I conducted this series of interviews as the 2024 MFA program graduates were setting up their thesis exhibition in RailSpur. Throughout the installation process, the artists grappled with the following question: what types of new connections arise when we start putting our works together?
The works harmonize by interacting and speaking with each other, with the space, and viewers. It's akin to creating a symphony, as it requires them to forgo the intricate ties and understandings that they have attached and imbued in their art. In my opinion, most good art simultaneously exhibits two contrasting qualities: relatability and strangeness. The Mark Strand poem below inspires this:
The Night, The Porch
TO STARE at nothing is to learn by heart
What all of us will be swept into, and baring oneself
To the wind is feeling the ungraspable somewhere close by.
Trees can sway or be still. Day or night can be what they wish.
What we desire, more than a season or weather, is the comfort
Of being strangers, at least to ourselves. This is the crux
Of the matter, which is why even now we seem to be waiting
For something whose appearance would be its vanishing—
The sound, say, of a few leaves falling, or just one leaf,
Or less. There is no end to what we can learn. The book out there
Tells us as much, and was never written with us in mind.
As they installed their artwork, the artists considered the spacing between each piece. Many of them realized that they had used their own bodies as a reference point for the scale of their individual works. Sometimes, these decisions are deliberate, while other times, they are subconsciously embedded and are only recognized later. The physicality of each work serves as a surface for reflecting the marks, rituals, and processes that give shape and meaning to the art, whether consciously or unconsciously. By experimenting with different ways of hanging and juxtaposing their artwork, the group emphasized the title of the show: Another Day at the Orifice.
Installing all of these different works together in a large space without a curator and an installation team creates a new opportunity for the group to explore the relationships between their works. After realizing that their show would not align with the exhibition space that they were initially considering, the group decided to find their own space and oversee most of the exhibition’s creation.
Further, everyone is familiar with each other's work. Throughout their studies here, the artists have had neighboring studios and witnessed the day-to-day progress of the pieces in this show. They have been through numerous critiques and have supported each other at various openings and in classrooms. The show redefines their relationship with each other, their works, and themselves, as they take the time and effort to reflect on how two years of hard work will speak to their audience, both as a part of their bodies of their own work and also as a unified cohort. As I spent a good amount of time in this space and talked to the artists, they enlisted me to write the entry text to their show, which speaks further to the key concepts surrounding the exhibition:
As physical and spiritual beings, we attach, detach, influence, experience, and define our surroundings—and we get wounded. This show is designed to air out these personal and sociocultural wounds. Another Day at the Orifice is a multidisciplinary exploration of contemporary life's fluctuating conditions. It brings us back to the body's orifices—openings such as nostrils, mouths, and other bodily apertures—as symbolic and literal sites of interaction and passage.
Here, the orifice is defined as an opening in the body or a vent through which something may pass. Glittery psychedelic paintings, glitchy experimental films, life-size ceramic sculptures imbued with hand-flavor, intimate woven and sewn paintings, and projections of mortality invite you to pass through with vulnerability and contemplate the intersections of your own physicality and identity. We invite you to consider how wounds can be a source of wonder by raising questions about the experiences that pass through our bodies, as our bodies pass through experiences to form moments and memories.
