Kim Salac, Diana Dreams, April 28, 2021, HD video and archival footage
This exhibition highlights the work produced by studio art majors during their final year at the University of Virginia. These artists responded to the uncertainty brought about by their personal circumstances and a global pandemic while on the cusp of entering the world beyond Grounds. During the shift to virtual learning, they physically created art with ephemeral materials that speak to the vulnerability of the ecosystems we inhabit and to the technologies that increasingly mediate our human interactions. They pictured the people who are at once present and absent from their lives. Through performance they explored feelings of belonging and alienation and confronted the larger systems that continue to oppress some and elevate others. They expressed their complex identities and family histories using dirt, paint, fabric, video, and photography. In the process of negotiating these apparent binaries, these sixteen artists drew from the gradations of their experiences to show that they––like all of us––exist in the spaces between.
The exhibition was curated by Eleanore Neumann and Meaghan Walsh, PhD Candidates in Art and Architectural History at UVA.
The Spaces Between will be on view through June 18, 2021.