Stay, Awaken, and Make Whole

Herter Art Gallery is pleased to present Stay, Awaken, and Make Whole, a group exhibition of work by the Art 401: Professional Practices students in the Department of Art at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Written during WW II, this excerpt from Walter Benjamin’s renowned theses on history refers to “the angel of history,” as he saw in Paul Klee’s monoprint Angelus Novus. Encapsulating the paradoxical interplay between past, present, and future, or how the notion of “progress” is inextricably entwined with catastrophe and destruction, Benjamin’s treatise inspired this exhibition and the work included within. This exhibition embraces the diversity of themes that concern the participants, such as memory, trauma, identity, childhood, reflection on the past, alterity, otherness, fantasy, nature, etc., represented in a wide variety of disciplines, including animation, painting, and sculpture. Stay, Awaken, and Make Whole is our call for awareness of various crises of our times and how art can be an essential part of the healing process.

Artists:

Emma Brenner-Slagle, Giuseppe Capua, Sydney Comire, Katherine Cook, Emma Croce, Jocelyn Fonseca, Aliyah Hall, Jasper Jackson, Shea Kenny, Sunil Kumar, Lenyx Le, Ash Larner, Aguila Lever, Ava Licciardi, Michelle Mott, Matthew Ong, Jenezy Ortiz, K. F. Otis, Mel Pagan, Edwina Polanco, Lily Rosenberg, Mollyann Ryder, Jo Waite.

This event was made possible with generous support from the UMass Fine Arts Council.