Not Yet and Yet

20 Juried Graduate Exhibition 22 The University of New Mexico

Nancy Zastudil Guest Curator

Organized by UNM Graduate Art Association Catalogue Design by Granadina Coop

20 Juried Graduate 22 Exhibition

Not Yet and Yet

An exhibition is a gathering of ideas, of imaginings, of perceived and proposed realities.

Not Yet and Yet is nothing less but perhaps something more.

The artists’ works presented here speak to the ideas of our time through representations of identity, perceptions of self, attraction and repulsion, consideration of natural phenomena, and comfort or lack thereof, with humor and heart swells throughout. As a whole, there is a palpable feeling that, amidst the fits and starts, the hammer and the dance, something of promise could be on the horizon.

Logistically, the curatorial selection process took place through online submissions and brief in-person studio visits. Artists self-selected whether or not they wanted their work to be considered for exhibition, and they decided which of their pieces were ready for public viewing. Conceptually, I chose the works presented here based on how effectively, unexpectedly, or radically the artists were using media to address ways of being in and navigating the world—and vice versa.

The individual works are confident in their content and form, with room for inquiry, ex-

amination, and growth, a collective proposal for ideas yet to emerge, for different realities to take shape. Some pieces are resolved or contained while others imply larger bodies of work still in process.

The title of the exhibition, Not Yet and Yet, was inspired by a small soft sculpture that spelled out the phrase “not yet” in curious form, hanging in one of the artist’s studios during our visits. The piece stayed with me as a visual memory, one that carried both the mounting pressure of anticipation and the gracious permission to pause. The complementary phrase “and yet” is one that echoed in my psyche as I reflected on the vital, generative role that hope plays in the creative process, and what it might mean to be making one’s way in the world as an art student today.

On top of everything else, no less, so soon as now.

Nancy Zastudil Guest Curator

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08....................................Corn Wagon Thunder 14....................................Daniel Hojnacki 18....................................Marlene Tafoya 20....................................Jenny Irene Miller 24....................................Anna Rotty 28....................................Ranran Fan 30................................... Karina Faulstich 34....................................Christopher Schuldt 36....................................Alyssa Eble 40....................................sofía méndez subieta 42....................................Juana Estrada Hernández 46....................................Eleonora Edreva 50....................................Shelby Roberts 52....................................Alexandria Zuniga de Dóchas 56....................................Ashley Miller

Corn Wagon Thunder Corn Wagon Thunder’s photographic self-portraiture is borne of a fascination with the existential questions ‘Who am I?’ and ‘Why am I?’ She is interested in dissecting the paradoxical mode and manner of her own being. With a nod to the absurd, she uses symbolism to visualize the riddle of life. Yet, with tenderness toward the mysterious edges of self-discovery. She uses language to dance with the visual, to provide wayfinding but also to reinforce mystery.

She focuses the camera on herself as a method of examining her personal mythology and to consider how one constructs and transforms meaning in relation to existence.

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www.cornwagonthunder.com / IG: @cornwagonthunder

Title: Insufflate Materials: Archival ink jet print, 20x16 inches

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Title: Effulgence Materials: Archival ink jet print, 20x16 inches

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Title: Reecho Materials: Archival ink jet print, 20x16 inches

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Title: Ruth Materials: Archival ink jet print, 20x16 inches

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Daniel Hojnacki In this series of works, I have been using a 19th century printing process called “Cliché Verre.” By applying smoke soot from an oil lamp flame to large pieces of glass. I then draw upon the prepared matrix and negative to be printed in the darkroom on photo sensitive paper. Cliché Verre which translates to “glass negative.” The negative becomes a volatile delicate substrate that has the ability to record the most nuanced of traces. These works are visual records of time keeping, in which my breath, body, and the natural world are frozen within. They are indexical experiences of seeing, that suspend the proof of life and existence upon the photographic page.

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www.danielhojnacki.com / IG: @d_hojnacki

Title: The Wind Through The Trees Materials: Unique silver gelatin print 16x20 inches

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Title: Volatile Body of Ash or A Vessel for Keeping Time Materials: Unique silver gelatin print, 20x24 inches

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Marlene Tafoya Marlene Tafoya is an artist, performer, and manicurist from Wilmington CA. Marlene is currently pursuing her MFA in Sculpture at the University of New Mexico. Building trust and laughing are the two main formalities of her work. Trying her best to live by words from Oasa DuVerney in Five Ways to Disrupt White Supremacy in the Mainstream Art World, Marlene hopes to be gangsta and continue creating for past, current, and future generations to come.

Over the years, Tafoya has exhibited her work at several locations including Honor Fraser Los Angeles, CA, Harwood Art Center Albuquerque NM, Museum of Latin American Art Long Beach CA, UCLA New Wight Gallery Los Angeles CA, TAFA Tianjin China, and Vincent Price Art Museum Los Angeles CA. Additionally, she cocurated Language: Art for Leonard Peltier, a union among artists and The International Leonard Peltier Defense Committee.

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www.marlenetafoya.com / IG: @1202studios

Title: Price List Materials: Acrylic Print, 24x36 inches

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Jenny Irene Miller

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www.jennyirenemiller.com / IG: @jennyirenemiller

Title: Nora’s hair cut (lock 1 of 6), 2021 Materials: Digital inkjet print, 20x30 inches

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Title: Untitled (September self-portrait), 2021 Materials: Digital inkjet print, 30x20 inches

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Anna Rotty In my practice, I go on long walks, collecting photographs and memories of the environment and my surroundings. Expanding upon these observations, I construct and rephotograph spaces in my studio as a way of understanding my relationship with seeing, place and home. I’m interested in illusion, and consider how our memory of a place is formed and changes over time. With each recollection it re-forms itself in our minds, becoming something new and more based in feeling than in fact. I see memory as a destination to arrive at itself and photography as a powerful tool to shift perception. In this volatile moment, I explore the drastic shift in emotions each day holds, through the lens of our human relationship with the landscape. I’m interested in experiencing multiple ways of existing at once, preferring to focus on the intangible, the feelings that can’t quite be described in language. Through these material and optical investigations, I hope to inspire awe by depicting places that linger in the fragile space of memory.

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www.annarotty.com / IG: @annarotty

Title: Cloud Gazing Materials: Digital photographs on transparency film, plexiglass, wooden stand, pedestal 7x7x1.5 inches

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Title: Evanesce Materials: Privacy screen protector, plexiglass, photograph on transparency film, polycarbonate block, tempered glass, pedestal, 3.5x6 inches

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Title: Evanesce Materials: Privacy screen protector, plexiglass, photograph on transparency film, polycarbonate block, tempered glass, pedestal, 3.5x6 inches

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Ranran Fan My practice centers around systems of coping with struggles and issues I have encountered as a foreigner and person of color in the United States, and as a woman in a patriarchal society. I make images and devices as solutions to deal with these issues. These solutions explore the absurd existence of the free individual female subject under an oppressive political and patriarchal environment. This print, 履 (Lü), is part of the project called “Amulets”. I visualize my interpretation of the situations in IChing, an ancient Chinese divination book, through lithographic prints.

The left part of the diptych is an amulet to provide protection in menacing environment; the figure is a bird in Chinese mythology who has two eyeballs in one eye, and it can keep devils away. The right part depicts the Chinese character, 履 , which is the title of this situation, literally meaning “shoes.” Its connotation includes walking, living, and traveling. The right part is partly coated with paraffin and is designed to be burned to provide an experience of ephemerality.

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www.ranranfan.com / IG: @ranran_narnar

Title: 履 (Lü) Materials: Lithographic print, fabric strings, paper, paraffin, fabric, 56x70 inches

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Karina Faulstich Karina Faulstich is an interdisciplinary artist exploring relationships between colonial landscapes, gender, and systems of labor. Through diverse mediums including installation, performance, photography, and fiber, their work confronts ways in which capitalism inhabits the body and seeks to cultivate pathways of resistance. Their recent practice centers on textiles and alternative printmaking techniques.

They use discarded, often mass-produced materials such as napkins and bedsheets and transform them through a regenerative process into handmade personal objects. Karina first began working with reclaimed fibers and fabrics for their accessibility but over time came to understand these materials as both symbols and practices of adaptability. They choose to continue working with these mediums in ways that subvert traditionally feminine “crafts” and allow for a tactile means of returning to the body.

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Title: Take Your Time

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Title: Rest

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Christopher Schuldt 34

IG: @christopher_schuldt

Title: Nein Materials: Acrylic on canvas, 29.75x23 inches

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Alyssa Eble Over the past few years, an air of isolation abounds in our realities and in Alyssa Eble’s work. Her response is to engage with this isolation, in subject and habitat, presenting an absurdity, serenity, and epoch to the development of “being alone”. Alyssa renders these conditions through assorted awkward descriptions of the human form and environment, experimenting with color and mood simultaneously in paint and drawing. The figures present a narrative, illustrating psychological interpretations from the pandemic, grappling with identity and politics, and the understanding of time.

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www.alyssaeble.com / IG: @a_boneserble

Title: Day Off (2021) Materials: Oil on canvas, 48x36 inches

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Title: When We Carry Ghosts (Fleeing From a Former Self) (2021) Materials: Oil on canvas, 40x48 inches

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Title: Midnight (2022) Materials: Oil on canvas, 47.5x59 inches 39

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sofia mendez subieta ,

My work exists in the dialogue among textiles, photography, poetry and digital manipulation. I enjoy thinking about the memory of fabrics and the language of archiving. Through the process of slow, gentle, and repetitive making, I imbue caring energy into the objects that I hand-make. I am often guided by processes of reconfiguration, healing and protection. Most recently, I am exploring the sound of photography, and I’m focused on the question: what happens when voice is sewed to a photograph? I tend to work through devices such as translation, collage, archiving, and patchwork. Through these often tactile objects, I invite the viewer to question our inherited emotions, beliefs and habits, to arrive in a place of intentional remembering.

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www.sofia-mendezsubieta.squarespace.com / IG: @sofia.mendezsubieta

Title: “se me ocurrio que es una litania/it occurred to me that it is a prayer” Materials: Pillow from family archive, poem, fiber arts, variable dimensions

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Juana Estrada Hernandez ,

The historical, political, socio-economic, and racist development of the U.S.Mexico borderland has produced an imagined barrier that, once physically and emblematically crossed, transfigures humans into negative identifications—into enemies of the nation. A place where promises and dreams unfold, are lost, or die.

Through a series of prints, Estrada Hernández explores this process of migration with images that act as remnants of memories of this experience. The works interrogate the false promises, limitations, and contradictions of an “American Dream” and provide a personal look at the complexities surrounding the notion of “home.” Home transcends geographical barriers in the ways immigrants carry the notion (and hope) of home on their backs—leaving all that they once knew behind and beginning a new journey into the unknown. Estrada Hernández’s prints offers an insight to the treasures that migrants hold on to when they move and the realities of being undocumented in a foreign country.

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www.juanaseemyprints.weebly.com / IG: @juanaseemyprints

Title: Comida de mi Madre (2020) Materials: Lithograph, screenprint, 20x15 inches

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Title: A chambiar para nuestra casita (2020) Materials: Intaglio, mezzotint, chine-colle, 18x24 inches

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Title: Comida de mi Madre (2020) Materials: Lithograph, screenprint, 20x15 inches

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Eleonora Edreva

My artistic work employs mediums like sound, video, scent, fiber, and photography to think about alternative forms of communication and knowledge transmission, including sensory communication, ancestral inheritance, codes, and music. I’m interested in how these forms of embodied knowledge are mirrored in both digital communication tools and the non-human world’s communication systems. These two videos are part of a current body of multi-media work titled “Inheritance.” This series examines how ancestral whispers trickle down through time to manifest in our bodies today. As a first-generation English speaker within my family, a main focus in the works is how language can confuse or sever one’s relationships to ancestral inheritances in the forms of memories, foods, stories, traditions, and locations. I Keep Your Names In My Mouth is a video poem about ancestral memory and names, tracing my own desire to learn the names of my ancestors as far back as is possible through living memory. “Cooking with Grandma” is a video piece focusing on the connection between language and food, and how a severance from ancestral language is also a severance from the written and oral archives of family and cultural recipes. What does it mean for my cells to contain the memories of generations of family cooking, but for me to need assistance in reading the written words that tell the secrets of how to recreate these dishes?

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www.eleonora.xyz / IG: @cyber.kiwi

Title: I Keep Your Names In My Mouth Materials: Single channel video

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Title: Cooking with Grandma Materials: Single channel video

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Shelby Roberts 50

Title: Tunnel Vision Materials: Digital archival print (anaglyph), 44x65 inches

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Alexandria Zuniga de Dochas ,

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Title: DRYAD EATS IMPERIAL BULLSHIT, 2020 Materials: Single-channel video, Duration: 6 minutes

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Title: DRYAD EATS IMPERIAL BULLSHIT, 2020 Materials: Single-channel video, Duration: 6 minutes

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Ashley Miller 56

Title: Vomits #13 (2021) Materials: Inkjet print, 44x54 inches

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Title: Vomits #5 (2021) Materials: Inkjet print, 44x54 inches

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Title: Vomits #17 (2021) Materials: Inkjet print, 44x54 inches

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Title: Vomits #1 (2021) Materials: Inkjet print, 44x54 inches

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