Fine Arts Commons^™

Standing On The Edge Of A Dream, Parto Ahmadpour Mobarake

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Standing On the Edge of a Dream delves into the intricate tapestry of lived experiences shaped by relocation, emphasizing the nuanced space that exists between reality and imagination. As an individual who has undergone the transformative journey of immigration, I recognize that the concept of relocation is like standing on the edge of a dream. This notion becomes a living structure, intricately woven with threads from our past, present, and future. My artistic exploration extends beyond my artworks, yet it remains deeply rooted in my personal narratives. The artworks in the exhibition continue to draw inspiration from personal memories and …

Food For Thought: Rituals In Place Based Learning, Natalia Pilato

International Journal of Lifelong Learning in Art Education

In my mother’s kitchen lasting bonds among family, friends, and newcomers are created. Using that space as a point of departure, I explore the significance of pedagogical places outside of classrooms that serve as flavorful ingredients for performative and participatory learning. This article articulates ways in which rituals associated with Sicilian cultural traditions are interwoven and complicit in establishing dispositions for socially engaged learning and teaching in the arts, showing how an ethic of care can transcend generations. With a focus on place-based learning, making art and enjoying food are investigated to show how healthy productive relationships, appreciation for beauty, …

Vanitas, Sae Jung Oh

Masters Theses

Vanitas is a tribute to the missing pieces within the reconstruction of human memory, places, and data. It is a cartography of words, including home, apartment complex, reconstruction, mourning, archive, memory, memorialization, a god within, collective memory, photogrammetry, cyberspace, omnipresence, meandering, heterotopia, alleyway, construction site, and mirror. I invite readers to meander in the map of relations and be lost in the topography. What can you discover when you meander? What happens when you renounce being a subject and become an object seamlessly blended into the topography?

A Room Full Of Pigeons And Three Spectators, Dina Khorchid, Dina Nazmi Khorchid

Masters Theses

My work explores themes of identity politics, domesticity, land and memory access - in relation to my own lived experiences as a Palestinian refugee, a daughter of a missing war casualty and an artist.

In this thesis book, I present a cumulation of thoughts, emotions and findings, along with a selection of works from the last two years.

During my time at the Rhode Island School of Design, messenger pigeons took over my studio, channeling physical and mental realms of grief and remembrance. By looking closely at the bird’s aesthetics and behaviorisms in my first semester, their resting deceased bodies …

Cuando Lloro, Melissa Medina

Masters Theses

There are moments where I am suddenly hit with a deep sentimental longing for a time that no longer exists, one that has transformed into a deep nostalgia, one that becomes more and more conflicted as time passes. Often thought of as a yearning for a recent past, or homesickness, nostalgia can be difficult to define. Although the concept and emotion associated with nostalgia may seem familiar, the word is in fact complex. Nostalgia, for the immigrant, is an escape from their marginalization; an opportunity to embrace the complexities. Painting then becomes an embrace, a direct connection between the present …

Rooted In Topsoil, Jiaying Wang

Masters Theses

Disillusioned by my transnational identity, I have come to realize that my sense of belonging is no longer attached to any physical location, but instead to a state of mind, to an intimacy with the world. My notion of home is an obscure and unsettled—at times utopian—idea, which can be infinitely decoded, re-positioned and re-established psychologically. This thesis is an investigation of that liminal state, questioning the paradoxical place at the intersection of longing and belonging, interior and exterior, rootedness and uprootedness. Through a collection of short essays that accompany projects, I seek to unpack the precarious emotional complexities that …

Melting, Dripping, Becoming: The Operations Of Memory From The Perspective Of Wax, Naomi Yu

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

In my thesis, I explore how different compositional and material techniques are used to re-create a memory. Looking at artists such as Kiki Smith, Guadalupe Maravilla, and Anselm Keifer, I investigate the ways in which they utilize 2D and 3D materials to re-create feelings of memory.

I argue that the art object can conserve and portray memory through metaphorical acts of preservation. I will be specifically studying the acts of encasing and layering as a means to simulate the feelings of memory. I argue that these metaphorical actions create an artificial sense of time that imbues these objects with created …

Sad Socks Without Sole Mates, Shaelee Comettant

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

Portrait of A Hundred Heartbreaks is a series that uses the unmatched sock as a symbol to speak about the experience of losing and grieving a relationship. Positioned as a series of memorials, the project facilitates spaces for viewers to bring their own life experiences to the project as well as empathize with those presented in the series. The use of the unmatched sock, an inanimate object, allows for it to be projected onto and melded into the specific and individualized narratives that viewers bring to the works. In its ability to access a level of specificity for each viewer, …

Reading The Room: Memory, Dwelling, And The Everyday, Sara R. Hardin

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In any space, there is a residue that coats the present with a patina of memory. Creating layered imagery in dream-like paintings and prints, I use the domestic realm as a metaphor for the internal world of the mind, memories, and private thoughts, including them in compositions with symbols like the boundaries of windows, doors, and gates. These metaphorical structures also portray outward identities, which guard inner emotions. The conceptual aspects of these compositional elements weave together memories of the past and places of the present into a unified whole.

I began graduate school at the beginning of the COVID-19 …