A Thing Like You and Me: MFA20 Thesis Exhibition Catalog

Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts

A Thing Like You and Me 20

Washington University in St. Louis

Thesis Exhibition

MFA in Visual Art

20

A Thing Like You and Me

MFA in Visual Art Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts Washington University in St. Louis The Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis is a leader in architecture, art, and design education. We are advancing our fields through innovative research and creative practice, excellence in teaching, a world-class university art museum, and a deep commitment to addressing the social and environmental challenges of our time. Through the work of our students, faculty, and alumni, we are striving to create a more just, sustainable, humane, and beautiful world.

MFA in Visual Art Faculty Jamie Adams Michael Byron Meghan Kirkwood Richard Krueger Arny Nadler Patricia Olynyk Tim Portlock Jack Risley Denise Ward-Brown Cheryl Wassenaar Monika Weiss

Program Leadership Lisa Bulawsky

2020 MFA in Visual Art Students

Professor & Chair, MFA in Visual Art Director, Island Press

Amy Hauft Director, College of Art and Graduate School of Art Jane Reuter Hitzeman and Herbert F. Hitzeman, Jr. Professor of Art

Carmon Colangelo Ralph J. Nagel Dean, Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts E. Desmond Lee Professor for Collaboration in the Arts

Grace Eunhae Cho Damaris Dunham Brie Henderson Aleida Hertel Yeeun Kang Alex T. Klein Sarah Knight Liz Moore Emily Mueller Lola Ayisha Ogbara Linnéa Ryshke Chris Scott Sixue Yang

Essays Gretchen Wagner Gretchen L. Wagner is a curator, art historian, and writer. She has completed curatorial projects and publications for the Saint Louis Art Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, Pulitzer Arts Foundation, Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, WIELS Centre d’Art Contemporain, and the International Print Center New York, among others.

Editors Stephanie Schlaifer Katherine Welsch Photographer Richard Sprengeler Designer James Walker Publisher Washington University in St. Louis Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts © 2021 Washington University in St. Louis. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the permission of the publisher.

Foreword

“How about siding with the object for a change?

Why not affirm it?

Why not be a thing?

An object without a subject?

A thing among other things?”

Hito Steyerl, A Thing Like You and Me, 2010

This catalog highlights thesis projects by the 2020 MFA in Visual Art graduating class, featured in their thesis exhibition, A Thing Like You and Me (titled by the exhibiting artists in tribute to an essay of the same title by artist and writer Hito Steyerl).

Through their work, the artists speak to structures of power and subjection—in art, politics, institutions, history, and everyday culture. They ask, why not be a thing?

An object? Perhaps power relations can be equalized when we recognize things as objects rather than subjects. In many of these artists’ works, there is a proposition of shared power, a post-Anthropocentric shift away from hierarchical relations that places us and our creations on equal footing with all the other things and creatures of this world. To be a thing is to be a material configuration, an arrangement of atoms, like every other thing. If an image is a thing (rather than a representation), then it is not a subject, not subjected to anything. Not ironically, ultimate power means having ultimate freedom—from subjectivity—in the form of stereotypes, assumptions, baggage, and “the trash of history.” As Steyerl suggests, this is not a cynical or nihilistic proposition. To be a thing is to be liberated.

The exhibition for which this publication serves as document was intended to open in early May of 2020. Of course, at that time, the global pandemic was raging, a lockdown was in place, and new strategies for doing just about everything from home had to be invented and implemented. I write this today, while we are still under the thumb of COVID-19, with deepest respect for these artists who completed their thesis projects and their MFA degrees with great vision and grace in the spring of 2020. And I am especially grateful for their perseverance in mounting their exhibition at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum almost a year after graduation, in the spring of 2021.

The works in this catalog reflect the best of what the MFA in Visual Art program has to offer: an environment rich in critical conversations related to art and broader questions of cultural production; opportunities for deep disciplinary and interdisciplinary research; rigorous commitment to the material, technical, and conceptual investigations inherent to studio practice; and a vibrant community and spirit of collaboration intended to sustain artists as they emerge with their work, poised to impact the future in powerful ways.

Acknowledgments

My most sincere thanks go to Gretchen Wagner, who wrote the essays in this catalog with remarkable clarity, sensitivity, and insight into each artist’s work. Thanks also to Stephanie Schlaifer, who served as expert copy editor, and to James Walker for the superb catalog design. Much appreciation to Richard Sprengeler for his photographic documentation of the exhibition. This catalog would not have been possible without the unflagging assistance of Katherine Welsch, Audrey Westcott, and Melissa Whitwam. And special thanks go to Amy Hauft, Director of the College of Art and Graduate School of Art, who was a steady force of inspiration and support.

Gratitude to everyone at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum who helped make A Thing Like You and Me: 2020 MFA in Visual Art Thesis Exhibition possible: Leslie Markle, who served as curator, and also Kristin Good, Erica Buss, Ida McCall, Mark Ryan, and director Sabine Eckmann for all of their efforts and support in celebrating the work of the MFA in Visual Art candidates this year, and each and every year.

On behalf of the MFA in Visual Art program in the Sam Fox School, I’d like to extend extra thanks to Patricia Olynyk, who led the program from 2007–2020 with vision and vigor, and to all of the faculty of the Graduate School of Art, whose investment in teaching, mentoring, and supporting MFA artists is inspired and unwavering.

In addition, the artists benefited significantly from the critical guidance of Dave Hullfish Bailey and Dana Levy, Henry L. and Natalie E. Freund Teaching Fellows in the MFA in Visual Art program for 2019 and 2020, respectively.

Lisa Bulawsky Professor & Chair, MFA in Visual Art Director, Island Press

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This exhibition reflects the critical conversations, interdisciplinary investigations, collective visions, and diverse practices of this distinctive group of artists. Their works are testaments to the power and persistence of art and the irrepressible drive MFA IN VISUAL ART THESIS EXHIBITION

of art making. The students, faculty, and staff of the MFA in Visual Art program in the Sam Fox School invite you to celebrate the work of this new generation of artists, surfacing in this time of such extraordinary global and national change, poised to impact the future.

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Grace Eunhae Cho 4 Damaris Dunham 8 Brie Henderson 12 Aleida Hertel 16 Yeeun Kang 20 Alex T. Klein 24 Sarah Knight 28 Liz Moore 32 Emily Mueller 36 Lola Ayisha Ogbara 40 Linnéa Ryshke 44 Chris Scott 48 Sixue Yang 52

Grace Eunhae Cho

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Surveillance in daily life is probably one of the most urgent issues of our time, and Grace Eunhae Cho focuses her current research on this theme. Several of her recent projects, which span the fields of film, experimental music, and interactive design, pose probing questions about global technologies devised to track people’s movements and activities in stunningly comprehensive and invasive ways. As privacy protections erode for the sake of big data and tech giants develop even more opportunities for us to give our information away, artists such as Cho enter this conversation with a deep concern for our future and a commitment to produce art with a purpose. When viewing Cho’s work, Nam June Paik’s attentiveness to media saturation in a networked world comes to mind, along with artists Hito Steyerl and Trevor Paglen, who interrogate the inner workings of the politics of visibility. Cho shares their investigatory approach while paying attention to entertainment value, an ingredient she considers essential to draw her audience into her pieces.

State and corporate power, and their enhancement through the development of surveillance technology, are the focus of Cho’s The Great Dictator and Synopticon.

Both projects are interactive environments where viewers are invited to participate in the act of watching. The Great Dictator is a collaboration with composer Noe Gonzalez where participants trigger sounds when they pass by motion-sensitive cameras. Initially startled by the sounds, the visitors often begin to dance as they listen to the soundtrack, which is a beat-heavy remix of sequences from Charlie Chaplin’s 1940 political satire of the same title. With Synopticon, Cho builds upon the idea of a mutual surveillance system where the public and authorities can watch each other. Visitors get lost in a labyrinth of two-way mirrored partitions and link, via QR code, to an upbeat Instagram-style video about body scan technology.

Acknowledging the simultaneous anxiety and pleasure technology inspires, Cho intends this piece to lead the spectator through a similar range of emotions.

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Synopticon, 2020 Wood, two-way mirror film, and QR code 84 x 144 x 144"

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Grace Eunhae Cho

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Damaris Dunham

Phobos, 2020 Papier mâché and paint 90 x 150 x 24"

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Part painting and part sculpture, Damaris Dunham’s large, three-dimensional abstractions are meant to be read symbolically. Spatially and visually commanding, they provide evocative visual prompts that she hopes encourage discussion around the emotional and psychological complexities of the human condition. Fascinated by different strategies used to access these elusive interior spaces, Dunham turns to psychoanalysis—and feminist approaches to psychoanalytical theories—as a framework to discuss her art. Individuals like writer and artist Bracha Ettinger, who maintain intensive, feminist psychoanalytic studio practices, interest Dunham greatly and inform her work.

Phobos is a mural-sized piece that exemplifies the physical and formal qualities that appear in many of her works. Dunham typically begins with a wood and wire armature, which she coats with a variety of materials though a process of addition and abstraction. She sculpts paper to build up the surface into rounded mounds and then carves out numerous holes. These openings recede into a darkened space of indefinite depth. To surround these recesses, Dunham embeds lace, string, and hair, while tangled masses of spray foam encrust large areas. The entire piece is painted a deep reddish-brown with a slightly metallic sheen to suggest biological and organic formations. Reducing distraction, the monochrome heightens the play of light and shadow on the surface’s varied texture, especially drawing the eye to the deep recesses.

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Dunham considers her works, such as Phobos, symbols of the female body, and the hole—as form and metaphor—is central to the constellation of meaning that she creates. It is a visual response to the psychoanalytic interpretation of the bodily orifice and womb as symbolic sites, and specifically how these concepts articulate feminine subjectivity as a hidden or forgotten position. Invisibility is often met with fear—a reaction that Dunham evokes in her title referencing Phobos, the ancient Greek personification of a panicked state. By making these connections, Dunham uses her work as a visual resource to inspire new feminist possibilities for representation in art.

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Damaris Dunham

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Brie Henderson

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In her suites of drawings, Brie Henderson shares a private world of fleeting thoughts and encounters derived from her own experiences navigating the complex intellectual, emotional, and physical terrain of interpersonal relationships. Henderson is especially interested in moments of intimacy and studies how bodies interact to create small compositions on paper that combine image and text. Watercolor is the primary medium for these sensual treatments of the nude—sometimes in pairs and other times isolated—which shift between figurative and abstract modes in a visual fluidity. The minimalist drawings demonstrate an economy of shape and line where Henderson presents fragmentary views of the human form pared down to contour and wash. She hangs the drawings in carefully selected groupings, creating an open-ended account of loosely connected episodes and impressions.

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Henderson’s art is diaristic and based on close observation of her encounters with those who are part of her private life. Inspired by Nan Goldin’s documentary style and involvement with her subjects, Henderson sketches episodes of intimacy and dependency, such as an embrace or touch, in her own relationships. Some of the views are more sexual and others open to interpretation, but they all offer an unrestricted view into a world that is deeply personal to the artist. Words help her access an even greater level of intimacy, and Henderson excerpts phrases from conversations and intersperses these found words, as well as verses from her poetry, throughout her work.

Another important aspect of Henderson’s work is her use of watercolor. For her, there is no hiding behind the immediacy of watercolor, which is applied directly and rapidly. She considers it a meaningful way to convey her content as candidly as possible. This approach to the technique is something she shares with artists such as Louise Bourgeois and Tracey Emin, whose watercolors visualize intensely personal subject matter without filter. Through her combination of drawing, text, and careful observation, Henderson calls attention to the delicate and mysterious nature of the relationships that connect us.

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Yours or mine, 2019

Trace the places, 2019

In lies, 2019

Only, 2020

When did walking feel like crawling, 2020

Untitled, 2019

Untitled, 2020

Bury all, 2020

Watercolor on paper

Untitled, 2019

Again, pretend so, 2020

15 x 11" each

Perfect and I, 2020

Untitled, 2020

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Brie Henderson

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Aleida Hertel In her installations and multimedia works, Aleida Hertel examines the trauma of displacement and the stories of migrants who have been forced to adapt to geographic, social, and political realities that are unfamiliar and unwelcoming. Research drives her projects in a manner that reflects Hertel’s deep sense of responsibility toward her subject matter—an empathetic approach she admires in the practices of artists such as Doris Salcedo and Alfredo Jaar, among others. Over several years, she has reviewed hundreds of interviews documenting the experiences of populations around the world that have been pushed to resettle as the result of war, environmental disasters, and economic hardship, among many other pressuring factors. Hertel’s personal memories of her own relocation and migration are among these accounts that inform her work.

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The sculptural installation Place is a poetic response to her investigations of human displacement. Hertel often identifies ordinary objects that have associations with circumstances of diasporic trauma. These “painful objects,” as she refers to them, symbolize circumstances of distress and hardship. In Place, a pair of rubber boots represents the many migrant stories Hertel studied, where extreme suffering found expression through narratives involving an individual’s shoes and feet. One hundred multiples of these boots occupy a defined square area to make up Place.

The installation’s structure and arrangement borrow from the qualities of sameness and repetition seen in Minimalist and Conceptual art; here, they are strategies to emphasize the recurrence of human absence and the return of traumatic memory.

For Hertel, it is important that the boots are not identical, however, and to create her multiples, she casts liquid clay in a plaster mold using a technique where forms set even though they are not kiln-fired. Depending on conditions during this sensitive hardening process, the clay responds differently. Hertel favors this material vulnerability and displays all the outcomes—including collapsed and malformed boots—producing a group of unique variants presenting difference within the collective. Hertel’s art, including works such as Place, is one of thoughtful advocacy for those who have been put in a place of otherness.

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Place, 2020 Installation of unfired clay Overall dimensions variable

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Aleida Hertel

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Yeeun Kang

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Into the Layers of Light, 2019 Multimedia installation with two-channel video projection, cloth, and Mylar, 2 min. (loop) Overall dimensions variable

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Yeeun Kang constructs immersive installations that focus on qualities of light and space to sensitize visitors to liminal states of perception. Into the Layers of Light, a recent example of her environments, consists of a darkened room hung with translucent screens and reflective Mylar sheets. These surfaces are illuminated with moving panoramic projections, where morphing and flickering shapes and hues fill blurry fields of form. At times, the images appear to represent a body of water or perhaps a city’s skyline, although points of reference quickly dissolve as images change and grow increasingly abstract. The space is ambiguous and views shift depending on one’s position in the room and relationship to the various surfaces and light sources.

The complete picture seems to come in and out of focus, keeping full comprehension just out of reach.

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Kang recalls a formative experience when, from an airplane, she observed the flickering effects of light dancing on the ocean below. As the surface seemed to dematerialize, she wondered about the complexities of vision and how personal and cultural factors determine perception and understanding, especially when observing light and space. To unpack these questions, she turned to architecture in the urban environment, specifically shop windows and their reflection of the streetscape.

Her resulting paintings and drawings present geometric, partially abstract scenes organized by line and plane that synthesize multiple viewpoints into two-dimensional pictorial space. Artist Dan Graham’s glass and mirror pavilions serve as another starting point for a large-scale painting. Yang observed Graham’s Bisected Circle—a visually complicated structure that blurs differentiation between itself and its surroundings—and translated it into a two-dimensional image. It was an ambitious task that forced Yang to determine how this dynamic environment could be depicted on a flat surface. These studies of the city and of Graham’s work eventually led her to test the limits of perception by creating installations of her own.

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Yeeun Kang

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Alex T. Klein

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Alex T. Klein’s sculpture is not meant to last. Rather, he creates temporary arrangements of found objects and images, plucking items from their usual circulation in the world to be his art for a brief period. Strange tool parts, peculiar knickknacks, and other mysterious fragments that Klein salvages from thrift stores and estate sales are placed on photographic backdrops depicting even more items. These assemblages resemble stage sets, and things often appear humorously out of place, yet they manage to hang together awkwardly in the time they have together. For other projects, Klein creates impromptu objects out of cardboard shipping boxes held together with coupon inserts that have shown up in the mail. He does not seek out his materials in these instances. Instead, they come to him via the postal service. Fascinated by the still life genre and its carefully orchestrated scenes of edibles, flowers, and housewares, Klein fabricates clumsy cardboard teapots, chalices, and other functionless objects that may fall apart at any moment.

The transitory status of an art object is important to Klein, and in some respects, there are connections to the “unmonumental” sculpture of recent decades and its accumulations of common objects. Works by artists Isa Genzken, Thomas Hirschhorn, and Rachel Harrison that investigate conditions of mass consumption come to mind, especially in relation to Klein’s cheeky titles, such as Too Good to Be True, that seem to poke at advertising’s manipulations. However, Klein departs from the dry analytics of social criticism and incorporates a splendidly speculative element into his projects.

Influenced by theories of magic and a longtime reader of epic fantasy novels, he often references ancient philosophies of supernatural material transmutation filtered through the digital age. An alchemist’s beaker straight from Goodwill, dragon pictures from a Google search, and references to the anime series Fullmetal Alchemist 2 are among the types of citations that appear throughout his projects. As objects and images zip around our interconnected planet, his explorations examine how art factors into this movement of things and ideas.

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Summoning Something, 2021

Too Good to Be True, 2021

Xerographic prints and colored

Cardboard and coupon inserts

pencil on two mirrors

20 x 43 x 32" overall

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48 x 36" each

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Alex T. Klein

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Sarah Knight Sarah Knight creates sculptural mixed-media ceramics to reframe queerness.

According to Knight, identity fluidity can be articulated through material and process, especially steps taken in the studio that push matter into a state of flux and entropy.

Frustrated by the limiting binary gender theories that they, as a genderqueer artist, had encountered in art, Knight uses the transformational methods of ceramics, combined with references to stonemasonry, metalworking, geological forces, and landscape, to map a new speculative course.

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The fragment—as a concept and object—is central to Knight’s creative explorations.

They take bits from their workspace and natural world, including discarded studio scraps, rebar segments, and chunks of rock, and assemble the fragmentary elements to produce new meaning in the in-between spaces. The experimental combinatory layouts of Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas, among other sources, introduced Knight to the power of visual comparison to inspire novel connections and explore processes of transformation. The collections of fragments that appear in their sculptures, many of which resemble geological specimens and core samples, are the result of entropic processes that remix references, both natural and cultural.

The installation Reliquary of Nonbinary Geomorphologies includes several of Knight’s pieces, arranged together on a gridded platform of jewel-toned Plexiglas pedestals glowing from within. The illumination hints at the intense thermal and chemical effects responsible for Knight’s art. To produce some pieces, various stages of the kiln firing process transform stone into lava. For others, stews of concrete and plaster congeal. Clay, metal, stone, and other substances fuse into cracked, pitted, and flattened forms, which show signs of the forces they endured. In these visible records of stress and change, Knight sees a connection to Earth’s landscape as well as the passing of time and topographic shifts responsible for its layers and fissures.

Overlaying this constellation of ideas with concepts of gender ambiguity, Knight presents new possibilities for definitions of place and identity.

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Reliquary of Nonbinary

Grey Matter

Mixed-media ceramics,

Geomorphologies, 2019-21

Spill

found and melted stone,

Artifice

steel, and concrete

Sedimentary Record

Overall dimensions variable

Zenith/Nadir II Sublimation Column II Angiolith/Cairn IV Embedded Manifesto/Cairn III Lavender lapilli Disinterred Zenith/Nadir I Geophagia/Cairn I Scree

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Sarah Knight

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Liz Moore Liz Moore searches for moments where beauty and the grotesque collide. In her large sculptures and architecturally engaged installations, pretty memories from her childhood growing up in the American South mix with references to mysterious and frightening presences lurking in life’s corners. Colors seemingly spun from cotton candy, patterns borrowed from fancy domestic interiors, and textures that match a teddy bear’s plush make up the floor and wall pieces she constructs primarily from luxurious, hand-made textiles and an assortment of bits and bobs plucked from sewing kits and jewelry boxes. Blistered and oozing surfaces and bizarre creatures stitched from cloth provide an unsettling counterpoint to the more precious qualities.

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Initially trained as a painter, Moore traded her brushes for fabric and began making felt, which is her favored medium for current projects. The intensive handwork required to process felt appeals to her, from dying the wool to agitating and tangling the fibers so they interlock to produce matted pieces. Moore admires Sheila Hicks’ pioneering work in the world of fiber arts, and connections to Olga de Amaral’s freestanding structures and Josh Faught’s identity explorations can also be drawn.

A dexterity with fabrics runs in Moore’s family, and Moore recalls her grandmother’s work as a seamstress for Atlanta’s elite. The jewelry and adornments her grandmother wore on the job—hat pins, lace, and jewels, which her family has kept—find their way into Moore’s constructions as reminders of this past. The tradition of French toile, with its pastoral prints, is another historical reference that Moore transforms into a haunting dreamscape inhabited by an imaginary beast for A Jungle, a Dream, a Wallowing Thing. Inspired by the grand, yet deteriorating, architecture she encountered as a child and as a student exploring St. Louis’ aging neighborhoods, her Wall Molds evoke the damp decay she observed in those spaces, which she finds simultaneously magical and terrifying—a combination of sensations and ideas she weaves throughout her work.

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Wall Molds (Rotting, Delighting, Stretching,

A Jungle, a Dream, a Wallowing Thing, 2020

and Staring), 2020

Handmade felt and mixed media

Mixed media and family heirlooms

Overall dimensions variable

overall dimensions variable

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Liz Moore

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Cat Shot 04

Emily Mueller

Cat Shot 06 Cat Shot 07 2020-21 Inkjet prints

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Emily Mueller uses her camera to examine the power images have to define social constructions of the female body and identity. For her projects, she takes photographs of herself, creating different series of related images that depict her in a range of settings, from familiar domestic spaces to fabricated abstract backdrops. Although she considers the photographs to be the final work, Mueller describes the preparatory process of positioning herself in these locations as performance, one informed by concepts of gender performativity. Through this act, she learns how to behave for the camera, taking cues from the environments she has selected or created.

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One series of photographs features somber, seemingly forgotten, household interiors, where Mueller appears in cluttered spaces crowded with furniture and belongings. In some photos, she contorts her limbs and wears clothing incorrectly—in a manner that conceals her face and transforms her shape. Partially hidden and unrecognizable, her body easily resembles yet another inanimate object in the room. The mood shifts in a group of highly saturated color photographs titled Cat Shots. Posing with her fluffy pet in front of backdrops resembling a frilly, DIY craft project, Mueller plays up stereotypes of girliness and cute aesthetics in these images, which simultaneously convey a message of self-determination. By drawing attention to the camera’s shutter release in her hand, she reminds us that she is in charge of her pictures.

Mueller follows several generations of artists who shaped feminist pictorial representation in photography, including Francesca Woodman, Cindy Sherman, and Hannah Wilke, each of whose ideas have impacted Mueller’s work. She is especially concerned with how conversations around the embodied experiences of women continue to evolve and respond to diverse perspectives. By welcoming hyperfeminine, saccharine qualities into her images and experimenting with modes of objectification, she looks beyond narrow definitions of female empowerment and employs photography to propose positive departures.

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Emily Mueller

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Lola Ayisha Ogbara

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With Labor and Love, 2020 Iron, glass, rhinestones, nickel, plastic, fibers, aluminum, resin, and single-channel video with sound, 3:06 min.

Through her art, Lola Ayisha Ogbara reclaims the Black female body for herself and the generations that came before her. Black feminine sexuality has long been pathologized through oppression and subjugation, and Ogbara creates sculptures, photographs, and films to turn the ugly, perpetuated myths on themselves by applying pleasure activism. This theoretical framework celebrates physical and intellectual enjoyment and its capability to generate justice and liberation. The link between labor and sexuality emerges frequently in Ogbara’s pieces, and slavery’s exploitation of Black labor and its role in the struggle of Black people to represent their own sexualities is an important area of investigation. In many ways, her approach corresponds with and provides visual contributions to recent critical race feminist thinking, such as the pioneering writings of author and activist adrienne maree brown, as well as the groundbreaking activities of the Black Sexual Economies Collective, co-convened by Adrienne Davis and Mireille Miller-Young.

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Ogbara often records herself working to produce her films and photographs. Skilled in ceramics, she captures her efforts handling clay and shaping the fleshy contours of her sculpture. Tightly cropped close-ups focus attention on fragments of her body in a style reminiscent of the voyeuristic space of pornographic photos and films, which Ogbara sometimes appropriates and combines with her own images to interrogate the representation of sex and work. Footage of her sculpting clay also appears in the single-channel video and performative installation With Labor and Love, which considers the history of sugar, its manufacture by exploited laborers, and its erotic associations tied to race. In the piece, which features a functioning syrup fountain, the messy chore of hauling and transferring buckets of the delicious sugary substance repeats in real time and on screen, accompanied by a soundtrack of sensuous phrases intertwined with calls for justice. By creating this world of references, Ogbara honors the body, its labors, and its satisfaction in an act of self-empowerment, and as she states, “the pleasure is, indeed, all mine.”

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Lola Ayisha Ogbara

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Linnéa Ryshke

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Linnéa Ryshke makes delicate, process-driven paintings and drawings featuring chickens, cows, and other creatures that call attention to the fragile and ancient relationships that link animals and humans. Ryshke thinks deeply about how transspecies connections have evolved over time and assesses the treatment of animals in contemporary life. Her research in this area spans nearly a decade and includes time spent living and working on a small farm in Northern Europe. These experiences present her with opportunities to study all kinds of transactions between man and nature. She turns to poet Mary Oliver’s clear observation of the wonder and pain of nature and scholar Jane Desmond’s pioneering research in the field of animal studies as points of reference. Human indifference for animals—beings often perceived as mere commodities for the global marketplace—is a reality that troubles Ryshke. The automated methods of industrialized food production and their profound effects on animal well-being are among the topics that occupy her recent work. With her images, she works to close the empathy gap so that respect is paid to other living creatures.

Although Ryshke acknowledges the activism that underpins her projects, she chooses to assert her messages softly, fully committed to art as a space of contemplation.

Abstracted close-ups of various creatures—cows snuggling and birds nesting—are ghost-like in their appearance. Muted colors and diaphanous paint layers generate translucent surface qualities emanating warm light. Although sensual and alluring interpretations of nature, they do not slip into purely nostalgic romanticism. Instead, the hard circumstances of animal life are acknowledged as well, such as in the piece Remains. To make this multi-part work, Ryshke designed a procedural painting method measured according to the drastically shortened life span of a factory farm chicken.

To acknowledge the brief forty-seven days from hatch to slaughter, Ryshke sketched the bird’s form each day, sanding down the painting, collecting the dust, and starting again. The accumulation of mark and erasure provides a poignant memorial.

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Host, 2020

Cleaved, 2020

To Say Their Own Names, 2019

Acrylic paint, pastel,

Acrylic paint, graphite, and

Acrylic paint, pastel, paper,

and paper on fabric

pumice on canvas

and found flower petals on

12 x 11"

17 3/4 x 15 1/8"

wooden strainers 13 x 11"

Soft of Fur, of Skin, of Voice, of Touch, of Hair, a Whisper Barely

Remains, 2020

There, 2020

Acrylic paint, charcoal, and

Acrylic paint, ash, charcoal,

Conté crayon on wood panel;

and pumice on canvas

stoneware with graphite and

23 1/8 x 23 1/8"

gum arabic 6 3/4 x 4"

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Linnéa Ryshke

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Chris Scott Combining biography with fiction, Chris Scott uses his performances, writings, and paintings to examine masculine stereotypes, specifically the macho persona of the white male painter that is a staple of Western art history. As a white man who paints, Scott recognizes his own participation in this popular trope and uses his art to deconstruct the power of this narrative—one that he acknowledges has overshadowed many other voices. For him, it is a complex personhood where aspirations of stardom collide with pangs of self-doubt and insecurity.

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In his performances, usually documented in videos, Scott typically enters some chaotic studio space. The debris of art-making—paint buckets, spray cans, canvas scraps, and rolled paper—is strewn everywhere, suggesting the aftermath of some epic session of creative release. Scott’s performances satirize any such artistic showboating—and its mythologizing in popular culture—with his episodes, such as Mollycoddle in Red, where he cavorts with a square of crimson-colored canvas—petting and wrapping himself in it suggestively. In another video, sadboyfuck, Scott confesses, “I was embarrassed to tell people what I have been up to. How I have been spending my time.”

One source of his shame is revealed when the scene cuts to him tossing himself into a large trash bin over and over.

The combination of manly posturing, crude prankster-ism, and sincere vulnerability acted out in these videos is something that Scott borrows from Bruce Nauman and Lou Reed, two important references for him. Paul McCarthy’s visceral clowning as well as Stanya Kahn and Harry Dodge’s comedic critiques also come to mind. Although he does paint abstract canvases of acrylic and collage, it is unclear if these are sincere objects or merely props for a persona he has created. As Scott slips in and out of character, he continues the self-critical work necessary to scramble dominant paradigms and render new possibilities.

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Street Hassle (Tracks 1 through 3), 2020

Real Cool Time, 2020

Acrylic and collage on burlap

Acrylic and collage on burlap

44 x 42 1/2"

41 x 37"

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Chris Scott

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MFA IN VISUAL ART THESIS EXHIBITION

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Sixue Yang

Rising Water, Floating Islands I-IV, 2020 Ink on Xuan paper 58 x 145" each

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MFA IN VISUAL ART THESIS EXHIBITION

Sixue Yang reinvents the ancient tradition of Chinese ink-and-brush painting to examine the physical and philosophical conditions of contemporary life. Having studied traditional calligraphy during her childhood in China, Yang enjoys the idea that an artform can be handed down through generations, and she adopts many of the older techniques for her current work. Yang paints on sheets of fine Xuan paper, or rice paper, which has been used in China for centuries, and mounts her work on silk, like handscrolls. Portions of her brushwork adhere to the historical aesthetic she learned as a child, although Yang inserts her own mark-making system of tiny squares that resemble the Chinese character for kŏu, or mouth. She also recognizes how themes central to Chinese painting—such as the relationship between humans and nature—are especially relevant today.

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Her recent project, the epic series Rising Water, Floating Islands I-IV, is composed of four sprawling compositions. Rocks, trees, and water elements in the first image are stylistically aligned with those found in paintings of the 11th-century Northern Song period, often considered the great age of Chinese landscape. As the cycle continues, the compositions open and there is a greater sense of space, flow, and abstraction.

These shifts in appearance and historical reference are important to Yang, who turns to moments of profound change for inspiration.

Rising Water, Floating Islands I-IV speaks to the extraordinary changes Yang witnessed in China during her lifetime. In recent decades, massive governmental projects have altered the natural landscape, including the construction of the Three Gorges Dam and the ongoing creation of artificial islands in the South China Sea. The painting’s mouthlike brushstrokes, grouped in numerous floating clusters, represent the countless individuals affected by these developments who are unable to speak openly about them.

These atmospheric scenes escort the viewer through a contemplative yet provocative narrative, which the artist hopes will invite more questions than answers, especially those concerning the profound impact rapid transformation has upon communities and the environment.

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Sixue Yang

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MFA IN VISUAL ART THESIS EXHIBITION

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