Grafting features the work of nine artists in the MFA Studio Arts Program at University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Grafting emerged through the collective efforts of the first and second year MFA candidates in Studio Art at UMass Amherst. Featured are new and recent projects by nine artists including: Adeyemi Adebayo, Kiran Jandu, Bo Kim,
Campbell Lackey, Michael Medeiros, Kait O’Brien, Josue Salazar, Rebecca Schrader, and Sophia Wallace. Their works include: text, photography, video, drawing, painting, print and new media, sculpture, clay, performance and installation.
The title of the exhibition Grafting draws from a horticultural technique whereby tissues of plants are joined so as to continue their growth together. It is an apt metaphor for the community that this cohort of artists has formed. Their lived experiences and practices are unique; enhanced by their collective desire to offer support, guidance, skills and gifts to each other.
In Grafting, visitors will encounter Adeyemi Adebayo’s series of portraits and narratives that explore strangeness and connection in shared spaces. Kiran Jandu’s work seeks to engage subject-object relations, observing institutional processes of othering, ownership, and interpersonal difference. Upon encountering this work viewers are invited to join in a long-duration sitting practice that favors observing over looking. After moving to the east coast, Campbell Lackey began a new body of prints that delve into what it means to re-root in a new environment. Using primarily upcycled and found materials, Campbell incorporates family photographs to address permanence and impermanence. Bo Kim’s artworks explore the complexities of Korean American identity by blending personal archives, family photographs, and media imagery to reflect the duality of being rooted in Korean culture while immersed in American life. Through textured brush strokes, she captures the fluid and shifting nature of identity, celebrating the tension and harmony between tradition and modernity, past and present, home and diaspora. Fig, Kale, Fava, Michael Medeiros’ handmade ceramic dinnerware, is a tribute to the demanding process of keeping a fig tree alive in a New Bedford backyard. He has developed recipes for making kale soup and favas as a means, however limited, of preserving his cultural heritage. Small dinners, prepared by Medeiros throughout the exhibition will utilize the dinnerware. Guests will read the stories printed and illustrated upon the dinnerware prior to being served fresh figs, kale soup, and favas. Moving from a place with too little water to a place with too much, Kait O’Brien was immediately impacted by the ritual of emptying dehumidifiers in their living space. This multimedia sculpture explores the relationship we have with water in both wet and dry places. Josue Salazar’s work brings importance to the landscape of the Sonoran Desert, touching on themes of immigration and economies. Using traditional charcoal and water based paints, he represents the City of Nogales, Sonora, Mexico as a starting point to investigate border culture. He inserts himself and his experience living as a binational person in between. In a series of abstract visual scores, Rebecca Schrader presents a new and developing drawing project entitled Gestures. In Sophia Wallace’s new installation of ceramic sculptures, the artist foregrounds rejected ceramic castings, which would otherwise be hidden from public view. Considered less valuable because of their visible flaws, these works reflect upon the superficial expectation of perfection in a world where brokenness is everywhere. Instead, Wallace seems to ask what do we do with our broken objects, relationships and bodies?
The exhibition is on view until October 29 at Herter Gallery. The Department of Art welcomes the audience to get to know and learn from the work of each of the artists in this exhibition. Wherever the point of your life this work finds you, let it be an invitation to think deeply about the ways you live, document, and celebrate each moment.
Susan Jahoda Graduate Program Director Department of Art
UMass Amherst
About the Artists:
Adeyemi Adebayo
Adeyemi is a Nigerian documentary photographer currently living in Massachusetts. In his work, he explores man and his environment, particularly migration, strife, and the notions of home.
Kiran Jandu
Kiran Jandu is an interdisciplinary artist working in installation and movement. Everyday objects and architectural structures serve as anchors in Kiran’s creative research - with a current focus on the materials and metaphors within walls.
Bo Kim
Bo Kim explores the interplay between art, identity, post-colonial (or postcolonial) narratives, and institutional structures through open-source systems in libraries and museums. Her work examines the tension between authenticity and forgery, questioning established narratives of history, race, and culture. By working across mediums such as painting, drawing, and installation, Kim re-research historical and contemporary archives to investigate how they shape cultural and racial identities.
Campbell Lackey
Campbell Lackey is an interdisciplinary artist working mainly in print media. Her process is materially driven, often weaving in found objects, image, and text. Serving as intermediaries between the past and present, these works explore change, memory, and the body.
Michael Medeiros
Michael Medeiros works at the intersection of words and artistic imagery, with a deep questioning of perceptive and conceptual experience driving his practice. Primarily a poet and ceramist, he also connects photography, printmaking, fiction, and narrative non-fiction into multidisciplinary personal work and community collaborations. Mindfulness and the exploration of varied methods of creative understanding and implementation are essential aspects of his artmaking and teaching.
Kait O’Brien
Kait O’Brien is an artist working in a variety of mediums and modalities. Kait explores the idea of place, political geography and the subconscious. Beeswax is the conceptual binding medium across their work, which includes media forms such as lens-based media & image capturing; printmaking; poetry; and other forms of mark, sound and object making.
Josue Salazar
Josue Salazar is primarily a landscape artist and educator living in Western Massachusetts. He was born in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico, and immigrated to the U.S. when he was still in grade school. He spent most of his life in California, where he received his Bachelor's in Studio Art Methods from California State University Sacramento. His art takes into account moments in life that inspired wonder and reflection and draws from those moments the content of his work.
Rebecca Schrader
Rebecca Schrader is (amongst other things) a composer, cellist, choreographer/dancer, film+theater-maker, visual artist, and writer.
Sophia Wallace
Sophia Wallace is a conceptual artist working at the intersection of bodies and ethics. She holds a BA in from Smith College and an MA from New York University. Best known for her viral project CLITERACY, Wallace is shown widely in the US and internationally including Portugal, Spain, Austria, Mexico, Italy, Nigeria, Australia and the UK. Critical recognition of Wallace's work includes New York Times, Boston Globe, Atlantic, ARTE, Guardian, Art in America, Teen Vogue, New Yorker and Time Magazine. Her TED featured talk, A Case For Cliteracy has been viewed over 2 million times while her interactive collaboration with Huffington Post received 3.5 million views. Wallace can be seen on BBC/Hulu’s Planet Sex with Cara Delevigne and in The Dilemma of Desire available on most streaming platforms.
This event was made possible with generous support from the UMass Fine Arts Council.