“Unspecified Objects, Marfa TX: The Built Wall” by Lindsey Lodie and Megan Alvarado-Saggese

This summer three Film and Visual Studies graduate students from the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies and the Critical Media Practice secondary field presented installations at the Graduate School of Design’s Kirkland Gallery in a series titled “Neither/Nor, Any/All”. These exhibits explored “the limits and possibilities of research as practice, exposing and probing the nature of art-making as a multi-modal activity.”

Lindsey Lodie and Megan Alvarado-Saggese’s “Unspecified Objects, Marfa TX: The Built Wall” explores the contradictions of site-specific practice at America’s borderlands, in particular the case study of Donald Judd, who in the mid-1970s used Marfa, Texas as a backdrop for his art installations while “largely ignoring the cultural, demographic and geo-political dimensions of the region”.

Brandon Evans presented “By Listening, Pain and Sin Are Eradicated,” which included a performance in audio works, curated materials, and textual translations of gurbani (Sikh sacred text) exploring “the dimensions of language, performance, and listening as shared spheres of practice in the Sikh religious tradition and in Western contemporary art”.

“By Listening, Pain and Sin Are Eradicated” by Brandon Evans

Jessica Bardsley’s installation “Unearthed” mapped “an internal geography, exploring relationships between surface and interiority, matter and affect. Taking inspiration from topography, geology, and theories of emotion, this exhibition assembles artifacts from a quiet, eerie galaxy, a desaturated land, light-years from within.”

“Unearthed” by Jessica Bardsley
“Unearthed” by Jessica Bardsley