Seeing Across Disciplines
Thursday, November 4, 2021 to Wednesday, August 31, 2022
SEEING ACROSS DISCIPLINES: AN OVERVIEW
by Kate Ogden, Professor of Art History, Visual Arts Program, Stockton University (USA)
Seeing Across Disciplines is the second juried virtual exhibition presented by the International Visual Literacy Association (IVLA). It was organized in conjunction with the IVLA Annual Conference “Seeing Across Disciplines: Visual Literacy and Education,” held online on November 5 and 6, 2021, and co-sponsored by the University of Toledo and the Toledo Museum of Art in Toledo, Ohio.
The exhibition was juried by Petronio Bendito, Peter Carpreau, Debra A. Davis, Alison Huftalen, Kate Nearpass Ogden, and Dana Statton Thompson. The Online VR Installation Team was coordinated by Petronio Bendito and included Geri Chesner, Debra A. Davis, and Karen Tardrew.
Seeing Across Disciplines includes a wide range of artistic expression, including artists’ videos, photographs, paintings, drawings, prints, posters, sculptures, graphics, and other digital images. The judges saw everything in the exhibition online, in a digital format, and audiences will view it in an online exhibition using the platform Kunstmatrix. The “digital revolution” influenced every stage of the exhibition, from the creation of imagery to the exhibition and catalogue. The fact that the only sculptures in the exhibition were made with 3D printing technology further indicates this move into the digital world.
The variety of work in the exhibition is characteristic of today’s broader art world: no single style, medium, message, or group of artists has predominated for several decades. Today’s art world is a pluralistic space in every sense, from the types of art being made to the people making the art. At least half of the artists submitting work for this exhibition were women, and several nationalities were represented.
Seeing Across Disciplines includes work by 22 artists – approximately 50 percent of the total number who submitted work – and half of them are women. Photographs, which outnumber other media in the exhibition, range from straightforward depictions of the world around us to images manipulated in various ways. The artists’ videos defy reality by fracturing realistic images or creating digital forms that move through space in realistic ways.
SELECTED ARTISTS
Faizan Adil
Gulbin Ozdamar Akarcay
Islam Allam
Michael Arrigo
Donna Marie Beauregard
Daniele Bongiovanni
Susan Jane Britsch
Bryce Culverhouse
De Ferrier
Mille Guldbeck
John Kinney
June Yong Lee
Gary McLeod
Barbara Miner
Ghafar Mohiudin
Nick Mullins
Deborah Orloff
Jennifer Scheuer
Eric Sung
Barry Whittaker
Lisa Winstanley
Isabel Zeng
AWARDS
1st Place – Eric Sung, “Public Library”
2nd Place – Deborah Orloff, “Young Boy”
3rd Place – Susan Jane Britsch, “Stems”
HONORABLE MENTIONS
De Ferrier, “Brookshire”
Daniele Bongiovanni, “Cloud And Rain Behind The Glass”
Faizan Adil, “Sonder, Seclusion”
Lisa Winstanley, “Hope Is Not a Strategy”
EXHIBITION JURY
Petronio Bendito
Peter Carpreau
Debra A. Davis
Alison Huftalen
Kate Nearpass Ogden
Dana Statton Thompson
Featured Award Winners
Public Library
1st Place Art Exhibit Award Winner
Eric Sung
Providence College, USA
“Public Library”, created by Eric Sung, was selected for the 1st place at the International Online Juried Art Exhibition at the 2021 IVLA annual conference. The image is from “Monuments of Memories for Our Times” series which is made with a dedicated consideration to the complexities inherent to the “monument.” In “public Library,” Sung explores documenting vacant community infrastructure as monument of current times to archive the impact of Covid-19.
About the artist:
Eric Sung is an artist and photographer who is an associate professor in the Art and Art History Department at Providence College and the founding director of a cutting-edge program in Business and Innovation. Sung’s work was recognized by numerous awards, exhibitions, and presentations around the globe. Recently, his work was awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Research Grant. Professor Sung is a leader in connecting the arts with real- world public problems, and it is in that vein that he is known not only as a public scholar, educator, and artist, but also as a genuine community builder and uniter.
Deborah Orloff
University of Toledo, USA
Young Boy
2nd Place Art Exhibit Award Winner
Using abandoned family pictures as subject matter, Elusive Memory deals with the complicated relationship between photography and memory. Recently I’ve been thinking about what happens when we lose family photos and the stories associated with them. Are these histories irretrievably lost? My newest pieces are intimate, smallscale photographs made with shallow depth of field to deny the viewer most of the visual information photos normally reveal. These images allude to lost stories, identities, and cultures – especially in situations of forced migration (as was the case for my ancestors who fled Ukraine during the Russian pogroms) – and the universal experience of struggling to recall details of a past for which no records exist. In their final presentation, banal objects become simulacra for lost family histories and speak to the ephemeral nature of memory.
Stems
3rd Place Art Exhibit Award Winner
My current work juxtaposes tools of creation: human-made tools drawn from the history of my family and natural tools drawn from my home environment…a blossom just broken from its stem running through a machine that repairs and constructs…or reconstructs. This juxtaposition results in a dialogue of eras and artifacts, involving as interlocutors my mother, more distant ancestors, and myself. Each image thus links memory—both lived and imagined—with immediacy. Time spent at home during the pandemic has accentuated this intimacy, creating a liminal space inhabited by love, treasure, careful work, and other lifetimes no longer present but alive to me now.
Susan Jane Britsch
Purdue University, USA
Faizan Adil
Independent Artist, Pakistan
Sonder, Seclusion
Honorable Mention
Sonder: The realization that each random passerby is living life as vivid and complex as your own.
Seclusion: The state of being private and away from other people.
Each society evolves with a new paradigm and generations. In each era, human isolation is increasing with the passage of time. A human rush and psychological warfare can be seen in daily routine. Inner chaos and remorsefulness, are not being addressed by a person or society. An absolute phase that every human faces in his life.
The mentioned brief is used in the fine art scam photographic work experiment.
Originally, This project is a reflection on the research paper of Ar. Zain Adil based on Light, Space, Time & Gravity.
Cloud and Rain behind the Glass
Honorable Mention
Through my works I try to bring my interiority to the outside, while my painting is also based on the ”landscape”, revised in a spiritual and emotional key. I don’t portray reality, my creations are the representation of my thought, my subject is nature and sometimes man. My work shows the progressive birth of things, the ”progression” is my favorite subject.
Daniele Bongiovanni
Academy of Fine Arts of Macerata, Italy
De Ferrier
Independent Artist, USA
Brookshire: Borderlands
A metaphorical representation of migrants in Texas
Honorable Mention
This body of work is informed by my own experience of constant migration. My lens based photographic practice is grounded in the images of my current ‘home’ where the iconic silos and rice dryers of Texas dominate the landscape. The actions of shooting, dissecting, cutting, folding and concealing these images mimics the vilification of migrants across the globe. Utilizing a hands-on meditative approach leads to a transformation of folded and constructed imagery that creates metaphors of hidden, unjust truths. My interest is in the materiality and physicality of the photograph, which becomes an object in itself. Journeys and borders are explored, then recreated with silo imagery. The intent is to invite the viewer in while gently touching upon very sensitive issues related to migration.
Hope is not a strategy
Honorable Mention
Hope is easy. It fills the heart with optimism. It allows us to imagine a better space or time. It is optimism in the face of apathy or despair. Hope is pure and good. However, hoping for the best is often a form of inertia when what is needed is action. What is needed is to deal with reality and to plan, prepare and move towards a better future, rather than to remain static in the hope that everything will be ok. The place where we can situate hope is when all the preparations have been made and the hard work has been put in, and yet even then, with all that in place, you can do your best but that does not entitle you to positive results.
Hope Is Not A Strategy.
But if it were not for hope the heart would break.
Lisa Winstanley
Nanyang Technological university, Singapore