farrill and the Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra; mounted large-scale public installations by Daan Roosegaarde and Jana Winderen; presented readings of contemporary plays from Chile,

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France, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Lebanon, Mexico, Palestine, Russia, Spain, Thailand, Uganda, and the UK; showcased theses by School of the Arts students; founded the annual Kit Noir Festival, and Lenfest Kids, a film screening series for children; hosted readings by New York City high school students who have produced original work with Writing students from Columbia University; and coordinated workshops on voice, theater, and storytelling for the Obama Scholars and the World Economic Forum.

THE MIRIAM AND IRA D. WALLACH ART GALLERY Established in 1986, the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery is Columbia University's premier visual arts space. The Wallach's mission is to advance Columbia University's historical, critical, and creative engagement with the visual arts. To that end, the gallery operates in close partnership with the University’s Department of Art History and Archaeology, and works with the School of the Arts and University Libraries, particularly the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library. The gallery presents critically acclaimed exhibitions, a dynamic range of programming, and creates publications that contribute to scholarship. The gallery also offers opportunities to artists, scholars, curators and creative thinkers who are contributing to contemporary discourses on the intersection of art and society. Programs also provide a framework for thinking about the role of art in everyday life, offer a platform for participants to respond to exhibitions, and provide probing perspectives on the works and their contexts.

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DONORS Columbia University School of the Arts is supported in part by contributions from alumni and friends of the arts. These gifts provide student fellowships, educational programming and awards. For more information or to make a contribution to the School of the Arts, please contact: Roberta W. Albert Associate Dean for Development 212-854-7724 ra481@columbia.edu The Visual Arts Program would like to extend special thanks to its contributors, and recognize those for whom fellowships and awards have been named:

Aaron and Betty Lee Stern Foundation Aaron Etra Alice Gordy Allison Ginsberg Ann Gillen Anonymous (3) Artis Fellows Ashish Pant Asif Mian Barrie Roman Betty Lee Stern Prize for Painters Brevoort-Eickemeyer Fellowship and Prize Candia Fisher Christian Ritchey Claire Heimarck CLEARING Gallery Dana Buhl D’Arcy Haymen Fellowships David Berg Foundation Fund Dean Carol Becker Dean Jana Wright Debora Ryan Diana Soorikian

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Donald C. Brace Student Loan Fund Dong Kingman Douglas Durst Dwight Lee Edward J. Kimball Edward Mazzella Endowed Fellowship Ellen Gelman Endowed Fellowship Eric Javits Family Foundation Faber Birren Endowed Fellowship Francois Ghebaly Gary Bandy Georges Raimes Beach Fund for Graphic Arts Geeta Tewari Gina Werfel Gordon Bloom Griffin Pero H. Hartley Platt DuPont Hartley Corporation Helen Frankenthaler Foundation Helen R. Else Fellowship Herbert S. Germaise Endowed Fellowship Holly and Albert Baril Hon Chung Woo Hugh Hayden Studio Ian Felstead Jacob Arthur Collins/The Morris and Alma Schapiro Fund Jacques and Natasha Gelman Fellowship Fund James McCracken Janet Gilmore-Bryan Joan Sovern Endowed Fellowship Fund Joan Weber Joe Pizza Joel Young Justin Walker Karen Hesse-Flatow Katharina Otto-Bernstein Katherine Parker Kelly Akashi Kenza Benbrahim Kevin Burke Kevin Klein Kraus Family Foundation Laurie Nathan

Lee Mayes Lenfest Foundation Leroy and Janet Neiman Fellowship Fund Logan Levi Louis and Janice Chan-Choy Fund Lucas T. Carlson Memorial Fund Margret Rivers Marguerite P. Roche Fellowship Fund Meredithe Mastrella Minna Saslaw Marrocco/Mancini Family Fellowship Fund Marshall Glaiser Endowed Fellowship for the Study of Drawing Martin Birnbaum Fellowship Morty Frank Traveling Fellowship Naomi Bossom Norman Galinsky Northshore Community Foundation Pablo Montealegre Pam Jones Paul Marko Pawel Skonieczka Penelope Manzella Peter Deutschman Professor Miya J. Masaoka Professor Nicola Lopez Professor Susanna J. Coffey Quinta Carolina Fund Rachel Foullon Ramona Bannayan Raymond T. & Ann T. Mancini Family Foundation Trust Regina Ketting Rhoda Altman Richard L. Tooke Richard Wright Roberta Albert Robyn Guzman Sally Tippman Sara Caples Schwab Charitable Solomon B. Hayden Fellowship for Visual Arts Students Stephen Whittlesey Steve Herskovitz

Student Relief Fund Susan Johnson Sun Liangang Arts Fellowship Tale Aasheim Taryn Brooke Holloway The Andrew Fisher Fellowship The Bogdanow Family Fund The Leon J. Simkins Charitable Foundation The SJS Charitable Trust Three Arts Club Endowed Fellowship Tobias Munthe Toby Devan Lewis Fellowship Award TOMS Scholarship Vanguard Charitable Vermont Community Foundation Victoria Baranetsky Walter Burke Warren Johnson Wenda Habenicht William Rubenstein William Talbott Hillman Foundation Fund Winston Lowe XIanling Zhou Xin Huang Yerra Sugarman

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SOUND ART AND VISUAL ARTS FACULTY & STAFF Sound Art Faculty and Associated Faculty Miya Masaoka (Director), Jace Clayton (Interim Director-Spring 2022), Seth Cluett (Assistant Director), David Adamcyk, Zosha Di Castri, Ciarán Finlayson, Brad Garton, Ben Holtzman, Nour Mobarak, Dave Sulzer Sound Art Visiting Faculty/Artist Mentors Regine Basha, Jules Gimbrone, James Hoff, Katherine Liberovskaya, Barbara London, Sara Magenheimer, Phil Niblock, Keith Obadike, Matthew Ostrowski, Douglas Repetto, Marina Rosenfeld, Julianne Swartz, C. Spencer Yeh Visual Arts Full-time Faculty Gregory Amenoff, Matthew Buckingham (Chair until 2021), Susanna Coffey (2021-22), Delphine Fawundu, Jon Kessler, Nicola López (Chair, current), Naeem Mohaiemen, Miya Masaoka, Shelly Silver, Sable Smith, Sarah Sze, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Tomas Vu-Daniel

Visual Arts Visiting Critics Eleana Antonaki, Kenseth Armstead, Yevgeniya Baras, Erica Baum, Michael Berryhill, Dora Budor, Sophie Cavoulacos, Rafram Chaddad, Onyedika Chuke, Tyler Coburn, Stuart Comer, William Cordova, Moyra Davey, Liz Deschenes, Torkwase Dyson, Amber Esseiva, Derek, Fordjour, Nikita Gale, Alan Gilbert, Kris Graves, Marcela Guerrero, Rosario Güiraldes, Josephine Halvorson, Dana Hoey, Katherine Hubbard, Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Chrissie Iles, Michael Joo, Baseera Khan, Tom Kalin, Tali Keren, Lucy Kim, Nora Lawrence, Carolyn Lazard , Dionne Lee, Sam Lewitt, Jen Liu, Dana Lok, D’Angelo Lovell Williams, Justine Ludwig, Tala Madani, Jill Magid, Guadalupe Maravilla, Asif Mian, Eileen Myles, Ken Okiishi, Sarah Oppenheimer, Sheila Pepe, Sondra Perry, Will Rawls, Sara Reisman, Daniela Rivera, Legacy Russell, Keisha Scarville, Tschabalala Self, Josh Siegel, Kyle Staver, Lumi Tan, Lynne Tillman, Patricia Trieb, Rodrigo Valenzuela, Didier William, John Yau

Patrice Renee Washington, Prentis Hall Facilities Manager Julie Malen, Shops Monitor Samantha Rippner, Associate Director of of the LeRoy Neiman Center for Print Studies Sarah Tortora, Assistant Shops Manager Jon Waites, Shops Monitor Liz Zito, Manager of Visual Arts Instructional Technology & Exhibitions

Visual Arts Staff Visual Arts Mentors Linda Bryant, Rochelle Feinstein, Valerie Hammond, David Humphrey, Michael Joo, Ralph Lemon, Rachelle Mozman, Matthew Ritchie, Rona Yefman, Craig Zammiello Visual Arts Graduate Adjunct Faculty Shirly Bahar, Regine Basha, Onyedika Chuke, Tyler Coburn, Aria Dean, Dana DeGiulio, Matthew Deleget, Lizzy De Vita, EJ Hauser, Gelare Khoshgozaran, Ajay Kurian, Justine Kurland, Orlee Malka, Guadalupe Maravilla, Leeza Meksin, JJ Peet, Tyler Rowland, Kiki Smith, Pamela Sneed, Sara VanDerBeek

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Andrew Brehm, Shops and Safety Manager Dana Buhl, Manager of School of the Arts Photography Facilities Nathan Catlin, Master Printer and Studio Manager of the LeRoy Neiman Center for Print Studies Nan Collymore, Manager of Academic Administration Cary Hulbert, Assistant Studio Manager of the LeRoy Neiman Center for Print Studies Laura Mosquera, Director of Academic Administration Rider Urena, Senior Manager of Visual Arts Facilities & Prentis Hall Claire Valdez, Program Assistant

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