Red Sky at Night
UPenn MFA Thesis Satellite Exhibition

Opening Reception (Part 1): August 8, 6-8 PM
On view August 7-16, 2024
Opening Reception (Part 2): August 22, 6-8 PM
On view August 22-31, 2024

Artists

Part 1:
Eissa Attar
jordana perrie bernstein
Cicada Chen
Tairan Hao
Rain Jacobson
Lin Li
Victoria Antoinette Megens
Emilie Slater
Di Tian
Jeiming Tsai

Part 2:
Cooper Campbell
Ghida Dalloul
Jewan Goo
Gayoung Lee
marta rodriguez maleck
Erin Morris
Alicia Riccio
Gabe Seamon
Catching on Thieves
Jacob Weinberg

Hypothesis
Text by David Hartt

I stopped teaching a class, called Defense Against the Dark Arts, a few years ago. I stopped because I noticed and was frustrated by each student’s entrenchment into the unique precarity of their separate cultural positions. The class, or my teaching, failed to acknowledge or define the larger concept of a public sphere, a space where those individual positions are uncomfortably shared.

It was announced a couple of weeks ago that the University of the Arts, a storied and illustrious Philadelphia institution, was closing its doors. Speculative real estate expansion and declining enrollment spoke to a misalignment of financial and social values. Earlier this year the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the oldest fine art school in the country, decided to wind down its degree granting programs, another casualty of the era. What does it mean to teach art, at an R1 research institution like the University of Pennsylvania? What is the value of art pedagogy and MFA programs, when the role of art is ill defined in the public sphere, when it becomes a reserve of the elite, no longer woven into the broader fabric of society, when we treat it as a form of entertainment in the experience economy, or, as simply an investment grade asset class.

How do we as artists participate meaningfully in the definition of social and cultural positions especially in moments of crisis? Take for example the concept of ‘Sovereignty', what does it mean in an era of failed states, virtual networks, and environmental catastrophe? The .yu domain name was retired 18 years after the dissolution of the Yugoslav state. The island nation of Tuvalu will most likely cease to exist in 50 years due to rising water levels. The 14th amendment, originally designed to grant citizenship rights to slaves, was used to grant personhood to corporations. Sovereignty is an unstable concept with real social, political, and economic consequences. We as artists have the platforms and the tools to investigate and dimensionalize how this or any other term or concept sits in the world. We contribute to the collective health, intelligence, and curiosity of our shared community. The artwork is a space for debate and practice a form of contention; responsive and accountable to the variety of publics it may encounter.

When asked to write something in support of the MFA traveling thesis exhibition, I couldn’t help but think reflectively upon this current moment, with an election on the horizon and the recent closures of arts education programs in Philadelphia, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. A thesis exhibition is already an awkward collection of works, a themeless framework that accommodates the full diversity of creative practice a spectrum of gender, socio-economic, cultural, and temporal positions. Restless as it may be though, perhaps that’s a good place to start, a fitting hypothesis of the public sphere.