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A selection of images from the 2024 Department of Art and Art History Graduation

June 25, 2024

Congratulations to all of our graduates of the Class of 2024! Here are a few images of the celebrations that were held in the Friday Center in May.

Student Film Screening: Creative Roots: Qatanum Expressions

April 18, 2024

CREATIVE ROOTS: QATANUM EXPRESSIONS (BTS Presentation)
Xe’il ech Txumu’n: Xhk’a’tnaquil Qatanum
SUNDAY, APRIL 28, 6 – 7PM
ROOM 3408 – Frank Porter Graham Student Union (UNC-Chapel Hill)

Join Brenda Palacios Rodriguez (BFA Honors 2024), the director and producer of the documentary film CREATIVE ROOTS: QATANUM EXPRESSIONS, for an open discussion about her film in-production and her Awakatek (Qatanum) Mayan community roots. Learn about her documentation process, behind-the-scenes work, and lessons learned in production.

“This project shares the story of my Awakatek community as storytellers of time, where you will learn about the Awakatek Mayan cosmovision, stories of five Awakatek changemakers, and indigenous knowledge that must be preserved. Learn about what being Qatantum means today, and how the lessons learned through these relational realities help us create a more loving, understanding, and respectful world made of advocacy work for BIPOC communities across the world” – Brenda (Docu-film Director & Producer)

Congratulations to Departmental Phi Beta Kappa honorees for 2024

April 4, 2024

Congratulations to the following Department of Art and Art History students who were inducted into Phi Beta Kappa this spring:

Isabelle Lilly Anderson, art history minor
Louise Celeste Covington, art history minor
Lauren Ashley Flach, art history minor
Lauren Sage Guillemette, studio art major
Andrew Robert Knotts, studio art major
Sydney Kates Martin, studio art major
Toni-Ann Ocloo, studio art minor
Glorianna R Tarlton, studio art minor

Studio Art Undergraduate Scholarship winners

January 31, 2024

Congratulations to Our Scholarship Recipients!

The winners of the Studio Art Undergraduate Scholarships have been chosen.

Congratulations to the following scholarship recipients:

The Alexander Julian Prize
Qiaoan Gu

The Anderson Undergraduate Studio Award
Marin Carr-Quimet

The George and Joyce Kachergis Memorial Undergraduate Scholarship
Isabella Gamez
Isabel Schomburger
Charlotte Allsbrook
Cora Mcanulty
Grace Fei
Hope Mutter

The Johnathan E. Sharpe Scholarship
Timothy Anderson
Lashayla Stephens
Briar Rose
Naari Short

Award Letters will be Forthcoming

ARTS 490 One Day Installation and Public Sculpture Event May 5, 2023

May 1, 2023

By flood or fire, the land will take what it is owed


Public sculpture & one-day installation public event

By artists in ARTS 490: Art As Social Action
Hanes Art Center Sculpture Garden
May 5, 2-6pm

By flood or fire, the land will take what it is owed is a public sculpture as well as a one-day installation and public event centered around calling attention to and supporting the Stop Cop City movement, as well as broader themes of policing, abolition, and protecting the environment. The sculpture consists of a garden housed within a cop-car structure created using locally scavenged car parts, recycled materials, and thrifted items, constructed to look like a demolished police car. The garden is planted with native plants to North Carolina which will thrive year round. The one-day event includes a “Living Room” installation, a space and title that refers to the living space created and tended by activists who defended and occupied Weelaunee Forest. The program will include workshops, a letter-writing campaign, live music, and banner-making.

This project was conceptually inspired by the Stop Cop City Movement in the Weelaunee People’s Forest, envisioning a future in which Cop City does not exist, or has been reclaimed by nature. Native plants growing in the cop car symbolize nature’s resilience in the face of destruction. The work’s use of a police car not only suggests a destabilization of human dominance over the natural environment but asserts a critique of entrenched institutions of power through which the natural environment is subjugated for oppressive ends. The project’s status as a work of life, rather than just a work of art, through its entanglement with living plants, posits the existence of a reality where life is protected and enabled to thrive, rather than targeted and perpetually dismantled.

When we speak of abolition we refer to the dismantling of the carceral system in the U.S. and the construction of new systems, practices, and values that resist our present carceral logic. With abolition, we want to build a new world where we can rely on our community to protect and care for us. As abolitionists Ruth Wilson Gilmore and Naomi Murakawa once said, “abolition is about abolishing the conditions under which prison became the solution to problems, rather than abolishing the buildings we call prisons.”

With By flood or fire, the land will take what it is owed, we hope to create solidarity with the forest defenders of the Stop Cop City Movement in Atlanta, showing that the impact of Cop City will be felt beyond Atlanta. We want to remind everyone that the resistance to and destruction of our existing systems is necessary to our growth, much like how the plants are able to grow out of our destroyed police car.

By flood or fire, the land will take what it is owed is a class project created by students in ARTS 490 (Art as Social Action), an upper-level undergraduate studio art course focused on socially-engaged practices. Experientially in this class, students collaboratively discussed and created work that blurred the boundary between life and art, revealing an inherent political connection. Projects ranged from performance to sculpture.

Artists:
Timothy Anderson, Deja Boone, Alexis Breitenfeld, Marin Carr-Quimet, A Cook, Jacqueline Doyle, Delilah Eby, Molly English, Lauren Guillemette, Sergia Jimenez, Samuel Martin, Jennifer Nguy, Abby Pallant, Maya Rampel, Nina Scott-Farquharson, Audrey Keelin, Hồng-Ân Trương (faculty)

Background on “Cop City” in the Weelaunee Forest in Atlanta

The Atlanta Police Foundation has plans to build a police militarization facility, known as “Cop City” by protestors and activists, for urban warfare training for police. Cop City is planned to include a mock city for police to practice urban warfare tactics, military-grade training grounds, explosive testing areas, shooting ranges, and a Black Hawk helicopter landing pad, all of which will be built in the Weelaunee Forest. Called the “lungs of Atlanta” by city officials, the Weelaunee Forest is home to wetlands that prevent flooding and filter rainwater, and is also a breeding ground for regional amphibians and a migration site for wading birds. Over 380 acres of the Forest are set to be destroyed to build Cop City, which will deeply impact the health and biodiversity of the surrounding community. The facility is a $90+ million project, $60+ million of which is funded by over 40 corporations, including Coca-Cola and Home Depot, and $30+ million of which is funded using tax-payer dollars.

For further information and resources, please visit the following:
Local Organizations:
Durham Beyond Policing: https://durhambeyondpolicing.org/
Southerners on New Ground Bail Out Black Mamas: https://southernersonnewground.org
Prison Books Collective: https://prisonbooks.info/

Defend Atlanta Forest: https://defendtheatlantaforest.org/
Stop Cop City Solidarity: https://www.stopcopcitysolidarity.org/
Stop Cop City: https://stopcop.city/

Infosession for Camino de Santiago Study Abroad program for Summer 2023

January 30, 2023

Does an artistic hike across Spain sound like a great way to spend your Summer in 2023? 

Come join us this week, Friday, February 3rd at 2:00pm in Hanes Art Center room 226 for an info session about the Department of Art + Art History’s Art on the Camino de Santiago Study Abroad program — walking an ancient pilgrimage path across Northern Spain. Professors Pérez-Méndez and Marzán will walk you through the experience and the courses they’ve developed for this UNC Faculty-Led Program, which is scheduled to take place from May 15 – June 23, 2023. The program earns you 6 credit hours in Studio Art towards your minor or major, or general education. Scholarships Available!!!

Topic: Art on the Camino de Santiago Study Abroad Info Session

Time: FEB 3, 2023 2:00 PM

APPLICATIONS DEADLINE FEB 10th!!!!  Come find out about SCHOLARSHIPS FOR STUDYING ART ABROAD!!!

Read more about the program at caminounc.com

Congratulations to all of our 2022-2023 Undergraduate Studio Art Scholarship Recipients

January 19, 2023

On behalf of the Department of Art and Art History, I am pleased to recognize the following students as recipients of the Undergraduate Studio Art Scholarships—congratulations!

Sharpe
Esme Kerr
Lashayla Stephens
Hope Mutter
Charlotte Allsbrook

Kachergis 
Yuxiao Sun
Qiaoan Gu
Isabella Gamez

Julian
Isabella Gamez

Anderson
Cora McAnulty
Samuel Tsolis

Penland
Isabel Schomburger
Lashayla Stephens

Video classes pop-up exhibition at Lump Gallery

November 10, 2022

GOLF
Lump Gallery
Friday, Nov 18, 6-9pm

Through video and audio installation, GOLF explores the relationship between privatized space and loss in all its forms. In this one-day pop-up exhibition and live sound performance at Lump Gallery, we examine the history and culture of golf in marking boundaries of class, race, and gender through its practice of exclusivity and hetero-patriarchy. GOLF immerses the viewer in the past, present, and future of ecological disaster.

The one-day pop-up exhibition is part of a larger exhibition project by Bill Thelen, called Love Letter, in which he invited different artists to take over the space for one-day events throughout Nov and Dec.  

Artists: Sadie Allen, Nicole Blevins, Maxwell Bryn, Brooklyn De Shazo-Griffin, Noah Gulledge, Sergia Jimenez, Bailey Johnson, Taylor Knoll, Lilian Manning, Payton Mills, Hope Mutter, Gustavo Rios, Nina Sehgal, Taika Sorjonen, Mirai Thorbjornsen, Bronwyn White

Artists are students at UNC Chapel-Hill in Hong-An Truong’s Intermediate/Advanced Video courses