The Judson-Morrissey 2023 Exhibition

2019 -
Photography Series

Pixel by Rose Ansari contrasts man-made objects with natural spaces. In this case a white cube represents the digital, the pixel, and recontextualizes these spaces of Ansari’s homeland, Iran. This series also serves as a memory making device for Ansari as she moves on to a new stage of her professional life in America. Just like the pixels form the digital images we see before ourselves, the images themselves form part of Ansari’s memories of Iran’s landscapes.

2023
Video Art

Seeking answers, Yasmin Lee and her mother interpret a poetic quote to further understand one another and the world around them. Inspired by Kanye’s mothers’ quote “The giant looks in the mirror and sees nothing” directed at the artist as a way to temper his pride in the face of his rising success. Unlike Kanye, Yasmin and her mother imbue their own experiences into the quote and arrive at their own personal and intimate interpretations that showcases who they really are.

2021
Installation & Interactive Art

In Lived in a Sea, Yan Shao combines photography, video and net.art to bring to attention to the ecological disaster occuring at the Salton Sea in Southern California created by an engineering accident in 1905. For a while the zone thrived and eventually became a resort area, unfortunately as the area is heavily farmed, runoff from the surrounding area resulted in contamination of the lake, a botulism outbreak and massive death of wildlife. Nowadays as water usage by farmers is more efficient, the lake is drying. Created by a man-made accident and potentially disappearing because of another, the lake is a cautionary tale for human intervention in nature. Now its appearance of an apocalyptic landscape as a result of disregarding the natural cycles ensues from over-exploitation and mismanagement for economic interests.

Yan Shao then presents us with the local barnacles, the only barnacles ever to survive in an inland lake, as a metaphor for the suffering of lifeforms in the area through a net.art monument. The monument shows images of dead barnacles that have accumulated on the beaches of the Salton Sea, created by multi-exposure photography and digitalization with 3D real-time rendering. The dome-shaped structure creates a new environment for the barnacles and transforms the otherwise dead into a self-perpetuating rotating hemisphere. It is an eternal cycle like samsara, a metaphor for the continuous natural cycles, and provides a space for mourning and eulogy by extending the biology of life arguably into the spirit of life.

2023
Video Game

Juvenoia is a live computer simulation that presents shifting snapshots of Michael’s nostalgia for a village in Southwestern China that no longer exists, along with distorted dreamscapes caused by a weariness towards the adoptive country of America.  It is an allegorical portrait of a diasporic coming of age. 

As the experience goes on, the generative nature of the work means no single visit to this ersatz village is ever the same. Just like memory changes through time and aspects are forgotten and others amplified, Juvenoia shifts and changes just like our memories do, highlighting the shifting nature of memory and the action of remembering our past. 

2022
Video & Sound Art

Jae-Eun’s Glimpse is many things, a visual and aural poem, a trek through a digital forest, a collection of sound and video where glimpses of what was can be seen through the digital manipulation. In her work the artist explores the use and interpretation of data, patterns, and timelines derived from personal collections, archives, and memories. Through the use of diverse materials and media, as well as the fragmentation of sounds and visuals, she generates multiple iterations of her concepts, inviting viewers to engage in a contemplative exploration of the subject matter.

2022
Video / Performance

After spending two months struggling to perform a dance alongside the robot arm, Bonilla became frustrated with the stilted movements of the robot. Dance is important to Angelica as it is her way to connect to Colombia her home country and a way to retain her culture. The resulting frustration led to the work we see here. A form of break up letter with the robot and the idea of dancing with it. In Bonilla’s words “…this piece as a whole is a testament to the technical failures that I experienced, technical failures that made me reconsider my position as a technologist. This piece was the process of coming to terms with my lack of technical expertise, but it is also a testament to my learning and a love letter to my culture and my language.”