‘Poetic Realities’ exhibit to showcase graduate students’ projects across mediums
The UCLA Department of Design Media Arts is hosting its first annual exhibit on Thursday at the Broad Art Center. The exhibit – titled Poetic Realities – will feature various works across mediums from graduate students in the DMA Masters of Fine Arts program.
Isaac Ruder’s “Hazard Tourist” is displayed on two screens on opposite walls in the corner of the gallery. “Poetic Realities” features 10 second-year graduate student artists. (Shengfeng Chien/Daily Bruin) Graduate students are sculpting, designing and building “Poetic Realities.”
The UCLA Department of Design Media Arts is hosting its first annual exhibit on Thursday at the Broad Art Center. The exhibit – titled “Poetic Realities” – will feature various works across mediums from graduate students in the DMA Masters of Fine Arts program. Graduate student Leslie Foster said the exhibit is a final opportunity to showcase work at the end of the two-year program, which began with a push for experimentation.
“My practice tends to use film installation, and one of the things I wanted to do at DMA is do more object making,” Foster said. “(I’m) combining those elements to create this piece that I’m hoping transports people into a space where they can stretch their imaginations.”
“Poetic Realities” was a theme decided on by the cohort as a whole, and Foster said many of the pieces present in the exhibit explore some sort of alternate reality. However, in working through the process of creating an alternate reality, many of the artists had to tackle certain emotions when analyzing the potential futures that arose as a result of the theme, he said.
Conceptualizing his own piece, Foster said, came from the exploration of Afro-pessimism in his first year in the program. Themes of generational trauma are intertwined within the work, which he said is titled “Black Honey (Or An Exuberance of Drapetomania).” The technical aspect of the project combines both film and installation in which he explores the possibility of alternate futures in the Black and queer communities, he said.
“Every time I do a new project, it terrifies me,” Foster said. “I was telling one of my professors that one day I’m going to create a piece that doesn’t scare me. … But I was like, ‘No, I’m not,’ because if it’s not scaring you, then why are you doing it?”
Another artist, graduate student Carrie Chen, said her project “Temporal Portrait” explores the different possibilities of herself. Her piece, a form of self-portraiture, showcases different versions of herself growing up in the United States and China, she said. She created past, present and future versions of herself via 3D technology and aging software and said she pulled from old photographs of family members to imagine what she might have looked like in the past. — Laura Carter, May 11, 2022
This post is an excerpt. Read the full article on the Daily Bruin website.
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