Pressing Matters: Installations By Enlivened Spaces Students at UNF
Join Us For Opening Night
APR 29 through JUL 17
Yellow House becomes the canvas, or more accurately the vessel, for sculptural installations that speak to the issues of our day. Students participating in the Enlivened Spaces course at University of North Florida, taught by Professor Jenny Hager, have spent a semester immersed in the experience of taking concept to process and intention to a physical, artful reality. Embracing the opportunities, limitations, and mission of Yellow House, student-artists have created 12 socially-conscious installations. The basic sculptural languages of metaphor, narrative, symbolism, space, materiality, form, mass and scale combine with your physical and energetic presence to lift up the pressing matters of our time.
Climate change, gun violence, feminism, Black lives, accessibility, identity, mental health, physical and emotional safety, the rise of hate, and our capacity to act and heal, all ask for our attention. We invite you to enter into the conversation by viewing the art, interacting with each environment, reading the artist statements, learning, grieving, creating, feeling, and spreading the seeds of progress.
Student-centered and student-led, Pressing Matters amplifies the power of young people speaking truth and leading the way. And when those young people are also artists, everything seems possible.
ARTISTS
Elysa Adams | Shisam Barrios | Parker Bush | W.S. Close | Orli Gutterman Coltrane MacKendrick | Patricia Muñiz-Villanueva | Cat Palacios | Shelby Stiehl
Emily Timmons | Seph Trask | Madeline Trudeau
Deep bows of gratitude to Jenny Hager for her transformational work as an educator, artist, and community builder. Her practice beautifully bridges and blends university teaching and learning, a robust personal studio practice, and the public sphere. She is a treasure and our community is better for her presence.
Poster image by Cat Palacios, honoring each artist’s contribution to this collective experience