By Mary Sui Yee Wong, IBA Faculty
INTERsectionS was an interdisciplinary student exhibition that endeavored to invite cross-pollination, open conversation and dynamic exchange between creators and their community.
In keeping with the format of a salon, INTERsectionS offered students a chance to present visual artwork, installation, videos, spoken word, readings, performance, music and other creative projects. This exhibition created a space for students in collaboration with faculty, to explore the intersections between imagination and realization, process and conception, art and ideas, culture and community.
INTERsectionS took shape as a workshop and an interdisciplinary exhibition in the Haybarn Gallery at Goddard College. During the workshop, students were invited to co-curate an event that would embrace a range of diverse creative practices. Ideas on how to activate audience participation, animate the gallery space to move art off the walls, and challenge conventional paradigms were discussed.
This learning activity culminated in dynamic multi-media, spontaneous improvisations, where the artists and viewers experienced the unfolding of a collective creative process.
Student Feedback on INTERsectionS:
“This process was about my art stitched into the fabric of so many other artists; how this cross-stitching creates conversations regardless of artistic discipline, economical backgrounds and cultural borders.” – Mo Tims of Brooklyn, N.Y.
“The curation process of INTERsections illuminated the possibility of sharing space without fear, of realizing and honoring the expansive nature of the creative mind and heart. Curated symbiosis, across mediums. Thank you for creating the conditions for our hearts to intersect. There does indeed seem to be an abundance of kindred spirit at IBA-2 [residency]. We have definitely been breathing the same breath.” ~Amber McZeal of Oakland, Calif.
“For me this show is part of an ongoing process of conceptualizing my work (which I often think of as more like design or craft) as art, in conversation and relationship with other artists across mediums. I usually create art either as gifts or as political imagery, and moving it from those contexts into a multi-media space co-created by artists (where it is part of a larger creative whole) gives it new / different meaning.” – Tyrone Boucher.
