Category: Exhibitions

EMBODYING THE RECORD at UnionDocs Center for Documentary Art ?>

EMBODYING THE RECORD at UnionDocs Center for Documentary Art

On October 12, 2023, UnionDocs collaborated with Fordham University and our Center for Community Engaged Learning and Visual Arts Program, to ask how we might embody found histories.

Fordham students and Lincoln Square community members display collages they created through a workshop with Crystal Z Campbell the day before.

Workshop participants included Helen Cahill, Luisa Coutinho Gazio, Dana Ebralidze, Nicole Estelami, Matthias Lai, Nicole Miceli, Manpreet Singh, Marie Stephen, Herbert McMillon and Michael Nelson.

Beforehand, students had read excerpts from After 1921: Notes from Tulsa’s Black Wall Street and Beyond, a collection of poems, essays, and images edited by artist Crystal Z Campbell and co-published by their Archive Acts (archiveacts.com) and VSW Press.

UnionDocs hosted Crystal Z Campbell and Catalina Alvarez to present work that approaches embodiment and performance of underknown or erased histories. Crystal Z Campbell shared and unpacked their concept of “underloved archives” while Catalina Alvarez shared sequences from Sound Spring, a film that shares resonant overlaps and methodologies.

God Bless the Child | Microscope Gallery ?>

God Bless the Child | Microscope Gallery

At this multimedia event in collaboration with Microscope Gallery and UnionDocs, Fordham students taking “Intro to Art and Engagement” showed work in a program together with internationally acclaimed experimental filmmaker Christopher Harris, on March 12, 2024.

The video installation and performance by Fordham students featured interviews, field recordings, and images of historical documents related to the destruction of the San Juan Hill neighborhood and Lincoln Square community in the 1950s.

The performance was followed by a presentation of God Bless the Child, Christopher Harris’s first autobiographical work.

In God Bless the Child, Harris draws directly from his experience as a foster child. Combining photos, records, and other materials from his personal archives with 16mm film footage he recently shot in Senegal, Harris situates “the carcerality of the social welfare state and child services in relation to Black childhood in the U.S.” within the broader context of the transatlantic slave trade and the French Catholic Church’s colonization of West Africa and the Americas. His hometown of St. Louis, Missouri, is presented alongside Saint-Louis, Senegal, as fraternal colonized twin cities.

The presentation was followed by an open conversation and Q&A with the audience.

The day before, Christopher Harris had lectured on abolitionist filmmaking for various classes taught by Alvarez, as well as Fadi Skeiker’s, THEA 4050 Arts, Social Justice, and Human Rights: Foundations:

These programs were supported by a Fordham University Faculty Challenge Grant and an Interdisciplinary Research Grant.

This isn’t oral history (learning from the library) ?>

This isn’t oral history (learning from the library)

On Wednesday October 23, 2024, in the Lipani Gallery and the adjacent seminar classroom at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus, there was a quiet and short multimedia installation by students and their interviewees studying the “art of the interview”.

After brief talks from representatives of Landmark West! (Executive Director Sean Khorsandi) and Good Shepherd Faith Presbyterian Church (Michael Nelson, Ronald Woods and Neal Matticks) on topics ranging from urban renewal to urban removal, students presented research talks they had developed with the help of New York Public Library staff (thanks to Mia Brunner of the NYPL General Research Division for her tremendous support, as well as her colleagues in the Picture Collection of the Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs and the Milstein Division of United States History, Local History, and Genealogy).


The installation in the Lipani Gallery included this video by Fordham alumna Nikki Estelami, made with student field recordings and collages made by students and interviews from archival research at NYPL and Fordham University Special Collections.

This isn’t oral history featured presentations by Fordham students Junhan Zhao, Tanvi Shah, Ash Wang, Bhavika Yendapalli, Eric Bishop, Meena Kabbani and Morgan Mueller.

The classes of Professors Fadi Skeiker and Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock attended, along with several other individual guests.

This isn’t oral history was presented by Fordham’s Departments in Theatre and Visual Arts, Anthropology and American Studies.

Loops & Loops ?>

Loops & Loops

(Intro to Art & Engagement: Protest, Participation, the Public & Other Performance Practices)

A very temporary installation

Monday December 16, 2024 | 2-3pm  
Butler Gallery | Fordham College at Lincoln Center | 113 West 60th Street New York

Through a workshop with beck haberstroh and Mira Dayal, authors of Camera of Possibilities: A Workbook Towards a Carrier Bag Theory of Photography, students taking VART 1111 “Intro to Art & Engagement” were asked to think about the ways that text can serve as an invitation for engagement. They considered how invitations might serve as an incentive for someone to join in, and indicate who is invited to participate, how they participate, and what they can expect when they do. At Loops & Loops, our very temporary installation, students used simple prompts to invite the public into challenging and abstract conversations.

Film photos by Suchi Jalavancha:

Elizabeth Weldon offered hushweh she made from a recipe by her sithu and napkins with questions about food and culture for tasters.
It was a very social event

Artworks by VART 1111 students Suchi Jalavancha, Isis Poulose, Shamia Rahman, Veni Rosales, Michelle Rosas Garcia, Pradanya Subramanyan, Elizabeth Weldon and Janson Zheng.

Presented by the Department of Theatre & Visual Arts. Special thanks to Nikki Estelami, Materials for the Arts, and Fordham’s Center for Community Engaged Learning.

Zine by Suchi Jalavancha

The Muse was Life; the Medium Was Film ?>

The Muse was Life; the Medium Was Film


The Muse was Life; the Medium Was Film:

Films by our charming resident contrarian Ross McLaren and his students


Fordham University’s Susan Lipani Gallery

February 12 –February 29, 2024
Opening Reception: February 16, 6 pm

Fordham University at Lincoln Center map
113 West 60th Street at Columbus Avenue
New York, NY 10023
Map to the Lipani Gallery
fordhamuniversitygalleries



The Fordham University Visual Arts Program would like to announce this memorial exhibition, The Muse was Life; the Medium Was Film: Films by our charming resident contrarian Ross McLaren and his students in our Lincoln Center Visual Arts Complex Susan Lipani gallery.

Ross McLaren died in November of 2023, days short of his 70th birthday, after suffering a stroke earlier in the summer. Ross was a Canadian-born filmmaker, curator, colleague, teacher, and mentor living in New York who taught at Fordham University since 1986. This memorial exhibition highlights Ross’ dedication to the film medium and his influence on generations of Fordham University film & video students.

We miss his presence and take solace in the many memories he leaves behind. If Ross were here today, he would be holding court, telling stories, quick to share a toast, and likely one of the last to leave. There was only one Ross, unique as each of his films. In life, there is an endless continuation of frames; we thank Ross for sharing the ones he pulled from it.

Three monitors in the gallery space present Ross’ work. On monitor #1 is his infamous 1977 (27.75 min) film Crash ‘n’ Burn, shot on 16mm black & white film with an overdubbed soundtrack, documenting the Toronto, Ontario, Canada punk rock scene. On monitor #2 is Sex Without Glasses,1983, (12.75 min), a color, 16 mm film “starring a preverbal somnambulist floating between word and object.” –RM. And on monitor #3 is a selection of films that Ross admired from other filmmakers, including a range from Chris Marker’s La Jetée to cartoons about Porky the Pig.

Monitors #4 and #5 display nine short works (eight by Ross’ students over the years, one by a colleague): Spencer Balter, 5 am Thoughts at 3 in the Afternoon; Masha Bychkova, Gag; Alex Chambers, Cameraless Animations; Matt Gioia, Quick Sand; Liam Kenny, Joy, and Love for All Things in the Garden; Luke Momo, The Stamp Collector; Booch O’Connell, Affirmations; Glen Redpath (friend), Ross’s Rooftop Garden; Koty Vooys, Leaving NYC.

Fully circling the gallery and connecting Ross with his students are his used Super-8 film cartridges, a further reminder of Ross’ continued love of the film medium since the early days when he founded and was the first director of the Funnel Film Centre in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

A memorial event in the Susan Lipani Gallery will occur on Friday, February 16, at 6 pm.

The Visual Arts Program would like to thank the Filmmakers’ Coop, who provided the 16mm print of Crash ‘n’ Burn and a digitized version of Sex Without Glasses, and special thanks to FCLC Dean Auricchio and FAS Dean Hume for funding the memorial event.

Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock and Joseph Lawton arranged this memorial with the assistance of Gallery Programmer Vincent Stracquadanio. Anibal Pella-Woo and Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock oversaw digitizing Crash ‘n’ Burn. Student films were collected and organized by Slav Velkov, Colin Cathcart, Eamon Redpath, and Glen Redpath, who assembled the list of Ross’ favorite movies, and Wilson Duggan installed the exhibition.


Link to the exhibition

For more information, contact Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock


For the Visual Arts Department Blog: click here.
For the Visual Arts Department Website: click here.
Instagram: @visualartsfordham

From the Archives III: Photographs by Barbara Morgan ?>

From the Archives III: Photographs by Barbara Morgan

Barbara Morgan, Martha Graham, Letter to the World, Swirl, 1940,
gelatin silver print, courtesy of the Fordham University Library Archives and Special Collections


From the Archives III:

Photographs by Barbara Morgan


Fordham University’s Ildiko Butler Gallery

January 29–February, 25, 2024

Opening Reception: February 8, 6 pm

Fordham University at Lincoln Center map
113 West 60th Street at Columbus Avenue
New York, NY 10023
Map to the Lipani Gallery
fordhamuniversitygalleries


Curators: Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock, Head of Visual Arts; Linda Loschiavo, Director of Libraries; and Gabriella DiMeglio, Archives and Special Collections Librarian

From the Archives: Photographs by Barbara Morgan brings together twelve black and white photographs from the Fordham University Archives and Special Collections housed at the Rose Hill Walsh Family Library. This exhibition is the third installment of the From the Archives series, which aims to highlight the rich and varied nature of Fordham University’s collections.

Barbara Morgan (1900–1992) represents a significant figure in the history of photography, particularly as the scope of her practice included very different photography styles. Half the works on display are samples from her studies of American modern dancers, and half represent her investigations in Russian Constructivist-inspired experimental photomontage.

In Barbara Morgan’s 1941 book, Martha Graham: Sixteen Dances in Photographs, Graham comments, “It is rare that even an inspired photographer possesses the demonic eye which can capture the instant of dance and transform it into timeless gesture… For to me, Barbara Morgan through her art reveals the inner landscape that is a dancer’s world.” The timing and precision required to record the essence of a dance taking place over time and transform it into a singular, iconic photograph is extraordinary and forms a counterpoint to Morgan’s photomontage experiments, which consciously bring together different images into dialogue pertaining to constructed environments and social issues. Moreover, the photomontage technique was viewed as radical and unpopular in the United States when Morgan began making the works in this exhibition.

Occasionally, as a curator one has a specific idea for an exhibition—the themes, the participants, and the message. Alternately, there are moments where one explores with no preconceived notions and gradually, elliptically, hones in on a show. The Fordham University Library is a rich collection filled with unforeseen gems waiting for researchers and is the perfect place to engage in exploration and analysis. Furthermore, the staff that cares for our collection and facilitates such undertakings are exceptionally knowledgeable about what we have and, significantly, supportive of those interested in the unknown.

In an age where many read PDFs on devices, levels removed from the authentic experience of turning a book page, nothing is more refreshing and surprising than holding items from a different century in their hands. Archives have a slightly dusty but not unpleasant smell and a palpable feeling of history and mystery. That one doesn’t always know what they will encounter on the next shelf or in that box over there underneath another box, are not problems to be solved, but rather encouragements to engage with the spirit of inquiry.

Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock
 

Linda, LoSchiavo, MLIS, MA, Director of Fordham University Libraries:

My introduction to the Barbara Morgan photographs came in the late 1980s when I first saw them being exhibited in Butler Hall at Marymount College, in Tarrytown, NY. Fordham’s relationship with Marymount had begun in 1976, when the University began to offer several graduate programs on Marymount property. The Morgan photos were among the more than 150 works of art donated to the College by an alum, Mary Furey, Class of 1968. The gift also included works by Salvador Dali, Marcel Marceau, as well as other 20th century American and European photographs and prints. The College was committed to displaying works of art on the campus, so items from the collection were dispersed to various campus locations.  Unfortunately, this well-intentioned gesture resulted in the bulk of the collection being lost and/or irretrievable by the time Fordham ended its relationship with Marymount and sold the College to EF Education in 2008.  The remains of the collection are now in Fordham University’s Special Collections, and consist primarily of the Barbara Morgan dance photos.

Gabriella DiMeglio, MLIS, Archives and Special Collections Librarian, Fordham University:

One of the core principles in archival work is the balance between preservation and access. When materials enter the archives to be preserved and protected for future generations, our access to them inevitably decreases. Archival materials can go untouched and unseen for decades at a time, often for the simple reason that people don’t know they exist. The goal with this series is to highlight some of Fordham’s more hidden gems — providing the public of today with access to these materials while also prolonging and preserving that same access for future generations.
 

The previous exhibitions from the series are:

From the Archives II: Photographs by William Fox from the Fordham University Archives and Special Collections, 2014. This exhibition brought together seventeen contemporary digital prints from the original negatives housed in the Archives at the Rose Hill campus’ Walsh Family Library. William Fox was a professional photographer who worked for Fordham University freelance for over twenty years, generating photographs that span a range of topics from commencements to classrooms and from campus architecture to student life. The images represent the beginnings of Fordham University’s self-awareness, from a publicity and photographic point of view, documenting the growth of Fordham University over an extended period and giving shape to aspects that the university valued up to and through the tumultuous times of World War Two. Curator: Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock. Link

From the Archives I: Half-Frames, 2013. Half-Frames brought together twenty-one prints made from the original color transparencies held in the personal archive of J. Joseph Lynch, S.J., a mathematics and seismology professor at Fordham University from 1950 to 1967. The photographs highlighted his spontaneous approach to documenting travels, events, people, and places. The criteria for image selection stemmed from our mutual enthusiasm for his images, which resonated with contemporary directions in photography from the period, such as the snapshot aesthetic and interests in the vernacular within the medium of photography. Curators: Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock and Anibal Pella-Woo. Link


Link to the exhibition

For more information, contact Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock

CARCELÉN, an exhibition by Joèl De Andrade Ledesma ?>

CARCELÉN, an exhibition by Joèl De Andrade Ledesma


CARCELÉN

Exhibition by Joèl De Andrade Ledesma


Fordham University’s Lipani Gallery
January 19 — February 9, 2024
Opening Reception: January 25th, 6:00 — 8:00 pm
Fordham University at Lincoln Center map
113 West 60th Street at Columbus Avenue
New York, NY 10023
Map to the Lipani Gallery
fordhamuniversitygalleries


The photographs in Carcelén were taken in 2018 in Quito, Ecuador at a makeshift refugee camp created and inhabited by Venezuelan migrants. This photographic project represents an investigation into the humanity of people, the reality of migration, and the vitality of those who choose to leave their homelands.

Many of the migrants pictured in this project had left home on foot as part of a wave of millions of Venezuelans who left the country in the 2010’s due to political and economic instability. In Ecuador, like other receiving countries, many of the Venezuelans encountered the challenges of xenophobia, accessing basic needs, and attacks by conservative and even fascist elements in society. Joél came in contact with the people of the camps, supporting a mutual aid network that was aware of the plight of these Venezuelans, including attempts by state and local actors to displace them from their camp. In the time spent with the community, Joél exchanged similar and divergent stories of homeland, diaspora, and the reality of migration today.

Carcelén consists of eighteen 13 x 19 prints, matted and framed. The photographs were created from black and white 35 mm film negatives shot on a Pentax K1000, developed in the dark room, and then scanned and digitally printed.

Artist Biography: Joél Alexander De Andrade Ledesma (b. 1989) is a cultural worker, educator, and community organizer. Born in Caracas, Venezuela in the midst of the Caracazo insurrection, Joél and his family migrated to the United States in the wake of this historical and violent event. Having lived as an undocumented immigrant for almost two decades, Joél now focuses his creative, political, and academic projects on making sense of the structural and institutional violence marginalized communities move through. From this perspective, Joél elaborates the ways communities exercise reciprocity, resistance, and resilience. Joél is interested in visual storytelling that demonstrates these qualities and the way people and communities assume the responsibility and reality of freedom, solidarity, and survival


Link to the exhibition

For more information, contact Vincent Stracquadanio


To Remember to Veil to Play to Decay – Selections from the 2023 Senior Seminar ?>

To Remember to Veil to Play to Decay – Selections from the 2023 Senior Seminar

Featuring: Cat Applebaum, Spencer Balter, Julia Boberg, Sara Lockett, Arina Medvedeva, Madison Nash, Erin Newtown, Booch O’Connell, Caroline Wong


The Fordham University Galleries
December 6, 2023 – February 7, 2024
Fordham University at Lincoln Center map
113 West 60th Street at Columbus Avenue
New York, NY 10023
fordhamuniversitygalleries


Every fall, Visual Arts majors persuing their thesis projects work together in the Senior Seminar course to discuss and develop their work – and to support one another in realizing a solo or two-person exhibition in the spring. This show presents a selection of the works produced, to date, by those students.

The poetic exhibition title was conceived of by the students. It reflects both the overlap and the differences in their projects, which come together to touch on themes of loss, chance, movement, memory, the unspoken, trauma, obfuscation, and, as one student wrote in her statement, “the loud and incessant beauty of living.”

 “the loud and incessant beauty of living” comes from the statement of Booch O’Connell


Link to the exhibition
For more information, please contact Vincent Stracquadanio

JUST A HOUSE:2023 Faculty Spotlight ?>

JUST A HOUSE:2023 Faculty Spotlight


Featuring: Catalina Alvarez, Amie Cunat, Aseel Sawalha, Vincent Stracquadanio

Reception December 1st – 6:00pm to 8:00pm



The Fordham University Galleries
Fordham University at Lincoln Center map
113 West 60th Street at Columbus Avenue
New York, NY 10023
fordhamuniversitygalleries
 


Fordham University and the Visual Arts Department is pleased to present Just a House, a group exhibition featuring the work of four faculty members. 

How do we form feelings of beloning? Are there boundaries that describe the contour of these notions? What histories are they made from? Just a House explores ideas of displacement, familiarity, comfort, and connection through sculptural installation. Each artist uses a domestic material or motif, along with an element of suspension from the gallery’s ceiling to prompt conversation about the complicated, sometimes precarious nature of belonging. 


Within Catalina Alvarez’s intimate installation, a grouping of two birch stools (by Peter Blasser), a wooden table (by Daniel Fishkin), a rocking chair, and animal skins invite a visitor to watch two chapters from her anthology film, Sound Spring (Seq. #5 & #7), projected onto a centralized plinth. Unfolding in a series of eight vignettes, Sound Spring explores the history of Yellow Springs, Ohio over hundreds of years, as narrated by its residents in comical scenes: one interviewee rollerblades and reads the village’s water meters, another stands on his head in a breakdancing freeze. The villagers describe American history—their ancestors’ settlements after slavery, a friendship with Coretta Scott King, and Ohio’s Trail of Tears— among other more personal details of village life. By interacting with their own previously recorded media, villagers uncover layers of time and storytelling. 

In Days I’ve Spent, Times I’ve Tried, Vincent Stracquadanio paints sequential rows of Coliseum-like archways on a bed sheet to describe a liminal space between structured architecture and soft installation; between positive and negative space; between conscious and dream worlds. With imagery that draws from Sicilian folkloric traditions, Etruscan frescoes, and Giallo horror films, Stracquadanio frequently uses patterns, gestural abstraction, or archetypical forms to flatten or expand space. The artist generates a purposeful lack of solidity and definition –as if ghostly forms are departing and floating through a dreamlike miasma—offering expressions of grief and longing.


Central points of tension acknowledge and defy the gravity of Aseel Sawalha’s objects. Lantern contains a multitude of hand-folded, paper shapes, which are connected by a system of crocheted netting that cascades from the gallery’s ceiling. The organic entanglement of the vermillion thread contradicts the sharpness of the geometric elements it binds. Passages and Spooler are made of reformations of discarded Fordham books and other found objects (Christmas tree stand, discarded mail tubes).The artist’s work is informed by ethnographic fieldwork research with Bedouin tribes, post-war Beirut, New York City women artists and the art scene in Jordan and Palestine. Meticulously constructed, the sculptures are hybrid restructurings of found books and print matter modified by hand rolling and quilling, weaving, and paint, which mesh forms from modern and post-modern visual arts with techniques from traditional Arabic and Palestinian handicrafts.


Made from paper materials and paint, Amie Cunat’s structure –with ubiquitous siding on its façade and a hunter green interior—resembles an excerpt from a Midwestern ranch-style home. Assumptions about its locale and reference are complicated by its construction. Influenced by unnamable sentience within horror movies like the The Blob, The Thing, and Them! and false front architecture, Cunat’s object contains two Crappie gills that disrupt the logical continuity of its domestic container. Window and Gills, Tatami Tan is both alien and familiar; animal and built.


Link to the exhibition
For more information, please contact Vincent Stracquadanio

For the Visual Arts Department Blog: click here.
For the Visual Arts Department Website: click here.