Issuu

Tobi Silma Ethan Jessica Attila Ameena Dylan Adam Isabella

Ajayi Berrada Boll Brice Delingat Faruki Fox Hazelton Hilditch

5 11 17 23 29 35 41 47 53

59 65 71 77 83 89 95 101 107

Olivia Samm Monique Javin Michael Megan Raya Miles Ryan

Kusio Lee Legaspi Lu Osei-Wusu Pai Ward Wilson Xia

Seniors

Faculty

Staff

Tobi Ajayi Silma Berrada Ethan Boll Jessica Brice Attila Delingat Ameena Faruki Dylan Fox Adam Hazelton Isabella Hilditch Olivia Kusio Samm Lee Monique Legaspi Javin Lu Michael Osei-Wusu Megan Pai Raya Ward Miles Wilson Ryan Xia

Eve Aschheim Colleen Asper Jennifer Calivas Tina Campt Laura Coombs MJ Daines Glen Fogel Martha Friedman Su Friedrich Charlotte Glynn Daniel Heyman Rindon Johnson Deana Lawson Troy Michie Moon Molson Mario Moore Katie Murray Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt David Reinfurt Ramell Ross Jess Rowland Joe Scanlan Laurel Schwulst Danna Singer Tim Szetela Kenneth Tam Adam Welch James Welling Amy Yao Pam Lins Jeff Whetstone

Ash Albeser Joseph Arnold Marjorie Carhart Katie Garth Peter Kazantsev Orlando Murgado Brandon Ndife David J. Palacios Michelle Peters Kristy Seymour Nick Sharpe Bhavani Srinivas

We’re living in translucent times. Light is passing through, but we can’t see with full clarity to the other side. These are the conditions in which we made art, and it is also the motivation behind the design of this book.

share the air that we breathe, but we bring a new understanding of space—when to fill it, and when to leave it empty; what is close and what is far; what is heavy and light; bright and dark; fast and slow; loud and soft.

Unexpected meshes of text and image become a reminder of our complex relationships to each other and our environment.

The page is like a screen that allows light to pass through, but not exactly in the digital way. The reverseprinted names signal to how our class is looking back, and forward at once. We are returning to a reality where we can

We have cultivated a hybrid sensibility, with perspectives from both sides of the screen. In this book, our names wrap around the main contents of the work, and the resulting stack of artists’ folders is zipped together with the spiral binding.

Use this opaque card as a viewing device. Place it behind one, two, or more sheets as an analog to the doubleclick, or an increase in brightness for legibility. There are a multiplicity of ways to see the work and this book—as 111 sheets, or as one.

Megan Pai ’22

oT ib

There are already enough words in this exhibition and I lament the fact that I am about to give you more. However, the labor of listening and looking and reading and noticing is foundational to the work on these walls. So I ask you to sacrifice yourself to the spatiotemporal patterns that the work demands. A trace, a mark, an investigation, a copy, a hint of something – in my case, of many things. Trace is the word I have used to denote my show. It is too fitting. The trace prints and prints of traces collected here encapsulate a year (a lifetime) of figuring things out. Prints are my way of holding meaning; their laborious processes of production reflect the effort of attending to this meaning in its multitudes. Printmaking is a revelation of process, but only if you know how to read it. How can I give you everything but also give you nothing at all? This work is a stark departure from the theories of my art practice. It is the first time I have chosen to work through and despite a lack of clarity. This work is deeply embodied in this way, it was formed intuitively and not with the level of intellectual transparency I have

craved in the past. My worry has always been that you would misunderstand my work and that I, in turn, would be misunderstood. Now I hope that the work frustrates you, that it refuses its viewing or its mastering. That has required me to let go of insisting on being understood. Despite all this, I hope you are still able to take something from the work, to make something of it for yourself. a trace of multitudes is unapologetically a P R I N T M A K I N G show. This medium feels like home. Thank you for coming to my show and for sharing this space with me. Thank you Joe for being my best friend and best conspirator. Thank you to all my friends who have made this work possible, without you I would be greatly diminished. I wish my family was here to celebrate with me.

a trace of multitudes

j ya i

iS l m

Catullus 85 I hate and I love. Why? You might ask. I don’t know. But I feel it happening and I hurt.

To you, A cardboard box full of times before me. To file through somebody’s history feels like resurrecting the dead. In 16” x 12” x 12”, pieces of a person’s past, all folded & rolled. I caught piles of photographs kissing a neatly packed envelope—a yellowed letter smelling like teen spirit, ink-stained by a dearest attempting to empty first love. The artifact was addressed to a woman who would at another time become a mother—my mother. I eavesdropped on a ghost’s heartbeat when mouthing her sweetheart’s sentences. Words left the back of my ears wet, to dream of turning a person into a poet. But in light time, I woke myself to the lucid thought that love-letter-writing-love wasn’t for a girl with yesteryears like me. I had to reckon with my history—a testimony to my memories & nostalgias & rituals thus far. The history of my family’s heart—their radical definition of aching love that is as genetic as folkloric. And the history of Black love, marriage, & family; the nation’s left (& still leaving) a legacy walling Black women’s love odyssey. From love lessons in childhood homes to marginalized fairy tales & misrepresented melodramas, I’ve encountered far too many stained sketches of love. Representations of romance call upon chivalric traditions, as narratives tend to manifest love in heteronormative conventions: prince charming saving the damsel in distress or a courting knight in shining armor. Or, as Sami Schalk considers, romance narratives “rely upon white, middle-class, able-bodied, and heterosexual norms of social mobility and citizenship through the marriage union” (Schalk 1244). How can those historically excluded from romance narratives engage with a genre founded on a fantasy that erases history? Or, as Rebecca Wanzo suggests when considering Disney fairy tales, “some languages and stories, some signs and symbols, are so ineradicably white,” that Black persons cannot image themselves within “the ‘unreal estate’” in America’s romantic imagination (qtd. In 1244). Narratives conjure tropes regarding sex & infidelity, gender normativity, family structures & economics. Stereotypes such as the jezebel, the mammies, or the sapphire emerge in the tellings. The marriage between Black forbidden love and racial trauma seems to be a tradition regarding African Americans’ affairs of the heart. Growing up on sexualized & racialized

images, coupled with the lack of images depicting Black love as “ordinary” or “classic,” tampered with how I eyed the world & all the more myself. Regardless of the pervasive mythicism concerning love-at-first-sight or happily-ever-after, I truly believed in the possibility of negotiating the genre’s record & conventions. From the hip, I so badly wanted to imagine Black persons beyond the un/told stories about racialized beings’ possibilities in the realm of companionship. Telling a good old love story was the origins of The Bittersweet Ballad. However, in attempting to tell of love, I got sick of words and lost my loyalty to language. For the first time in a long-long time, I wholeheartedly swore by writer’s block. And I feared I had caught a terminal case. What began as my most passionate endeavor soon evolved into my greatest trial as a writer thus far. How could I put the deepest parts of myself (& all selves before me) into sentences, into some thing that needs at least all the senses? I couldn’t even string syllables to sound my definition of love; how that bittersweet feeling has been passed down from times before me. In short, history haunted. I longed to write Black in the norm, but I didn’t know what that looked like. I still don’t. And to be honest, I’m angry about that unknown. I’m angry because in realizing I could only write from what I knew, I was unable to write what I wanted to know. And now I’m angry because I didn’t know what I wanted to know; I couldn’t. After all, I’d rarely seen Black love as normal, as two people simply in love. And now I’m angry because it’s all time’s fault—family trees & grand timelines. With roots in the peculiar institution, Black love is as personal as “deeply entangled with structural power” Dianne M. Stewart exposes in Black Women, Black Love: America’s War on African American Marriage (Stewart 5). Black persons’ forbidden love odyssey has been bound with the nation’s historical realities (6). To sound the hearts of Black folk in love against four centuries of laws, policies, & customs systemically oppressing wedded & families, I returned to the beginning—the yellowed letter. An epistle is nothing but bittersweet as a lover & beloved are at the same time present & absent within the writing. Letters rebel against distance, especially the correspondences of enslaved African Americans severed from their loves. Or the nation denying racialized beings the freedom to choose partners, marry, & raise children. For African Americans in love, I considered the letter a testament to the bonds endured while being a Black person in America. An epistle may be anything from an epic expressing somebody’s raw feelings to a short & simple message. Nonetheless, the letter—the composition

a e d a rr B

of direct address—is associated with both seclusion & self-exposure. The epistolary tradition lives between something private & intimate or public & formal. Love letters are at once, connected & separated, sweet & bitter. The Bittersweet Ballad of Blessed (& Messiah) is a tale of lovers. The spirit of the writing is possessed by my need to spell out my life. To spell out myself & the lives before me, the story traverses the intricacies of love—agápe, philautía, prágma, manía, ludus, storgé, éros. More so, The Bittersweet Ballad proposes an image of Black folk as real persons, as mosaic human beings attempt to bear the weight of true love. Or, as Toni Morrison writes in Beloved: “Love is or it ain’t. Thin love ain’t love at all” (Morrison 194). Thick love—simply love—is its potential as a verb, as an action rather than the word as a noun or the wording “I love you” (Hooks 4). Therefore, Blessed & Messiah storyline confronts all that can come from the word. Love as conditional. Loving somebody as a collection of defining characteristics. To love somebody like an ifthen-else statement. Love as all-consuming. Falling in love with romantic perceptions & falling out when faced with reality. Continuing to love somebody that can only cause heartache. Expressions of love as kindred to expressions of hate. Love that ignites & then extinguishes without kindling. Love as steady as the people entangled. Considering the vocabulary of love & love’s parts of speech, the work questions the word in relation to the intimate, prosaic, historical, & prophetic. The writing translates & transcribes my soul, my definition of what love is & isn’t. To define my innards within the confines of a narrative, The Bittersweet Ballad of Blessed (& Messiah) is as visual as poetic as sonic. (In other words, read aloud.) I call upon taste, touch, sight, smell, & sound to (re-)essay the story of love. Love requires all of the senses.

B+M, or The Bittersweet Ballad of Blessing and Messiah

a ht

Discounting translations, there are about 68 known adaptations of Victor Hugo’s Notre Dame de Paris. This series of live-action adaptations of five songs from Disney’s stage musical The Hunchback of Notre Dame explores what the next one might look like. The project seeks to understand the role of adaptation and how stories change across time, space, and medium.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

ll o B

J i ss e

Exploring the tissues of the body through soft sculpture.

Fascia

ci r e B

l i tt

Re-Centered explores the post covid experience through material, form, and process. Through experimental techniques and negative space, I attempt to describe the feeling of familiarity, loss, and mixed emotion in the post-pandemic world.

Re-Centered

il e n D g

mA ne e

In the last couple days of the show, I added another installation to the gallery that I put together for a midterm project for video installation class. It was a video I shot of other videos of videos of videos all taken around the site of the staircase in the back of Lucas gallery and the corners leading into it. They incorporated that small-ish stretch of space, a lacey thrifted tablecloth, shadows from my hands, and the colored lighting that intersected at each corner. I shot one video of my hand shadows on the tablecloth on a wall facing the staircase… then one of that video projected onto a pedestal across from that wall… then one from the other side of the staircase of that video projected onto the same wall that appeared in the first video… then projected that video on the small bit of wall overlapping with the corner radiator beneath the windows and filmed that projection… then filmed a projection of that video onto a bit of stairway rail and the piece of wall behind it. I sometimes intervened in these videos and added more shadows. It was projected onto the same tablecloth on the same wall from the first video. The main installation featured recent photo work shot on

old digital cameras ranging from 1998 to 2010 (hung up on an elaborate multiribbon/string/yarn/ leather and suede cord offset grid system) and video work shot on Super 8 (scanned and played on six late 90s/early 00s Sony Trinitrons that have been sitting unused in 185 for several years before I inquired about reviving them). The lighting bathing it all used a sunset color palette. The gallery was scented with Olivia Giacobetti’s nowdiscontinued creation

Drôle de Rose from L’Artisan Parfumeur. The fragrance came in a vintage 50ml bottle from the year of its launch, 1996. Its top notes are star anise and African orange flower; its middle notes are rose, violet, and iris; its base notes are almond, white honey, and leather. These combine to produce a powdery, subtly candied lipstick accord. I documented the show with a Leica D-Lux 5, a digicam from 2010 that I also used to film the staircase video. The shutter speed had to be stopped down to about 1/20 to 1/25 in order to capture the CRT screens decently enough — these guys are notoriously tricky to photograph because they scan at a different frame rate from still digital cameras. Maybe you were at this show or in the presence of a different CRT monitor sometime and tried to photograph or film one of these screens with your phone but it ended up looking glitchy. If you look really closely at some of these documentation photos, you might see some thin horizontal bars or lines that are the artifact of this discrepancy, and I evidently didn’t stop down low enough for some of these angles. But I did for others!

the love and affection i used to have

k ur a F

al y n

“The Twelfth House” explores the filmmaker’s relationship with his friend and collaborator Drake Baer, a former activist, astrologer, and socialite. During editing, Dylan reminisces about the filming process and his friendship while also attempting to construct a film that gives a full understanding of his friend.

The Twelfth House

a m

Sam Vang is a 25-yearold woman living with her sister in California’s Central Valley. Permanently on supplemental oxygen, she becomes convinced that a faith-healing televangelist in Los Angeles can cure her. With a leaking oxygen tank and a crumpled twenty-dollar bill, Sam races to catch the last bus to L.A.

American Oxygen

t n

l ez a H

ba sI a e ll

On the 10th of November 2010, I wrote about the best day of my life. I won a competition, the “Junior Painter of the Year Award,” and my prize was to see my work hung in the Royal Academy of Art in London. Our prompt for the competition was to paint something about the future. During the pandemic, I went back to my childhood journal and found the painting again. It was sixteen, masked faces, all staring forward and standing around a dying tree protected by yellow tape. When I was younger, this day brought me the greatest joy. Now, having lived as an adult, this day appears changed – cemented over by grief, trauma, fear. I welcome you to an exhibition about how I now feel about that day in November. I’ve made a collection of fossils to explore the ridges that memory accrues over time. Personal history aside, I’m so sad that what I most feared as a child evolves more into truth every day. I have let the painting of my past explode into the gallery. I invited participants to take a postcard from my journal, put on a fresh mask, and allow these objects to guide them through the work. In reflection, what I found from the

discussion in my crit, to seeing my work realized in the gallery, is that I’m happy I took the fears I had as a child seriously. Turning a childhood image into something real brought a sense of urgency that I needed to feel. The experience was strangely validating. I imagine this work and image to continue to feature in my art as years go by, as the prediction for the future I made as a child becomes less or more true.

This Wonderful Memory

dl i H i

v il O ai

Mycoremediation is a process that employs fungi in the removal of toxic compounds such as petroleum and diesel oil. Princeton University Is a private Ivy League research institution that invests in the distribution of toxic compounds such as petroleum and diesel oil. This exhibition, located in Princeton University, is about extractive industries and their power over the body, childhood play, and dancing.

Mycoremediation

u o is K

m ma

Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken

Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken

eu q

i no M

i’ve always believed communication is important. you don’t need to have the right words to get your feelings across – you just need to reach out. i’m really bad at talking to people, though… and as graduation looms over us, i’ve realized there are a lot of people i wish i’d talked to more, and i might never see them again. which is a great excuse to run away and just leave it at that. but it’s way more kind to send that one text, or catch them in the hall for a word or two. say what you need to say to them, and give them a chance to do the same. it’s super scary. it never gets easier. but i always feel a little better afterwards. left unsaid is basically a reflection of these sentiments. to be honest, i mostly made this game for myself! but i know a lot of people feel the same way, and i wanted to show them that talking is always an option, no matter how long it’s been, and no matter how badly you (or they) messed up. i tried to make it realistic – it’s awkward, and painful, and sometimes you wish you could just reset the game and avoid them altogether – but you have to have that difficult conversation at the end no matter what. it’s the only way to get closure as both the player and the protagonist. and it’s

just the right thing to do!

left unsaid

i ps

ag e L

v i n

James Xu, an educated, high-skilled Chinese immigrant, works a dead-end job at a Chinese restaurant near Stanford University. Insecurities mount after a chance encounter with a successful childhood friend from Mainland China and his highachieving daughter.

Unicorn

le a

h ci M

An astronaut embarks on a journey through time and space in search of life’s answer.

Syzygy

O u s s -ie u

a n

M e g

Signatures was a show in two parts. It opened simultaneously in the Hagan Studio at 185 Nassau Street and the Hurley Gallery at the Lewis Arts Complex for the week of March 28, 2022. The show lasted for an additional week in the Hagan Gallery. Each part featured notes collected on paper, on screen, in tissue, and in time. The sound in each gallery alternated between audible and silent tracks, with the silence corresponding with audio in the other gallery. Through acts of scripting and transcription, visitors engaged with the dynamics of reading, interpretation, practice, performance, and memory.

Signatures

y a

We are constantly constructing archives. Our inscriptions, transactions, and interactions are all diaries. There are records of you across the world: in data centers, in trash dumps, in the memories of the lives you have loved. The records of you are infinite, and almost completely out of your control. Physical, digital, fragile. Accurate, yet abstracted. Even summed together, all are still never quite a complete representation. sarry about saying you don’t is a diary of multiple mediums. Raya Ward welcomes us in to an intimate space constructed of her own archives — ones made of her, ones she has collected, and others she has produced. Through mixed media collage and installation, Raya weaves together a range of record types and sources in a simultaneous rejection of ‘privacy’ and calculated presentation of truth.

sarry about saying you don’t

d ra W

l e s

101

Folkscraft

103

s o n

li W

105

R n ay

107

This show is a reconstruction of the thoughts, ideas, and prayers that we encounter every day. Through paintings, books, and postcards, I created a reading room for you to interact with and interpret the submissions of 150 of your peers, just as you would in each and every day of your lives. The hope is that, through interpreting and understanding the thoughts of your peers in a concentrated fashion, you can come to understand the way I see the world. 生き方: Ikikata Ikikata. Iki is “to live” and is pronounced the same as “to breathe” or “breath”. Kata means “method”. The term Ikikata refers to how one lives their life and, in a sense, for what reason one lives their life. The show is a personal exploration of how I intend to live my life. At the moment, it goes something like this: ”Every moment of every day we are translating, interpreting, and understanding the world and the people around us so that we may come to love everything that shapes our lives.” The Lord and His Word My current understanding of how I ought to live my life is not exactly in line with Christian thought. A

more correct answer would be along the lines of: “We live to obey the Lord and therefore please the Lord and the Lord will provide for us.” At least, that is my current understanding of what I ought to believe. I am still not quite there, and I am sure many of my Christian brothers and sisters also struggle with their beliefs. But the Lord is forgiving and patient, so long as we are working with good hearts and minds towards Him, He is sure to be understanding and will guide our thoughts and actions. Realities & Time The thoughts, ideas, and prayers of those around us define their realities, even just for a moment. As you read and interpret these paintings, books, and postcards, I hope that you can come to view them as integral parts of that person. Those submissions defined your peers for the minute, the hour, or even the day they submitted them, just as a thought or idea preoccupies your mind right now. Going forward, I hope that you can come to see those around you and the actions they take or the words they say as something integral to them and, in doing so, come to understand and love them.

109

Thoughts, Ideas, and Prayers

111

113

Thank you to the faculty and staff of the Princeton University Program in Visual Arts and Department of Art and Archaeology. We are so grateful for your unending generosity and support. Thank you to Jeff Whetsone, Director of Visual Arts, Pam Lins, Associate Director of Visual Arts, and Marion Friedman Young, Executive Director of the Lewis Center for the Arts. We owe a great deal of gratitude for your spirited embrace of our creative endeavors. Thank you to Bhavani Srinivas for offering the most perfect mix of clarity and confusion throughout the making of this book. Your guidance and collaboration has been invaluable. This is the fifth edition of the book project, initiated by Eric Li ’18.

vis.princeton.edu 185nassau.art

Princeton Visual Arts 2022

Copyright © Tobi Ajayi, Silma Berrada, Ethan Boll, Jessica Brice, Attila Delingat, Ameena Faruki, Dylan Fox, Adam Hazelton, Isabella Hilditch, Olivia Kusio, Samm Lee, Monique Legaspi, Javin Lu, Michael Osei-Wusu, Megan Pai, Raya Ward, Miles Wilson, Ryan Xia No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior permission in writing from the artist.

Published by Princeton University Program in Visual Arts and Department of Art & Archaeology Designed by Megan Pai with Bhavani Srinivas Printed by Brilliant Graphics, PA

Typeset in Selectric Mono by Leonard Mabille

115