Open gallery
Hannah Chock’s senior art exhibition, The Absent Are Still Holy, questions Western depictions of religious bodies that form and maintain normative social defaults. Engaging with post-structuralist analysis and studies of white identity, Chock investigates the visual linguistics of divine bodies that create inherent exclusions historically used to legitimize oppression of the constructed “other”. Through a combination of traditional printmaking, papercutting, and painting media and common bible school craft materials, The Absent Are Still Holy embarks on a search for more inclusive constructions of divinity, and invites viewers to wrestle with the social implications of the canonized image of the Western God.
Adina Johnson’s senior art exhibition, Rooted Within, explores themes of race, gender, and sexuality through a combination of oil paint, pastel drawing, and other mixed media. The series of artworks exhibited in the gallery represent a variety of ways Johnson questions traditional gender and race ideologies in America. Johnson utilizes her own personal identity and effects as a starting point to engage with these ideas, particularly those concerning societal norms enforced on individuals of biracial and queer identities.