Opening Reception: I Thought I Knew (MFA Exhibition)

An opening reception for the thesis exhibition of master of fine arts (M.F.A.) students in the College of Visual and Performing Arts, curated by Rodrigo Guzman-Serrano.

“I Thought I Knew” will be on view through May 19. Gallery hours: Monday-Wednesday, 1-5 pm.; Thursday, 1-5 p.m.; and Friday, noon-6 p.m.

Curatorial Statement:

As we emerge from a period of drastic change and radical uncertainty, we begin to reexamine our intuitions and question our deeply held assumptions: How did I come to think this way? Why wasn’t I aware of that? The answers are almost never entirely satisfying. But while saying “I don’t know” feels like an admission of one’s own ignorance, “I thought I knew” offers an opportunity for self-reflection; a recognition that knowledge and ideas are constantly being produced and reproduced, formed, and transformed. Although a statement in the past tense, the phrase is very much about the present. It points to an acknowledgement of the contingency of our comprehensions and apprehensions, our thoughts, and wisdoms.

The exhibition follows three main axes that cut across our understandings of the body, the world, and the future, posing questions about the paradoxical familiarity and strangeness of each. The works in the exhibition navigate familiar themes and concerns, but do so charily and subtly, threading the proverbial needle between conceptual exploration, material experimentation, personal histories, more-than-human connections, and the place of situated subjectivity in the world at large. The result is an array of works and projects that invite us to rethink our position in the world and to probe our most immutable enduring thoughts and beliefs.