Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 10 of 10
Full-Text Articles in Art and Design
America, Dreaming., Sarah Meftah
America, Dreaming., Sarah Meftah
Masters Theses
There is a version
of America
that exists
only in dreams,
a kind of folklore,
shrouded in images,
technicolor interiors,
wrapped in plastic,
ghosts of recent past
to haunt and guide;
a constant reminder.
Wishful thinking
a constructed imaginary,
one I can hold in my hand.
Popular culture and spectacle, America and the domestic ideal, capitalism and the collective unconscious of a national identity. As an artist, I am interested in the myriad images that manifest for a viewer when they think of the spectacle of American pop culture, its domestic archetypes, and the material worship it revolves around. My …
Ni De Aqui Ni De Alla..., Jc Santistevan
Ni De Aqui Ni De Alla..., Jc Santistevan
All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023
Ni de aqui ni de alla navigates the complexities of belonging to two cultures-Mexican
and American-while not fully identifying with either. By visualizing liminal spaces,
migratory patterns, and quotidian subject matter the work serves as a metaphor for
the Latinx experience in the United States-an experience defined by conflicts between
conformity and resistance, individuality and community, spirituality and secularism,
alienation and belonging. "Black and white are the colors of photography…..they
symbolize the alternatives of hope and despair," Robert Frank once said, and it is
through a nonlinear installation of black and white imagery that I seek to describe the
push …
The Landscape Does Not Care It Is A Landscape: A Utopian Pessimist Journey In Kentucky., Shachaf Polakow
The Landscape Does Not Care It Is A Landscape: A Utopian Pessimist Journey In Kentucky., Shachaf Polakow
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
These thesis and exhibition, invite the viewers to travel through different places in Central and Eastern Kentucky. The region’s landscape, like many other American landscapes, is often known to the public through the settler colonial lens—a lens that ignores Indigenous peoples’ history in the region. The work in the exhibition is a response to landscape art's history and its complicity with American settler colonialism- art that was recruited to create a new identity for the settlers and for the country from the beginning of the American Colonial Project. Landscape art was a crucial part of this effort, presenting the land …
Representing The Ali'i And Monarchy: Dress, Diplomacy, And Featherwork In Hawai'i, Tess Anderson
Representing The Ali'i And Monarchy: Dress, Diplomacy, And Featherwork In Hawai'i, Tess Anderson
Scripps Senior Theses
When Native Hawaiians and haole (foreigners) first met, both participants belonged to fashion systems unknown to the other, composed of different materials, styles, tastes, standards, and construction techniques. As the outside world was introduced to the cultural heritage of Hawaiian hulu manu (featherwork), kūkaulani (chiefly fashion), and European skewed conceptions of Hawaiian indigeneity; the ali‘i (chiefs) and kama‘āina (commoners) received and adapted to incoming materials, technologies, and information. When these encounters transitioned into “prolonged contact” and settlement, dress and adornment proliferated in new ways. Analyzing the case studies of historic pā‘ū, holokū, ‘ahu'ula, and military uniforms shows the significance of …
In/Visible, Raymond Thompson Jr
In/Visible, Raymond Thompson Jr
Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports
My MFA thesis and supporting exhibition focus on challenging the United States’ photographic archive that often left out African-American people. The work, through the use of appropriation and alternative photographic processes, disrupts America’s historical visual archive and notions that surround the white gaze. Through the unsettling of this visual space, new speculative narratives can be created to help imagine new futures. This work is the beginning of a process of mourning histories I have never known and reclaiming a place for myself and my family in the American landscape that is free of racial trauma.
Do You Wanna Go Dancing?, Anthony Kascak
Do You Wanna Go Dancing?, Anthony Kascak
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
The transdisciplinary art work within Do you wanna go dancing? unpacks the experience and perception of my interpersonal relationships, as well as the role that touch and introspection has in my visual arts practice and everyday life. I am interested in pairing the act of looking with the sensation of touching through specific installation and arrangement of intimate imagery, ceramic fragments and frames, and manual or digitally fabricated surfaces. The negotiation of these installations orient the viewer to consider their positionality within space, as well as the extent in which distance, intimacy, and vulnerability fluctuate inside these psychological spaces.
The …
Remixing The Archives: Indigenous Interpretations Of History And The Future, Marcella Ernest
Remixing The Archives: Indigenous Interpretations Of History And The Future, Marcella Ernest
American Studies ETDs
This dissertation examines how Native art makes critical interventions that are aesthetically and intellectually arranged with the intention of displacing the master narratives. The project tracks how film and photography—historically used by non-Native people as a tool of colonialism—are being reclaimed by the visual and sonic scholarship of contemporary Native artists. The project shows how multidisciplinary artists use technology to remix audiovisual archives from a specific time in American history: portrait photography and ethnographic filmmaking at the turn of the twentieth century, Hollywood’s frontier representations of Indianness in twentieth-century motion pictures, social guidance classroom films from the 1950s, and digital …
Rui(N)Ation: Narratives Of Art And Urban Revitalization In Detroit, Jessica Ks Cappuccitti
Rui(N)Ation: Narratives Of Art And Urban Revitalization In Detroit, Jessica Ks Cappuccitti
Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository
This dissertation considers the City of Detroit as a case study for analyzing the complex role that artists and art institutions are playing in the potential re-growth and revitalization of the city. I specifically look at artists and arts organizations who are working against the popular narrative of Detroit as “ruin city.” Their efforts create counter narratives that emphasize stories of survival and showcase vibrant communities. By focussing on artist-led and institutional initiatives, I emphasize the importance of art in both community and narrative-building.
This research has taken the form of a written dissertation and two adapted projects, and positions …
Imaging Exploitation, Complexity, And Paradox In Subaltern Labor Photography, Mahnure Janis
Imaging Exploitation, Complexity, And Paradox In Subaltern Labor Photography, Mahnure Janis
Theses and Dissertations
Imaging Exploitation, Complexity, and Paradox in Subaltern Labor Photography is an expanded cinema performance examining 'cheap' labor in the fast fashion industry through a self-reflexive diasporic lens. The images and narration explores the garment factories in Bangladesh and contains ‘a photographer’s cognitive meta-data’, including ethical dilemmas while taking the images.
“After-Ozymandias”: The Colonization Of Symbols And The American Monument, H. R. Membreno-Canales
“After-Ozymandias”: The Colonization Of Symbols And The American Monument, H. R. Membreno-Canales
Theses and Dissertations
After-Ozymandias examines the visual rhetoric of American patriotism through its many symbols, including flags and monuments. My thesis project consists of photographs of empty plinths, objects, products and archival materials. Countless relics remain today memorializing leaders and empires that inevitably declined, from antiquity to modern times. Looking back at distant history feels like a luxury, though: the question for our time in America is whether we have the strength of mind as a society to scrutinize our history, warts and all.