Northwestern’s student-run Dittmar Memorial Gallery collaborated with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s SITE Galleries to celebrate students’ pieces exploring meaningful connections to archives.
The cross-institutional exhibition opened Friday and features an array of art mediums ranging from photography and collages to sculptures. It is located in Norris University Center and celebrates SITE Galleries’ 30th and Dittmar’s 53rd anniversaries, respectively.
The exhibition’s theme “Archive as Action, Archive as Discourse” invites visitors to critique and engage in conversations surrounding memory, records and preserving documents .
Communication junior Maggie Munday Odom, Dittmar curator and student supervisor, said this exhibition was an opportunity to reflect on broader ideas, such as legacy.
“This show is an exciting invitation for visitors to reflect on their place within archives in their own life and their own experiences, both as students and as people living in a complex society,” Odom said.
As part of the collection, SAIC junior Ceninye Harris, who studies photography, displayed two photographs shot in Liberia which are part of his larger project, “Son of Liberia.”
He said his most recent works capture the people and scenes from his home country with minimal retouching. However, as part of the artistic process, Harris does point out how he tried to convey the orange hue he associates with his home country, calling it an “orange utopia.”
“In America, whenever you talk about Black people, it is always from the center of trauma, and I was thinking about ‘How do I make my work escape from that?,’” Harris said. “I’m trying to trace the memory of Liberia, and the conversation is to be more about their stories and their lives.”
Harris said he will be returning to Liberia in June to continue building his project.
Third-year SAIC graduate student Anna Seo also highlights her cultural history by drawing inspiration from the Korean War. She said her sculptures take on the shape of volcanic rocks in Jeju Island to represent the colonial uprising that unfolded there.
To represent the power of generational trauma, Seo said she incorporated her kids’ clothes to make the dough for her multi-piece artwork.
“The shape is very hollow with a lot of mourning and losses, but even though those shapes can hold the light,” Seo said. “I started going over my emotions, like anger and frustration but later on, it starts opening up a new narrative.”
Communication sophomore Zakariah Hany Massoud was one of many visitors at the gallery’s opening reception April 11.
“(The artwork is) so explorative, so full of imagination,” Massoud said.
Massoud also said they enjoyed seeing artists’ diverse interpretations of the archival theme of the gallery.
The artworks will be on display at Norris University Center until May 6. SITE Gallery will also be hosting its version of the exhibition in Chicago from April 30 to May 21, featuring a few additional and companion pieces.
“This collaboration was very exciting because we had the opportunity to learn from each other and share knowledge about the curatorial process, and about what it means to be students studying, making and curating art great,” Odom said.
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