Art Practice Commons^™

Confined By Darkness, Alyssa C. Sweeney

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In addition to my Master of Fine Arts thesis exhibition, this dossier is arranged with an extended artist statement, documentation of a photographic series, a case study on artist Brian Ulrich, and a curriculum vitae. These portions of the thesis exhibit the themes and pursuit that inform my studio practice in photography. The comprehensive artist statement describes the attachments and personal background that informs my overall approach. The second chapter consists of a series of images titled, Confined by Darkness, which is an archive of significant spaces documented at night that evoke nostalgia or are prominent in my everyday …

Sweeping The Forest Floor Of Frequencies, Maria A. Kouznetsova

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

sweeping the forest floor of frequencies is a Master of Fine Art thesis project comprised of the dossier and the exhibition presented at the Artlab Gallery July 27 - August 11, 2023. My writing and multidisciplinary work foreground sonic, visual, and imperceptible signals as search modes for grounding and interconnectedness. The Comprehensive Artist Statement is the first chapter of the dossier and focuses on drawing, listening, and exploring forms of language as three dominant modes of my practice that reflect my fragmented life between three countries. In its form, the writing embraces fragmentation and iterative growth through refragmentation, drawing on …

Creative Common Worlding With Research Creation In Early Childhood Education, Sarah M. Hennessy

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Creative Common worlding with research-creation in early childhood education engages with provocations that disrupt dominant understandings of children and their relations with more-than-human and human others. Reconceptualizing alternatives through art, this dissertation contemplates the potent possibilities beyond human stewardship, underscores the influence of an uncommoning lens, and emphasizes the difficulties with humancentric notions of research. If, by disrupting how we understand ourselves and our role in place, we modify our actions and change our habits, then perhaps we can live differently and contribute differently to the planet. Through a common worlds framework together with research-creation, this dissertation considers climate education …

Credulous Escapism, Brianne C. Casey

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

My Master of Fine Arts (MFA), explores the world of toys. I do so following the Thesis Dossier Stream, which is paired with a Thesis Exhibition Credulous Escapism (2022). My program of research reflects on the psychological impact of toys on myself and individuals. I have sought to create a series of works that express childhood wonderment and awe through paintings and installation works. The paintings depict apocalyptic landscapes in which toys explore an alternate universe which allude to a foreboding entity: the reality of adulthood. To contextualize my work, I examine the works of Marcel Duchamp, Diana Thorneycroft, Melanie …

Speculative Subjectivities: Essayistic Forms And Material Bodies, Eeva Siivonen

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This practice-based research project focuses on selected contemporary moving image practices that work with strategies of experimental documentary, essayistic filmmaking, and site-specific installation. It focuses on the specific tactics employed by three artists, Dani ReStack, Rachel Rose and Diana Thater. The forms and strategies employed in these practices are analyzed through case studies of ReStack’s Draft 9 (2003), Rose’s Sitting Feeding Sleeping (2013), and Thater’s Delphine (1999). The specific purpose of this research is to illuminate how these contemporary moving image practices describe subjective experience, in both single-channel and installation forms, to critically engage with anthropocentric and humanist notions of …

The No No-Exit Closet: An Alternative To No-Exit Pathways, Faith I. Patrick

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The focus of this dossier is my Masters Thesis project, which is titled The No No-Exit Closet. The No No-Exit Closet has been a project through which I have developed a heightened ethical awareness of how I consume, store, throw away, and reuse the materials that enter and exit my life. This thesis dossier is divided into three sections: an extended artist statement about my thesis project, photographic documentation of the artwork I produced for my Masters Thesis Exhibition, and a case study on the artwork of Andrea Zittel. The extended artist statement describes my Masters Thesis project which …

The Other Neighbour Of El Otro Lado, Anahi Gonzalez Teran

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This written thesis is in support of a Master’s of Fine Arts degree at Western University. The thesis dossier explores themes of Mexican migration in Canada engaging with ideas of human labour and various indexes of Mexican culture, trade, and economic exchange. The thesis also consists of documentation of public exhibitions and other various creative production components including videos, photography and multi-media installations. This thesis is separated into three major sections. The first is an extended artist statement which outlines my artistic research and my creative process as an artist. The second is a portfolio of photographic documentation of artworks …

Pharmakon: From Body To Being, Jérôme Y. C. Conquy

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis dossier is separated into the following distinct sections: an extended artist statement; a portfolio documenting artworks made during my MFA candidacy and my exhibit Pharmakon: Acts, Traces, and Maps; and a case study of artist Tony Oursler, whose video and multimedia installations explore the psychological and social relationships between individuals and technologies. Together, they present my exploration of the body’s ‘power of acting,’ or potentia agendi, in relation to the modificatory capacity of technology, or affectus, on the human body. In particular, I investigate the body’s habits, or capacity for habit-building, what Bourdieu calls habitus, and the interconnection …

Cyber Souls And Second Selves, Yas Nikpour Khoshgrudi

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This project explores the relationship between the real self and digital identity (mostly in the form of avatars in life simulation video games) and how these two states of being could possibly merge and act as one. This dossier consists of three chapters. The first chapter is an extended artist statement and a summary of influences in my work. There I explore the tangible relationship between player and avatar and how digital experiences affect our psyches in various contexts where this relationship is developed and maintained. The second chapter is an interview with Mohawk multimedia artist, Skawennati, who discusses how …

To Be Me: The Contingency Of The Body, Sepideh Tajalizadeh Dashti

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Exploring my Iranian and immigrant identity, this dossier investigates factors that contribute to the formation of my identity through the experience of living in a complex and repressive society. This dossier is composed of an extended artist statement, a case study of UK-based, Palestinian artist Mona Hatoum’s art practices, documentation of a selection of my artworks, and a Curriculum Vitae. In my extended artist statement, I engage with feminist post-structuralist theories to explore my identity as multiple, performative, and contingent. I also discuss how I use these feminist post-structuralist theories in my art practice to question the phallocentric dominant ideology …

Collaborative Listening And Cultural Difference In Contemporary Art, Santiago Ulises Unda Lara

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The research represented in this thesis has a relationship with my sustained interest in the subject of cultural difference that typified my earlier artistic practice. During my Ph.D. studies in Art and Visual Culture at Western University, I have advanced new perspectives on this problematic by elaborating on the potentialities of listening in dialogic and collaborative artistic practice. It comprises the discussion about the projects and activities developed within my doctoral studies, according to two main and related purposes. The first is the examination of hegemonic practices of production of meaning regarding cultural difference with a backdrop of the social, …

Inventory, Lydia Elvira Santia

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis dossier is divided into the following sections: the first is an extended artist statement that elucidates the research that orbits my visual practice, involving theories of material complicity, Object Oriented Ontology, Thing Theory, and material culture. The second section is a portfolio of photographic documentation of artworks made during my MFA candidacy, focusing primarily on works from the last 15 months. The third section is a case study exploring the expanded sculpture practice of Jessica Stockholder, whose work liberates everyday objects in an especially affective approach to installation.

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 …

Affective And Sensuous Critique In The Undergraduate Art Classroom, Claire Bartleman

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Drawing on the ways that art history, art theory, and art criticism have used affect theory, I ask how an affective approach can align the undergraduate classroom art critique with the historical definition of aesthetics, or aesthesis, and create a space for sense and feeling. The first chapter reviews literature in the field and demonstrates the perceived benefits and drawbacks of current critique models. In the second chapter, I consider how affect has the potential to disrupt traditional approaches to critique in order to assist in rethinking stated goals, disrupt power dynamics in the classroom, and generate transformative knowledge. In …

Spanning, Mary Katherine Carder-Thompson

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dossier consists of three chapters. Chapter 1 is a comprehensive artist statement describing my system for spirit communication that leverages the latent power of wool processing tools. This system borrows strategies from varied sources including living history, paraconceptualism, and bricolage. Chapter 2 visually documents my studio practice over the two years of my MFA candidacy at Western University. Chapter 3 is a case study of Luanne Martineau’s 2009 drawing, Who are they you salute, and that one after another salute you. This case study addresses Martineau’s engagement with Modernism’s legacy and discusses how her work builds an equitable …

Philosophical Archeology In Theoretical And Artistic Practice, Ido Govrin

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The aim of this thesis is to examine philosophical archeology and the feasibility of knowledge that derives from researching it simultaneously through theoretical and artistic practice.

Philosophical archeology essentially embodies one’s relation to history and historiographic research—a research methodology at the core of which lies a “historical a priori”, that which a priori conditions the historical development of a phenomenon. However, this research conceives of philosophical archeology more broadly, as a multifaceted term that traverses the discourse of the humanities at large.

By pursuing this doctoral research, my original contribution to knowledge is twofold: (1) I historicize philosophical archeology—a …

Absence And Proximity, Zhizi Wang

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dossier is combined with my Master of Fine Arts thesis exhibition, Absence and Proximity. This paper includes the following components: an extended artist statement, documentation of art practice and a case study of Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s First Surface. The first two chapters investigate the digital representation of the body through affect, boundary and subjectivity. I also examine my material and technical choices related to these concepts. The last chapter focuses on how First Surface opens up the possibility of identification through building a body-technology complex.

"I Need To Fight The Power, But I Need That New Ferrari": Conspicuous Consumption, New-School Hip-Hop And "The New Rock & Roll", Emmett H. Robinson Smith

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

2017 marked the year in which hip-hop officially became the most listened-to genre in the United States. This thesis explores hip-hop music’s rise to its now-hegemonic position within the music industry, seeking to provide insight into the increasingly popular sentiment that hip-hop is “the new rock & roll”. The “new-school” hip-hop artists of the last six years or so have also been the subject of widespread critical disdain, especially for their heightened degree of emphasis on conspicuous consumption. This study will track hip-hop’s ascent from the mid-1980s through to its current position as both a political vehicle and a commercial …

Disaster As A Framework For Social Change: Searching For New Patterns Across Plant Ecology And Online Networks, Christina Battle

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation looks to disaster as a framework for enhancing community and the ways in which small gestures of artistic practice might be utilized for change. Embracing the complexity of disaster, the dissertation weaves linkages across a number of disciplines: disaster studies, climate science, contemporary art, internet studies, and plant ecology, in order to seek out potential tactics. Utilizing artistic strategies, especially an embrace of failure as part of methodology, this dissertation accepts the contradictions of such complexity, asserting that following patterns of overlap is a necessary tactic for approaching emergent and speculative futures. The overall project takes cues from …

Un/Dead Animal Art: Ethical Encounters Through Rogue Taxidermy Sculpture, Miranda Niittynen

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Beginning in 2004, the Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists began an art movement of taxidermied animal sculptures that challenged conventional forms of taxidermied objects massively produced and displayed on an international scale. In contrast to taxidermied ‘specimens’ found in museums, taxidermied ‘exotic’ wildlife decapitated and mounted on hunters' walls, or synthetic taxidermied heads bought in department stores, rogue taxidermy artists create unconventional sculptures that are arguably antithetical to the ideologies shaped by previous generations: realism, colonialism, masculinity. As a pop-surrealist art movement chiefly practiced among women artists, rogue taxidermy artists follow an ethical mandate to never kill animals for the …

Next To A River: Mobility, Mapping, And Hand Embroidery, Sharmistha Kar

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This MFA project explores identity, mapping, and embroidery as broadly considered regarding ideas of place and landscape. Concepts such as travel, the familiar, the temporary, the known, and the unknown are motivating notions that I examine through academic study alongside techniques of hand embroidery. Throughout my MFA project, a series of material and technical choices were crucial to my reflecting on ideas of resemblance, mapping, migration, and archiving in order to further understand my identity.

A series of texts on resemblance, archiving, and mapping by Michel Foucault, Arjun Appadurai, and Tom Vanderbilt, along with references to the art practices and …

Buffer, Graham Macaulay

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis dossier is separated into the following distinct sections. The first is an extended artist statement that attempts to locate the uncertain objects of my practice within a relational field, involving writing around becoming, unaccountability and empathy, among other things. The second is a portfolio of photographic documentation of artworks made during my MFA candidacy, primarily attending to documentation of my concurrent thesis exhibition. The third is a case study exploring the work of artist Erin Shirreff, who works between photography, video and sculpture, among other media, drawing attention to bodily presence and duration through mediated structures.

Interfaces Of Nearness: Documentary Photography And The Representation Of Technology, Mark Kasumovic

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The central aim of this dissertation is to provide insights into the ways in which documentary photography, in theory and practice, can be employed in the representation of evolving and difficult to visualize technologies. Examining technology via its relationship to scientific inquiry offers a framework for considering the production of knowledge through instruments and their inscriptions. This relationship is examined from diverse perspectives, such as the philosophy of technology, social constructivism, the philosophy of science, and media studies. Considering the relationship between the function of instruments within the scientific laboratory and the camera as used within the visual arts can …

Representation Of Settler Colonial Violence In Palestine, A Thesis In Support Of The Multi-Media Exhibition Choreographies Of Resistance, Rehab Nazzal

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This project-based dissertation emerges from my engagement with theories of representation, settler colonialism, and genocide, as well as involvement with direct engagement through embodied experience of the Palestinian reality in the colonized West Bank during 2015–2017. The artworks and written components of this project seek to represent shards of the multilayered Western-Zionist settler colonial project in Palestine through a focus on the struggle and resilience of the Palestinian people and the endurance of their land. Land seizing as the aim of settler colonialism and the colonised bodies as sites of oppression and sites of resistance are central to the various …

Slower Than Time Itself, Matthew S. Trueman

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This paper is combined with my Master of Fine Art thesis exhibition, Slower Than Time Itself. There is a significant discontinuity between how duration is measured by clocks and how it is perceived by the individual. This discontinuity generates pressure both on the individual and the environment. The concept of dualism constructs a dichotomy between people and nature, devaluing that which can not be measured. In Slower Than Time Itself the thesis, sculptural and video works aims to dissolve this dichotomy not by rejecting technology but by embracing it. Can one use clocks to escape time itself? I investigate the …

Supernova: Performing Race, Hybridity And Expanding The Geographical Imagination, Raheleh Saneie

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis attempts to explore the many socio-political, temporal and spatial factors that contribute to the formation of cultural identity. Through my video work, SuperNova, I examine how race is performed and the discursive structures that contribute to the process of racialization. The core question that is central to this thesis is how race is performed and the potential benefits and drawbacks of this performance. In chapter one, I explore how whiteness is performed and how racial hierarchies are maintained through performance. I critique the Aryan race discourse that is a part pf Iranian nationalist discourse of identity. In …

Gardening At Arm's Length, Paul Chartrand

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Combined with a Master of Fine Art thesis exhibition, Gardening at Arm’s Length, this dossier provides supporting components: an extended artist’s statement, documentation of my artwork, an interview with artist Mary Mattingly and my Curriculum Vitae. Throughout the program, I have explored the nature/culture divide and concepts of agency shared by humans and non-humans alike. This work is informed by historical and contemporary artists who are discussed in my artist statement, as well as the theories of place-thought by Vanessa Watts, the dark ecology of Timothy Morton, and the vibrant matter of Jane Bennet. These research components help elaborate …

On Coming And Going, Quintin Teszeri

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dossier and the accompanying exhibition On Coming and Going (presented at the Artlab Gallery in January 2017) constitute my MFA in Visual Arts thesis. The first chapter of this dossier is a Comprehensive Artist Statement in which I reflect on how my art, thinking, and life engage different meanings of coming and going in different ways. The statement approaches a deeply subjective and aggregate philosophy, or perhaps an attitude, or perhaps most appropriately if also most cliché, a way of being, in the face of relentless transience. The second chapter is a review of Michel de Broin’s 2016 Castles …

Hand-Eye, Michael S. Pszczonak

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This integrated article thesis has two distinct chapters: The first chapter is a case study on a selection of works by German artist Sigmar Polke using Hal Fosters writing on the historical and neo-avant-gardes. The study traces the way Polke revisits the first avant-garde project and comprehends its attempted traumatic rift from dominant ideologies for the first time. The second chapter is a comprehensive artist statement which simultaneously outlines the theoretical underpinnings of my work as well as the process leading to the body of work on display at McIntosh Gallery. The research sets out to answer the following question: …

Tangled Hair: Uncertain Fluid Identity, Niloufar Salimi

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dossier consists of three chapters. Chapter one is an extended artist statement within which I discuss a very particular notion of identity that acknowledges its fluidity and ever-shifting qualities. Further in this chapter, I address my studio practice processes and its overall development, as well as making a detailed comparison with Roni Horn’s drawings and also Mona Hatoum’s artwork. Chapter two is a documentation of selected works that I have made in the studio during my two-year candidacy at Western University. Each work is accompanied by a brief description. Chapter three is a case study on Shirin Neshat’s photography …