Columbia's 2021 Visual Arts Class Presents Culminating Thesis Exhibition

Upper West Side NY

18 October, 2021

12:27 PM

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Columbia Daily Spectator BY VINCENT HOU OCTOBER 15, 2021 From deconstructing a pan-African liberation anthem through blinking lights and embroidery on paper to investigating transformations in nature through a wired dome structure, the 2021 Visual Arts MFA Thesis Exhibition presents a series of boundary-breaking artworks that invite visitors to explore the frontiers of visual arts. On display on the eighth floor of the Lantern Lenfest Center for the Arts from Sept. 25 to Oct. 16, the first cohort in the Visual Arts Class of 2021 Thesis MFA Exhibition presents a diverse collection of paintings, sculptures, sound art, and multimedia installations as the culmination of their artistic exploration in Columbia's two-year program. After a year of restricting exhibition access to only Columbia affiliates due to the University COVID-19 regulations, the exhibition center finally welcomes the general public. In accordance with the Key to NYC Executive Order, public visitors over the age of 12 can enter the exhibition space with proof of vaccination and ID, after making an online reservation for timed tickets. Breaking from convention, the Master's of Fine Arts students used cutting-edge techniques such as multichannel surround sound to engage with pressing topics including freedom, police brutality, and the human relationship with nature. Curator Amy Sadao commented that "this exhibition of emerging contemporary art looks, sounds, feels like and responds to the world in which it is being made." Here is an in-depth look into two groups of artists on display in this year's exhibition. Yixuan Shao and Bicheng Liang Yixuan Shao, SoA '21, and Bicheng Liang, SoA '21, returned to the gallery as a collaborative duo with two mixed-media installations, both inspired by three weeks in the American Southwest exploring deserts and canyons. During their journey into the wilderness, Shao and Liang made a studio of their environment, creating ceramics, recordings, prints, and photography onsite. In the installation "Left without the Means to Move," six pieces of black and white clay embracing an organic form sit on top of acrylic boxes half-filled with desert soil. A metallic dome encompasses this assembly, channeling its energy to the ceiling through a strand of electric cables. Lava rocks are scattered around the structure, while channels of sounds bounce back and forth in the gallery. Shao and Liang brought together a wide array of materials seldom seen in a gallery setting, ranging from lava rocks and bone conductors to desert soil and pit-fired white clay. Shao and Ling found that these materials had a mysterious, transformative potential. They used the black and white clay vessels as an example of this capacity. "Bicheng made [the black and white clay vessels], transferring the shapes of the mountain and the sandstones into clay. So we're interested in this transference, transformation. When the clay is wet, it is one sort of texture and material, and after it's been fired, it becomes a completely different solid quality. I think each part of each element in that piece has that sort of quality of becoming something else," Shao explained. Liang and Shao had placed microphones inside each of the vessels in order for the work to react to the physical presence of the audience. When people approach the dome, the air inside the ceramic vessels is compressed, which can be picked up by the microphone, and in turn, alters the sound coming out from the speakers. "[When visitors approach the structure], slowly, gradually, there is this kind of sound like feedback. … They had this reaction that they need to back off. And we're like, "No, no, no," it actually adapts to your presence after a while. So it's not like feedback with a microphone that immediately you have to put it away. ... These vessels are speaking to each other or with us. ... They're always listening." Shao added. In "Stir, Full of, Abounding in," Shao and Liang presented an intricate collage of cyanotypes featuring the texture and materiality of the natural landscape, transforming them into a visual narrative across three black panels. Pieces of prints extend beyond the boundaries of the black back panels and meander into the gallery space. Despite Shao and Liang's photographic, seemingly automated production, the process of making cyanotypes was in fact one requiring a remarkable level of personal engagement that heavily involved the artists' sensory experience. "Taking analog photography and using that record as a monotype to make prints is a very physical thing. Your fingers are constantly touching the paper, the chemicals, the water, washing it over and over again, dying in it. It reminds me of how we always want to touch the sand, the rocks. It all feels different in the different parts of the environment," Shao commented. In the process of breaking apart and reorganizing the photos, the cyanotypes underwent a transformation from a factual representation of the landscape into an impression of Liang and Shao's experience. "We compose them based on our own experience or memories of the place. The whole three panels are more like a subjective map for us. It's not about exactly the places look like this, but more like how we experienced that, how we remembered it and using all the fragments of the reality," Liang said. Reflecting on the core of this body of work, Liang and Shao discussed a human relationship to nature. By highlighting the massive timescale and the metamorphosis inherent in nature, it offered an alternative perspective through which humans can reexamine their own presence. "We're inside of nature, we're from nature, yet we're outside of nature, yet we're constantly part of it, inevitably belong to it," Shao said. "I feel like there always is this tension of trying to become something and trying to deny it. And I think to us, that tension is really representative of how we situate ourselves in this world, not only as humans but also, you notice who we are." Keli Safia Maksud Using her research and investigation on national anthems in continental Africa, Keli Safia Maksud, SoA '21, crafted a multimedia installation, "Provisional Notes of Freedom." From her initial exploration of the subject, Maksud recognized a strange pattern in the auditory language of these anthems. "Most of them were written in the '50s and '60s, just as countries were getting independence from colonial rule," Maksud said. "But the anthems themselves are very much based on a Western style of music. And I found this to be an interesting contradiction because many countries are trying to separate themselves from European rule but, at the same time, still using that language." In a curious and experimental orchestration of multichannel sound, rotating metallic horns, blinking lights, and embroidered paper, Maksud engages in a vigorous exploration of the relationship between sound and national boundaries. To explore how people see and understand sound, Maksud took a deconstructive approach by breaking down sound into various elements. Fragments of music play from various speakers. Embroidered musical scores on rolls of paper are suspended on metallic frameworks, and flashing lights become drastically distinct manifestations of the singular musical score. "I started to understand questions around how we understand sound, how we understand it visually, how we can understand it as we hear it, how we can understand it as we feel it. All of these things, I started to break down and try to have these different elements in the piece. Not making it about any one of them, but it's really about all of it," Maksud said. Sound, as a medium, is not containable. As it travels out from its source, it bounces back or permeates the boundaries it runs into. While transferring the unique qualities of sound to the particular context of national anthems, Maksud was fascinated by the permeability of music and aimed to replicate it in her installation. "I started to think of [national anthems] as sonic borders, but [an anthem] is never really gonna be able to contain everything that's happening in that space. It's always gonna leak into the next country, the next border. So I was trying in some sense to try and always have things breaking its border or its boundary in this piece." The particular piece of the national anthem that Maksud chose to experiment with is "Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika," a former South African conational anthem that was adopted during Nelson Mandela's presidency after the end of apartheid. Originally intended to be a church hymn, the song was used by the African National Congress as a symbolic tune representing its fight against apartheid. Despite being banned by the apartheid government, the song carried major significance in continental Africa as an emblem of freedom and equality. As a pan-African liberation song, "Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika" was later adopted as the national anthem of five countries after they gained independence. "This song really did exemplify what sound and music can do, and how it moves, and where it resonates. And how it's beyond borders, in many ways, but it's still somehow confined to a border because it's used as a national anthem. … It's just the ways in which certain sounds can bring people together across a vast amount of space," Maksud said. As a symbol of freedom and agency, a national anthem serves as a collective language of the people in a particular nation, in which there exists a multitude of perspectives on what freedom means. In her deconstruction of a national anthem, Maksud also aims to address this. "I think that's the collective, where I tried to have things coming together, almost like a chorus. But it can also be pulled apart. It's like an individual voice. Because I think collectively, we're asking ourselves certain questions, and individually, we're asking ourselves very similar questions too," Maksud said. As an installation that incorporates a multitude of visual, audio, and sensory elements, Maksud's work invites the audience to take time and slowly decipher the issue it discusses. From pondering sound and music as a means of communication to scrutinizing the concept of freedom and liberty in this auditory experiment, such massive issues demand careful deliberation. "I feel like a lot of people have a hard time even describing what [the piece] is. I think sometimes we need to complicate things that way. Because it's not right or left, it's really something in between that's really messy and contradictory," Maksud said. In their final exhibition, which marks the completion of their Columbia journey, the class of 2021 visual arts graduates illustrate their boldness and artistic ambition through a series of sophisticated projects. To show support to the group of talented artists, reservations for in-person viewing can be made on the Lenfest Center of Arts website. The last chance to see the exhibition is Saturday, Oct. 16. Staff writer Vincent Hou can be contacted at [email protected]. Follow Spectator on Twitter @ColumbiaSpec. Founded in 1877, the Columbia Daily Spectator is the independent undergraduate newspaper of Columbia University, serving thousands of readers in Morningside Heights, West Harlem, and beyond. Read more at columbiaspectator.com and donate here.