DIG A HOLE
Featuring art-making against a backdrop of contemporary readings, texts and politics, the Spring 2021 Visual Art Praxis class was enacted against a backdrop of ZOOM education, social distancing, digital removal from the tangible world and a selection of texts from James Baldwin, Sara Ahmed, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Audre Lorde, Jennifer Kabat, Che Gossett, Syl Ko, Peter Singer, Donna Haraway, and Stephen Harrod Buhner. To begin it was important for all participants to touch the earth.
Sihan Guo
My neighborhood in the city area of Shanghai, China
Derek Koffi-Ziter
Rivera Maya
Hannah Rothbart
The East River Park. My project developed out of my research into the current debate over the plan to combat climate change, which will require extensive park closure.
DIG A HOLE / MAKE A PLACE
Whose land is this? Whose land was it? What was it before? What is your place?
Is this a place for others?
Any locale offers opportunities.
Participatory placemaking requires critical and holistic thought concerning the world around us.
Make a place for yourself, for others, for another species.
(assignment excerpt)
Kristina Waymire
All my friends and myself in my social pod need more sleep. I built a house in the Senior Studios for sleeping.
Delia Luz Pelli-Walbert
“Waste Book” is an attempt at co-authorship between me and my waste, using papermaking techniques to preserve 1 week’s-worth of recycling – including medication pamphlets, the Yale spring literary magazine, and grocery bags.
Derek Kofi-Zitter
I sought to transform the natural environment to create momentary balance by means of personal ritual.
Eve Lewis
Sihan Guo
Found potteries, found paper, epoxy resin, soil, dandelion seeds, artificial sod. Random pieces of daily conversation and thought were asked to be written down by their generators, the strangers I encountered. These texts were written on found pieces of paper specific to where those dialogues took place. The paper scraps were each coated with epoxy and “grew” in shattered potteries with dandelion seeds.
Hannah Rothbard
Good Design doesn’t Exist
My work explores design as a concept characterized by trade-offs and infinite options.
Xiaoli Zhou
From NASA, first image of a black hole in human history.
The hole became the abyss. THE ABYSS, Stage 4.
From the syllabus for Visual Arts Praxis Spring 2021:
Though we are mired in the muck of the past, we are looking to the future, the path forward, sites of regrowth. Centuries of colonization, capitalism, industrialization and greed have brought us where? Cultivation has depleted vital ecosystems and encouraged climate devastation. Ruminations on masculinity, whiteness and their inherent toxicities continually point to repeated sites of noxious ravages. Some things are ending.
In decay and obsolescence there can be new pathways forward. The future, unknown and probably not some nostalgic retooling of a make-believe-comfortable past, can be a source of liberation, burgeoning with growth, healing and vision. Some things are beginning.
In this class students are encouraged to create artwork that does not shy away from this extraordinary moment.
https://wp.nyu.edu/visualartspraxisspring2021/2021/04/22/hello-world/