Undergraduate studio art awards recipients are showcasing their works in the exhibition "Occluded Front," on display in the Hanes Arts Center until March 18.
Each artist applied “Occluded Front” to their art in different ways, but overall they focused on the theme of change between the past and present, and the turmoil that comes with it.
Beth Grabowski, the event's organizer, said she is excited about the scope of media represented — ranging from 2D collage to sculpture to interactive works — and the impressive levels of technical skill and intellectually compelling work displayed.
“A title like (Occluded Front) is meant to be thought-provoking," Grabowski said. "Often when artists are working, they’re working through metaphor just as much as they are working in specific didactic explanations. So taking those words both separately and together — What does a front mean? — is something that is a transition. So many of these students are upperclassmen or even graduating, so they are looking at that kind of transition.”
Isys Hennigar, whose art in the exhibition comments on the unintentional impact of genetically modified food, explained the science behind the exhibition's theme.
“Occluded front is the boundary between two air masses, specifically when a cold air mass meets a warm air mass," Hennigar said. "It is all playing on that boundary between something past and something future, the negotiating of change. A lot of the work, too, explores uneasy change … the period in which we don’t know what directions things are going, but we know that they are evolving.”
Samprati Prasad, another student artist, created work that considered the "Occluded Front" as two forces merging together: her understanding of her spirituality and her place within Hinduism.
Prasad focused on how money and institutional systems work, touching on intersectional topics like corruption in her work. She created books that reference the importance of folklore through the placement of donation boxes that are used in the Hundi system present in Indian Hindu temples.
Annie Simpson, an artist whose works explore white supremacy at UNC, especially following Reconstruction, regarded the "Occluded Front" as a hidden front.
