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Fighting Domestic Terrorism: Art's Role In Social Activism, Jonathan Cornell

Graduate School of Art Theses

Abstract

Through a study into the complex web of Church and State, I describe how the American condition falters under a Capitalist regime. Throughout this thesis, I identify incongruences within pervading socio-political tropes. By dissections of religion and culture, I identify how the American people are subjugated by their own ideologies, thereby perpetuating a cycle of class struggle and social injustice. I assert that the American hero has failed in the face of material desire and blind faith to a ruling plutocracy, and that organized religion has been ultimately subsumed by politics as a tool of control. Using the visual …

Phenomenal Marks, Ruptured Spaces, Relearning Language, Crossing Cultures, Meelee Ahn

Graduate School of Art Theses

The form of my thesis is one of interruptions, or “Ruptures,” as I call them. These are events of my personal history, or stories from the lives of artists, that intervene against my narrative through graphic and language devices meant to be understood as equivalent to the material affects in my painting. Important artists and movements mentioned are Gerhard Richter, Franz Kline, Helen Frankenhauler, Lee Ufan, Doho Suh, and Abstract Expressionism. Writers and philosophers Maurice Merlou-Ponty, Gaston Bachelard, Joan Banach, Sigmund Freud, John Gage, Brian Massumi, Allen Weiss, Clement Greenburg, Shin-Chulgyu, and Yoon-Dongju are also discussed. The idea discussed include …

Creatures Of Play, Melissa Shelton

Graduate School of Art Theses

This thesis explores my practice as an artist and my work’s cultural, theoretical and social contexts, such carnival theory, feminist studies and film studies, as well as references to mythology and my own biography. I discuss forms of representation of gendered identities through my work in drawing, performance, animation, video and installation.

The masks we wear become as real as our bare face. Through the act of doubling the representation, my thesis work BECOMING/a fine line situates the mask as the mediator between reflections, mirroring the identity and the notion of performativity. Embracing a certain incompleteness and embodying the theoretical …

Cat Metamorfosis: Becoming Animal And The Freedom Of Non-Identity, Hannah Becker

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

A large number of modern and contemporary female artists have employed the state of becoming to either free themselves of or challenge the social norms that come with being a woman. Kara Walker frees the Mammy of her expectation by combining her with a sphinx in her monumental sugar sculpture, A Subtlety. The Guerilla Girls have an impenetrable and unidentifiable voice when they speak from behind gorilla masks. Lucy Gunning’s The Horse Impressionists depicts women mimicking the behavior of horses to lose their human consciousness, and more specifically, female identity. Looking beyond the art world and into recent consumerist …

Black Matter, Kahlil Irving

Graduate School of Art Theses

History as we know it, is inherited. Racism, fascism, white supremacy, and Eurocentric dominance have been presented as normal and acceptable within our society for many years. This has allowed police officers to execute Black American’s and not be acquitted for their horrendous crimes. As an activist I want to challenge the status quo. As an artist I am interested in investigating how I can present ideas embody or reflect contemporary issues and concerns. Using different colors can aggressively change how an object is perceived. Historical objects hold many important.

I explore many mediums, but an anchor material that I …