Art and Design Commons^™

Unbound, Changrui He

Masters Theses

For many years, I have been repeatedly trying to understand what the term “trauma” means to me. While invisible, my trauma is ever-present, and I have not been able to understand how it has trapped me and my inner feelings. At the same time, more recently I don’t feel helpless or abandoned. I have been trying to tap the potential of connecting with the world outside, thereby piecing together the broken bits and pieces and reconciling with my family, past sorrows and myself.

In my thesis collection, I pay homage to a garden I often visited as a child. The …

A New World Order, Yuwei Pan

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Through my work “A New World Order,” I question the extent to which the color Millennial Pink changes our perceptions of objects and even influences our unconscious decisions, by imagining what it would look like if on the institutional level pink’s “feminizing” power is put into good use – to reduce perceived violence for a kinder society –in a fictional feminist utopia/dystopia. In this paper, I will be contextualizing my art practice with the complex implications of pink in realms of psychology, pop culture, politics and participation art, and how social construction about the color pink affects gender performance. This …

Never Forgets: Traumatic Trace Within Public Space, Jan Descartes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper will interrogate the ways in which ephemera from events affects the human and non- human environment and how the absence, manipulation or presence of traumatic trace weaves itself into the atmosphere of the past, present and future. It will look at space and the ways that trace manifests itself in hierarchal spaces and Lebbeus Woods’ concept of heterarchial spaces, which are organic and/or horizontally organized. A thread throughout is the question that if trace from trauma can exist in the visual field, i.e. the physical or digital landscape, in a way that maintains a discourse without perpetuating oppression. …

Mimicry And Mimesis: Matrix Insect, Madeleine Kelly

Animal Studies Journal

Paintings and insects might seem like odd companions. In this paper I describe how a series of paintings I made depicting insects creates associations between mimesis and mimicry in order to flag a sort of protective self-referentiality – one where painting resists its proverbial ‘end’ and insects are presented as vital new orders. Drawing upon art historical references, such as Surrealism and the modernist grid, I argue that playing on these references and the compositional effects of camouflage enlivens our regard for the sensuous worlds of both insects and painting. I conclude by exploring how paintings of insects are powerful …