The Birth Of "A Painting": You Yong Solo Exhibition, 2024 Sotheby's Institute of Art
The Birth Of "A Painting": You Yong Solo Exhibition, Dongpeng Wang
MA Projects
Curator Wang Dongpeng takes great pride in unveiling "The Birth of 'A Painting'," an exclusive solo exhibition by the renowned painter You Yong. In this thoughtprovoking display, You Yong harnesses the simplicity of the iPad to craft vivid artworks that capture the essence of individual lives amidst the pandemic. His pieces offer a window into the lived realities within mainland China during these challenging times. This exhibition is an invitation to an extraordinary art experience that breaks free from the confines of traditional art space, promising to leave viewers with lasting impressions. The Birth of "A Painting" stands as a …
An Examination Of The Visual And Textual Influences On The Anthology Of American Folk Music, 2024 State University of New York College at Buffalo - Buffalo State College
An Examination Of The Visual And Textual Influences On The Anthology Of American Folk Music, Ben Collier
History Theses
The Anthology of American Folk Music is a collection of eight-four selections of southern vernacular recordings made for commercial record labels in the 1920s and 1930s and assembled into a unified collage by Harry Smith. Smith was an experimental filmmaker, painter, and self-taught anthropologist with a deep interest in renaissance hermeticism and mysticism who worked with Moe Asch in 1952 to release the six-record set and accompanying handbook on Folkways Records. The release was heralded by musicians and critics as an essential piece of influence on the folk music revival. Despite this, the Anthology sold poorly and quickly faced legal …
Unveiling Urban Photographs: The Evolution Of Street Photography Through Cameras, The New York Photo League, And Visionaries Lisette Model And Helen Levitt, 2024 Sotheby's Institute of Art
Unveiling Urban Photographs: The Evolution Of Street Photography Through Cameras, The New York Photo League, And Visionaries Lisette Model And Helen Levitt, Isabella Danesi
MA Theses
Street photography is a visual art that began to pick up in popularity in the 20th century especially in large cities like New York. There was so much going on in the world at the times and it was a perfect opportunity for aspiring artists to go out into the streets and capture the realities of what was happening. This thesis dives into the origins of street photography as well as an emphasis on the development and shaping of street photography while being used in urban settings in the 20th century. A discussion of the technological development of the camera …
Navigating Boundaries: Challenges And Strategies In Exhibiting Brazilian Art Globally, 2024 Sotheby's Institute of Art
Navigating Boundaries: Challenges And Strategies In Exhibiting Brazilian Art Globally, Bruna Ribeiro Schnor
MA Theses
This thesis critically evaluates key initiatives in New York from 2002 to 2023, notably "Brazil: Body and Soul" and "Tarsila do Amaral: Inventing Modern Art in Brazil" at institutions like the Guggenheim and MoMA, highlighting potential shortcomings in representing Brazilian culture accurately. Additionally, it discusses exhibitions like "Bárbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca: Five Times Brazil" at the New Museum and “The Yanomami Struggle” at The Shed for their unique approaches to showcasing Brazilian art. The methodology involves analyzing significant exhibitions in New York from 2000 to 2023, evaluating their efforts to globalize Brazilian art, and understanding their global impact. …
Ethical Dilemmas In Art Advisory Services: Navigating Influence In The Art Market, 2024 Sotheby's Institute of Art
Ethical Dilemmas In Art Advisory Services: Navigating Influence In The Art Market, Noah G. Tyler
MA Theses
This scholarly exploration delves into the ethical dimensions inherent in providing art advisory services within the dynamic milieu of the New York art market. The spotlight is aptly directed towards influential entities such as Gagosian Art Advisory, Lisa Schiff, Pace Gallery, Acquavella Galleries, Allan Schwartzman, and The Brant Foundation. This diverse array of players vividly illustrates the complexity of the ethical discourse prevailing in this intricate landscape. The convergence of commerce and creativity leads to profound inquiries regarding conflicts of interest, transparency, and the responsible custodianship of cultural heritage, thereby unveiling the intricate relationships underpinning the art world. The significance …
Deep Roots, New Shoots: Modern And Contemporary African Art From The Kam Collection, 2024 Hope College
Deep Roots, New Shoots: Modern And Contemporary African Art From The Kam Collection, Charles Mason, Andie Near
Kruizenga Art Museum Exhibition Catalogs
Kruizenga Art Museum, Hope College Catalog for the exhibition: Deep Roots New Shoots: Modern and Contemporary African Art from the KAM Collection. Exhibition dates: January 12 – May 18, 2024. Charles Mason, author. Andie Near, photographer, designer.
Living In Untranslatability--Performance Art In China And Usa, 2023 Rhode Island School of Design
Living In Untranslatability--Performance Art In China And Usa, Ziyun Ma
Masters Theses
This thesis embodies discontinuities in performance art and its non-equivalent Chinese term “行 为艺术” between language and cultural context into a migrating journey. A comparative analysis on the disciplinary history of performance art studies in the US and China laid a foundation in exploring the dynamics of marginality in two contexts. Extracting from the narrative mechanism and body view of Chinese performance art, I demonstrate how the philosophy of living (生) inspired many artistic creation, which also echoes my research journey. And from our mutual living experience, I pose the concept of constructive untranslatability that applies positionality and situated knowledge …
Standing On The Edge Of A Dream, 2023 University of Arkansas-Fayetteville
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 …
Where Will I Be From, 2023 University of Arkansas-Fayetteville
Where Will I Be From, Melissa Loney
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Where Will I Be From is an exhibition and film centered around the intersections of generational grief and technology. I documented domestic locations connected to my family across the Great Plains. This on-site photo documentation was then used to create photogrammetric renderings of these locations and their structures, recorded in the open-source CAD software Blender. Together, these familial places, separated by hundreds of miles, were digitally compiled to make one collective world. The aesthetic of this project connects the visual languages of Southern Gothic and Low-Poly Video games. The Gothic nature exposes an isolated decaying presence within a rural landscape. …
Cartographic Subjectivity In Fernand Deligny’S Lignes D’Erre, 2023 The Graduate Center, City University of New York
Cartographic Subjectivity In Fernand Deligny’S Lignes D’Erre, Anya Komar
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Fernand Deligny (1913-1996) was a French thinker, writer, and social worker who dedicated his entire life to an abolitionist project of protecting “severely autistic” children from internment in mental asylums by allowing them to move freely through the mountains of Cévennes where he established a support network for neurodiverse children. He privileged children’s nonverbal state and let them “direct” the community.
This thesis aims to historicize the drawings made under the guidance of Fernand Deligny between the 1960s and 1980s. His drawing method of tracing children’s movement offered an unprecedented way of providing visibility to children with nonverbal autism, outside …
Taking Comfort In Virtual Humor: Tolkien Memes As Adaptation And Escape, 2023 Independent Scholar
Taking Comfort In Virtual Humor: Tolkien Memes As Adaptation And Escape, Nick Polk
Journal of Tolkien Research
Presented at the inaugural Prancing Pony Podcast Moot in 2021, this paper's aim is to argue that Tolkien memes can be classified as adaptation as Linda Hutcheon defines adaptation and argue for a hermeneutic of Tolkien's concept of Escape, as laid out in his essay On Fairy-stories, as way to understand Tolkien meme creation and circulation. Concluding remarks are given to the spreadability of Tolkien memes among Tolkien fan communities.
Keeping Both History And Magic Alive: Judson Dance Theater: The Work Is Never Done (2018) At The Museum Of Modern Art, 2023 CUNY Hunter College
Keeping Both History And Magic Alive: Judson Dance Theater: The Work Is Never Done (2018) At The Museum Of Modern Art, Beatrice M. Johnson
Theses and Dissertations
This thesis examines the exhibition, historical reconstruction, and museum acquisition and conservation of postmodern dance, with the 2018 MoMA exhibition Judson Dance Theater: The Work Is Never Done as a case study. This exhibition considered the history and legacy of 1960s postmodern dance through a presentation of artifacts and archives alongside a continuous program of live, in-gallery performances. The Work Is Never Done catalyzed questions in the three areas of dance exhibition, reconstruction, and conservation and, as this thesis argues, represents a unique example of preserving canonical dance history while creating a generative context for spontaneity, experimentation, and reinvention.
On The Black Book As Durational: Noah Purifoy’S Desert Library, 2023 Skidmore College
On The Black Book As Durational: Noah Purifoy’S Desert Library, Paul Benzon
Criticism
What happens to a library in the desert? How does it transform as a material object under these pressures, and what might these transformations tell us about its capacity for bearing and registering history? This article considers these questions in relation to the artist Noah Purifoy’s found-object installation Library of Congress, one of approximately thirty works that make up the ten-acre space of the Noah Purifoy Desert Art Museum of Assemblage Art in Joshua Tree, California. The museum consists of a wide range of found-object sculptures, all deeply enmeshed within the space of the desert. The museum, and indeed Purifoy’s …
Out In Thin Air, 2023 Rhode Island School of Design
Out In Thin Air, Daiqing Zhang
Masters Theses
My work often takes form in experience-charged installations underscored by phenomenology. The whys and hows behind the work mostly remain unspoken, since I would rather my work speak for itself. This writing project offered me the opportunity to comb through and tell the stories and thoughts that informed the work.
I have built a collection of documentation about the experience of having a sensitivity to moments of wonder in everyday life. These archives recorded sensuous imprints in life composed of mundane phenomena. In the collection there are images/footage of a glimpse of light leaking through cloud crevices; a brush of …
Curiosity Beyond The Hidden, 2023 Rhode Island School of Design
Curiosity Beyond The Hidden, Yi Young Kim
Masters Theses
What lies beneath the surface of vessels? This captivating thesis explores the hidden world within, drawing inspiration from traditional Korean ceramics and employing coil-built sculptures. By focusing on the hollowness of vessels, this study unveils their profound interconnectedness and inherent uniqueness.
Through spontaneous stacking of claylike glazes and textured elements, the artwork reveals mysterious processes and transformations within these vessels. Exposing the intricacies of hollow spaces, viewers are invited to contemplate the mesmerizing realms concealed within.
Intertwining elements of Korean heritagewith intricate structures, this artistic endeavor
sheds light on the hidden and challenges preconceived notions of everyday existence. The work …
Margins (I Nvr Needed Acceptance From All U Outsiders), 2023 Rhode Island School of Design
Margins (I Nvr Needed Acceptance From All U Outsiders), Jahi Lendor
Masters Theses
A comedian said, “American pie isn’t made out of apples, it’s made out of whatever you can get your fucking hands on.”1 With that, my work seeks to provide an honest representation of the infinite value of the everydayness and behavior of blackness ranging from trauma to beauty. Various mediums explore culture, class, collective memory, identity, and erasure. While resisting institutional and systemic boundaries between disciplines my practice actively seeks fluidity between media. The work often translates to (social) poetic-bricolage visualizations that combine gestures of assemblage, sculpture, installation, and painting. The work focuses on reflecting on how I see life …
Postindustrial Playbook++, 2023 Rhode Island School of Design
Postindustrial Playbook++, Maxwell Fertik
Masters Theses
There is no such thing as an undisrupted ecosystem. Every inch of the planet is impacted by industrial development and its chemical legacy has mutated the soil and water. As a response, this thesis is designed to promote abundant over extractive resources and visualize a post-industrial reality. It consists of a series of objects, writing and design research on the relationship of industry and ecosystem.
In many ways it is a playbook++, laying out possible strategies or “plays’’ for making do with what exists around us amid collapse.
Japanese knotweed (Reynoutria japonica)(ي'ڑ*), a plant that grows in the most degraded …
Making Then Meaning, 2023 Rhode Island School of Design
Making Then Meaning, Ben Denzer
Masters Theses
This is an artist talk contained within a book. It is 816 pages and 49 minutes long. Closed captions run across the spreads. A video of this talk can be watched on bendenzer.com/making-then-meaning
At RISD, I’ve been prompted to expand the scope and tools of my practice and to reflect on questions of meaning in my work.
I spend my days making things, but I’ve never really had good answers to questions of why I make the things I make, or what their meaning is. I don’t think there are simple answers to these questions.
I think meaning comes from …
Soul Furnace / فرن الأرواح, 2023 Rhode Island School of Design
Soul Furnace / فرن الأرواح, Isa Ghanayem
Masters Theses
“This is the good washing, this is (the washing) which separates the dirty body from the pure body. This is like silver mixed with lead, it is separated from it by this (process): one makes for it a cupel of bones, which is what is called the “head of the dog” and of which the common name is kūja-which is the crucible—and this must be made of burnt bones. One melts the silver in it, one gives it a strong fire: the cupel will absorb and receive the lead, the fire will make its subtle (part) fly away and extirpate …
Rooted In Topsoil, 2023 Rhode Island School of Design
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 …