Contemporary Art Commons^™

Self-Fashioning In Contemporary Figurative Painting, Hal Hardin

School of Art Undergraduate Honors Theses

This paper positions my painting practice as a form of resistance to historical constructions of gender, identity, and visibility, shaped by my experience as a queer, nonbinary person navigating womanhood in the American South. Drawing on Stephen Greenblatt’s concept of self-fashioning and Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity, I argue that Western figurative painting has long disciplined the feminine body, exploiting it and commodifying it into an easily consumable object.

In response, I appropriate and distort these visual conventions. My figures refuse to behave: they stretch, slouch, and linger in ambiguity, resisting fixed interpretation. Placed in spaces of visibility and …

Following The Thread: Maria Lai’S 1981 Legarsi Alla Montagna, Claire Borre

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines Maria Lai’s (1919-2013) Legarsi alla montagna (1981), a three-day, relational project in which seventeen miles of ribbon were wound through the Sardinian town of Ulassai. In its conception, execution, and legacy, Lai’s project represented a significant challenge to traditional monumentality.

Closest Yet Farthest: Zhou Li And The Boundaries Of Contemporary Chinese Art, Langcheng Zhou

Pomona Senior Theses

The global visibility of contemporary Chinese art has been formed by politically legible or culturally identifiable styles, which often explicitly reference social critique, political history, or traditional Chinese visual elements and media. Because of the rapid expansion of the global art market, these visual identifiers quickly became the most effortless and efficient determinants for an artwork’s representativeness of the contemporary Chinese art scene. This framing undeniably helped international audiences to establish a recognizable narrative, but has also narrowed the range of practices that define the field. This thesis argues that Zhou Li’s abstract practice expands the boundaries of what contemporary …

He Rengao Super-Consciousness Imagery, A Global Touring Exhibition, Jun Dong

MA Projects

Focusing squarely on He Rengao’s long-developed visual philosophy, this exhibition will take the form of a solo presentation introducing Super-Consciousness Imagery to New York audiences. As one of China’s most established contemporary artists, He has spent decades refining a highly introspective and philosophically grounded painterly language. This exhibition aims to situate his mature body of work within an international conversation, foregrounding painting as a site where civilizational imagination, spiritual inquiry, and aesthetic experimentation converge. The exhibition title, Super-Consciousness Imagery, encapsulates two key elements central to He’s artistic practice; it refers to the expanded state of awareness the artist seeks to …

A Visual Analysis Of The Work Of Anna Weyant For Art Historical Precedent, Jordan Arnold

MA Theses

This paper examines the rapid ascent and artistic evolution of Anna Weyant, whose blend of technical rigor, stylized figuration, and sly narrative tension has positioned her as a leading name in contemporary figurative painting. While her market visibility and high-profile representation have often overshadowed critical engagement with her work, a close analysis reveals a steadily developing practice grounded in a set of consistent formal concerns: controlled light and shadow, psychologically charged compositions, and a sustained dialogue with art-historical precedents. By situating Weyant’s paintings in relation to the psychological realism of the Dutch Golden Age, the uncanny and erotic undercurrents of …

About Witch Hunt: Feminist And Political Agency In Contemporary Art, Rana Sumerler

MA Theses

The Witch Hunt exhibition conjures a powerful dialogue between history, identity, and empowerment, bringing together sixteen international artists to channel the spirit of the witch. This show traces a vast genealogy of women—from the 15th century witch hunts to Californian artistic legacies of the 1970s, to the exhibitions opening in 2021, and into present day. The participating artists emerge as symbols of resistance through their creations which transform domesticity, sexuality, and labor into sites of inquiry all while grappling with the intersectional concerns of womanhood.  In a moment marked by political upheaval, the exhibition is particularly resonant in its exploration …

Identity And Representation In Contemporary Art: An Inclusive 400/500-Level Art History Seminar Course, Laura E. Franz

Theses

This project is an upper-level art history seminar addressing identity and representation – specifically related to race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality – in contemporary art. Primarily a discussion-based course, the course is focused on inclusivity and is highly structured, with weekly low-stakes assignments that provide students with ample opportunities to practice engaging with academic texts. Designed for students with varying levels of academic skills, it is built around current non-academic articles that students select via an online survey. Students then “unpack” the “big ideas” in each of the four chosen non-academic articles via a cluster of academic readings and videos …

Deconstructing Ancient Allegories: Eleanor Antin’S 'Historical Takes' On Subverting Classical Motifs And Typologies, Lainey Tomasoski

Undergraduate Theses in Art History

The New York-born artist Eleanor Antin erupted into the male-dominated American conceptual photography art scene in the 1960s and 70s with feminist works that reimagined the female body in terms of representation and history. In congruence with the feminist and civil rights movements, conceptual photography represented a shift in how art was utilized to criticize the social and political institutions in which it is rooted. Antin and other feminist artists engaging in conceptual photography and video played with the embodiment of characters, performance of the body, and an intrinsic “self-reflexivity” of subject, viewer, and artist. However, Antin pivoted her work …

What's The Art In Artificial Intelligence?, Emily Verla Bovino

Open Educational Resources

This workbook learns from Black and Indigenous artists working with Artificial Intelligence to confront issues of ethics and aesthetics in its technologies. It features guided learning activities with links to publicly available video lectures and online articles, and includes options for experiential learning through both a tutorial in Midjourney and a visit to the public art collection at York College in Jamaica, Queens. Featured artists include: American Artist, Rizvana Bradley, Beth Coleman, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Suzanne Kite, Sondra Perry, Mimi Onuoha and Alisha B. Wormsley. Works by Martin Puryear and Maren Hassinger are explored in the Midjourney exercise.

About …

Take Shrigley’S Word For It, Mary Gurley

MA Theses

This essay investigates the complexities of text-based art and contemporary conceptualism by focusing on David Shrigley’s work. By exploring the origins, evolution, and function of language-based practices, Take Shrigley’s Word for It emphasizes the artist’s use of text across various mediums, all of which occupy textual fields, blurring the line between commercial and fine art. Despite Shrigley’s extensive career, limited scholarship exists on his eccentric pairing of words and visuals, as well as his abundant spaces dedicated to sales. This paper also considers how Shrigley transformed the practice of text-based art by making it accessible and relatable to wide ranging …

How Social Media Is Reshaping The Art Market: Catalyzing The Rise Of The Art Agency Model In The United States, Leo Braudy

MA Theses

The art world is undergoing a fundamental transformation, marked by a shift from the traditional gallery-centric model to a talent agency model akin to those in the entertainment and music industries. This evolution is driven by the increasing influence of social media platforms, which empower artists to directly engage with audiences, bypassing the traditional gatekeepers of galleries and auction houses. Drawing on insights from industry reports, social media analytics, and case studies, this thesis explores how social media has catalyzed this shift and examines its implications for artists, collectors, and the broader art market. It argues that the rise of …

Southern And Caribbean Transnational Black Feminist Dialogues In Contemporary Art, Adria Gunter

Theses and Dissertations

“Southern and Caribbean Black Feminist Transnational Dialogues in Contemporary Art” presents a Black feminist reading of the transnational cultural forms, as well as the political and social histories between the Southern United States and the Caribbean through the works of Andrea Chung, Allison Janae Hamilton, and Tamika Galanis.

Picturing Consumer Culture, Cultural Hybridity, And Womanhood: Farah Al Qasimi’S Photographs From 2012 To 2020, Minji Lee

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines Farah Al Qasimi’s 2012-2020 color photographs, arguing that this work presents a distinctive and salient critique of domesticity, material culture, and womanhood in the UAE. Through her lens as a woman and a culturally hybrid subject, Al Qasimi explores the tensions of modernization, globalization, consumerism, and gender.

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 …

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. …

The Artist As Surveillant: The Use Of Surveillance Technology In Contemporary Art, Claire O'Neill

MA Theses

Artists have long been called observers, voyeurs, and watchers, and with a
/="/">particular interest in human behavior and society, they frequently use unknowing
/="/">passersby as their subjects for works. Curators and scholars explored how artists put citizens under surveillance with photography and videography, which dates back to the early 1900s, years before governments deployed surveillance systems. Since the 1980s, artists have explicitly explored surveillance technology and theory to alert viewers to the rise of surveillance. Today, this genre is called artveillance, a term coined by Andrea Mubi Brighenti in 2010 to categorize art that explicitly deals with surveillance. …

Black And Silver Screens: Afropessimism And Filmic Appropriation In Contemporary Video Art, Madeleine A. Seidel

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis looks at the video works of artists Ulysses Jenkins, Ina Archer, and Garrett Bradley and their appropriation of images of Black actors in Classic Hollywood films through the theoretical framework of afropessimism.

Art After Dark: Economies Of Performance, New York City 1978–1988, Meredith Mowder

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Art After Dark: Economies of Performance, New York City 1978-1988 examines the interwoven social and economic histories of New York City and performance in the late 1970s and 1980s. The dissertation traces the growth and visibility of performance art, moving from the recession of the 1970s and early years of public funding for the arts, to the downtown nightclub scene of the 1980s, the history of the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival, and artistic experiments with television in the 1980s.Looking closely at the economic conditions under which performance occurred during the late 1970s and early 1980s, this dissertation …

Do You Wanna Go Dancing?, Anthony Kascak

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The transdisciplinary art work within Do you wanna go dancing? unpacks the experience and perception of my interpersonal relationships, as well as the role that touch and introspection has in my visual arts practice and everyday life. I am interested in pairing the act of looking with the sensation of touching through specific installation and arrangement of intimate imagery, ceramic fragments and frames, and manual or digitally fabricated surfaces. The negotiation of these installations orient the viewer to consider their positionality within space, as well as the extent in which distance, intimacy, and vulnerability fluctuate inside these psychological spaces.

The …

Stills Of Passage: Photography And Migration In The Us-Mexico Borderlands, 1978-1992, Nadiah Rivera Fellah

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project investigates documentary photography at a critical juncture in the history of the US-Mexico borderlands. Following a period of rapid industrialization and growth in Mexico, the 1970s and 1980s were marked by moments of economic and political crisis, which simultaneously spurred a massive wave of northward migrants and the militarization of the US-Mexico border. These developments produced a large class of Mexican undocumented workers in the US, which in turn stimulated the formation of a hybrid border culture. At the same moment, a generation of young artists from Mexico and the United States, eager to document these changes, radically …

Now Was Too Late, Kaleigh Rusgrove

MFA Statements

No abstract provided.

Layered Histories, Interpretive Desires, Rachelle Dang

Theses and Dissertations

I aim to excavate source material from the past and reinterpret its significance in the present through art. I merge history with the contemporary through acts of appropriation and material exploration, creating conditions for the viewer to grapple with colonial legacies in an affective space of visual experience.

Painting, Geography, And The Body: Charting The First Two Decades Of Mary Corse’S Art, Sarah A. Meller

Theses and Dissertations

Mary Corse has always maintained her position on the periphery, and her work has generally been excluded from art historical scholarship. This study illuminates the ways in which the first two decades of Corse’s practice were in fact in dynamic dialogue with broader impulses and concurrent trends operating at the time.

Mexican Technoscientific Arts, 2000-2015: Art And Science, Machine Inventions, And Political Ecologies, Carlos R. Guzman

Dissertations and Theses

In the last decades, several artists have engaged directly with emerging digital technologies and science, the so-called new media arts. For the past fifteen or twenty years, such practices have experienced a paradigmatic transformation in Mexico, particularly in the capital. They have shifted from peripheral to mainstream, from contingent to ubiquitous, and from underground/experimental to official and governmentally funded.

This thesis explores the development of technoscientific arts in Mexico, its evolution, main artists, and institutions. It focuses on specific technoscientific artistic projects developed in Mexico between 2000 and 2015 by artists like Tania Candiani, Gilberto Esparza, Iván Puig, and Ale …

Theory For A Starving Obese, Ishai Shapira Kalter

Theses and Dissertations

Theory for a Starving Obese (2017) is both a book and an installation. During the years 2015-2017 I began writing Theory for a Starving Obese; a collection of essays and art criticism about exhibitions that took place in white cubes in New York. I was following my dissatisfaction, and hoped to delve deeper into the question “What is Contemporary Art?” At the end of a process, I sent seventeen envelopes to artists who exhibited solo shows in New York and whose works I have criticized. Each envelope consists of one digital drawing (שרבוט, pronounced Shirbut), DVD with the …

Beginner's Mind, Martin L. Benson

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

My art distills my relationship to spirituality, digital culture, and the practices and side-effects therein, into a simplified visual language. The work manifests in the form of paintings, drawings, and light sculptures. Meditation and mindfulness training are a large part of my influence and interests. I often wonder how mindfulness practice can be mirrored in my artwork, not only in my process for creating the work, but also with what the resulting imagery does for the viewer. My intention is to provide an art form that invites one to look and experience one’s own capacity to observe, without the need …

Horizon Of Possibilities: Artists And The City In Postwar Beirut, Tatiana Mouarbes

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis narrates a history of postwar cultural production framed by urban redevelopment in Beirut, Lebanon (1989-Present). Focusing on artists engagements with the city, this thesis demonstrates how artists thought through the legacies of war inflicted upon the beleaguered city of Beirut in order to construct livable futures.

Radical Dissonance And Haunted Gestures: Rupture And Reverence In The Artwork Of Aja Mujinga Sherrard, Aja M. Sherrard

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This paper serves to establish the studio practice of Aja Mujinga Sherrard within the framework of conceptual art, touching on the flexible use of media, the subversive or political nature of the work, and its relationship to movements and disciplines such as Feminism and Poststructuralism.

The section entitled “Race and Incoherence” addresses the practice of Radical Dissonance—or the creation of ruptures within commonly accepted concepts and social constructions—through the Costuming Kinship Series, 13≠12≠12.2 (Genetics Project), and Body Double. The section entitled ”Art, Loss, and the Unspeakable” traces an emotional shift in her work and speaks directly to the pieces …

Silhouettes Of A Silent Female’S Authority: A Psychoanalytic And Feminist Perspective On The Art Of Kara Walker, Angelica E. Perez

The Kennesaw Journal of Undergraduate Research

The focus of my research centers on the contemporary work of Georgia-based artist, Kara Elizabeth Walker. In conducting extensive research on the life of the artist as well as three select artworks which recall the antebellum slave era within the south, I argue the explicit presence of the power of the enslaved prepubescent girl and young woman. The three select works that I intend to analyze are Burn, a cut-paper silhouette on canvas created in 1998, The Invisible Beauty, a mixed media piece made in 2001, and Cut, a paper cut-out silhouette made in 1998.

In a …

Tragedy And The Vicious: Moral Education In Aristotle’S Poetics And Future Applications To Contemporary Art, Erika Brown

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

This project interprets Aristotle’s Poetics through a morally educative approach. More specifically, expanding on past research of Poetics by individuals such as Isaiah Smithson, this project will examine the affective influence of tragedy on morally unknowing audience members of vicious character types. Through the associations between the sensory experiences incorporated in a tragedy and moral messages portrayed in the plot, the vicious character can begin a process of becoming morally knowing subjects. In others words, this experience with morally charged tragedies can teach vicious characters what is morally good. Moreover, the vicious audience members can learn how what is morally …