My SAIC BFA Show + Senior Expo

In preparing to graduate this semester from SAIC, I worked alongside many of my classmates to produce two senior exhibitions, the Undergraduate Exhibition (or BFA Show) and Senior Expo. Since the format of these exhibits changed due to shelter-in-place orders brought on by COVID-19, I wanted to share my work online.

For my senior thesis exhibition (often referred to as the BFA Show), I produced an installation composed of several works that I made during my undergraduate studies at SAIC. For this installation, I wanted to create a pause in the exhibition – an intimate space where people found a focal point, and from there, were drawn closer and closer into my work. My banner piece, Was It Only a Kiss?, focuses heavily on desire and the fleeting nature of kisses and intimacy. The napkin works, first titled Love, focus on a meeting and disconnection of bodies and attraction, and to me exhibits the recyclability of memory and relationships. The text piece, Queer, and miniature portrait, Breathe, focus on a variety of themes I have been exploring as an artist, such as the function of human senses, memory, fluidity, gender, and a critical questioning of the self and other.

Links (clicking will open new window):

SAIC Spring Undergraduate Exhibition
My artist page / installation

Senior Expo (click on “Undergraduate” and find “Senior Expo,” click again to open a pop-up window with each project)
Photography Department Showcase (my capstone class)
My contribution

Queer, 2018

Vision is abstract, touch is figurative. 
The Female and the Almost.
Or eye, a sense of space,
as a specter on a coffin (and falls in the same way).
Discontinuous: Not in continuity with something else.
Is it a name, a brand, a person, an identity? 
A play on words?
A way to regain lost intimacy?
Lost intimacy is akin to being animalistic. 

The sea, then, has played the role of the female.
Love and life appear to be separate,
not in touch.
Lost space, seeking the womb.
Temporarily destroying self. 

The rain is soon raised up again. 
We move blindly through modes of delirium. 
Much of me against you, digesting the power within. 
What do I expose? 
What do I unlock? 

Photo Documentation by Tony Favarula and Connor Fenwick