Category: visual essays

Explorations of the Work of Graduate Student Artists and Architects through Photography of their Work

Jijnasa (desire to know)

by Sayak Mitra The crisscrossing threads of my identity as both a Bengali Indian and a conditional resident of the USA unfurl and entangle conventional forms of artistic knowledge. Through my paintings and installations, I assemble fragments of my life—past and present, seen and unseen—to describe the breadth of my multicultural experiences and the worlds […]

Thread as Measurement of the Distance From East to West or Me to You

by Noah Greene-Lowe My work is often a practice of unraveling and intertwining, whether or not I am working with fiber. I approach my materials as tangles of social, economic, political, and personal histories that may be pulled apart and reconnected. I often apply the logic or the physical form of thread to objects that […]

Re-Fuse: The Macro-Ecologies of Microfiber Waste

by Adelaide Theriault Figures 1-7. Adelaide Theriault. Sediment and Erosion (1-7) (2023). Digital scan of laundry lint, hair, skin, dust, microplastics, natural fibers, cotton thread, dryer sheets, various other debris from laundered fibers. 34 x 24 in. each (86.4 x 61 cm). Images courtesy of the artist. I think often of dust, of erosion, and […]

Everything and Nothing: The Diary of One Who Leaves

by Japheth Asiedu-Kwarteng Figure 1. Japheth Asiedu-Kwarteng. I Miss You Dada (2021). Ceramic, Kente, American flag, jute rope, epoxy. 28 x 18 x 13.5 in. Image courtesy of the artist; Figure 2. Japheth Asiedu-Kwarteng. Picking the Pieces Together (2020). Ceramic, epoxy. 28 x 18 x 15 in. Image courtesy of Anthony Kascak; Figure 3. Japheth Asiedu-Kwarteng. Ruffled Feathers […]

Unnatural Return: The Feminist Uncanny

by Elizabeth Rankin In a recent publication, Alexandra Kokoli explores the concept of the uncanny in feminist thought and in contemporary art practice.1 My doctoral research employs Kokoli’s theories to re-conceptualize representations of women in crime narratives through a close reading of the murder coverage of Linda Agostini in Albury, Australia, 1934. For Kokoli, the uncanny […]

Fauxssilles for the Future: Cyanotype Expressions on Plastic Waste

This project focuses on the emerging plastic waste problem in the marine environment through a photographic series. In order to create a visual reflection, the project highlights the relationship between found plastic objects and cyanotype photography. Cyanotype is most commonly known as technical “blueprints” and was also the technique of the first photographic book, made […]

Processes as Objects

My printmaking practice explores the “objectness”[1] of stones, pebbles, and cobbles. Informed by Heiddegerian Object Oriented Ontology, my work expands how we define objects. It presents them as things with histories, “irreducible in both directions: an object is more than its pieces and less than its effects.”[2] In the series Souls and Eclipse I complicate […]

Visual Essay

This body of work explores our relationship to images, especially with increasing technological access, and our current blindness to the photograph itself — when images are forgotten as representations and mistaken for reality. Using a large format camera, I photograph composed images, words, reflections, and grit, contained within my personal computer screen. The clearly visible surface […]

Dwelling in Sensation

We live in an age of mass virtual mediation. This originates in the historical oppression of sensuality. Alongside sexual promiscuity and perversion, sensuality itself is repeatedly condemned in biblical texts. During the rise of Fordist mass production and the Industrial Revolution in America, a Protestant work ethic prioritized efficient production over experience when the creative […]