Door In The Ceiling

Door In The Ceiling |Ringling Student Exhibition 

May, 2021

This is the Ringling Fine Arts senior class of 2021 group exhibition the day after their graduation ceremony. The Ringling Fine Arts grads are excited to begin their careers by showing at SPAACES with a wide variety of conceptual work which includes mixed media, video and traditional media.

SPAACES enjoys giving emerging artists such as these opportunities to exhibit with an artistic freedom by supporting experimentation with new mediums or technologies, and giving artists the flexibility to control the curation of their exhibit. We believe this support will open new avenues of thought and inspiration that young artists might not typically have in their day to day studio practice or in a traditional gallery model.

Individual Artists Statements:

Musa Kunene

I did not appreciate or even understand my home until I was not able to return to it. This experience of being disconnected from my family and cultural background is archived in my work through drawings, paintings, and prints depicting shamanistic and initiation practices in Swaziland. In depicting these practices, my work presents the viewer with images of cow and goat skulls merged with human figures and biological elements to show the intrinsic connection that shamans have with the natural world. At the same time, I explore the idea of metamorphosis, showing the complex changes in perception that are experienced by shamans in their spiritual journeys. 

Emily Heiler

Home is a complex space; it’s where we learn to understand ourselves, others, and the roles we’re meant to play in the world. I paint images of my childhood home and my family. Focusing more closely on the dynamics between the women in my life. By looking at my past childhood surroundings, I explore my own connection to the concept of home. Our home was cluttered with plants, catholic iconography and objects girls collected. The strange objects that filled our home continue to influence me and my sisters; acting as icons of our shared experience.

José Linares

More often than not, I see a disconnection between people and myself as if there’s a wall between us. Differences in interpersonal relationships, empathy, and experiences drive home a sense of isolation that I’m invested in practicing in my oil paintings and my sculptures. Coming from a deeper curiosity on how we interact with the world, I use architecture as a tool to explore the psychology behind our settings and to demonstrate uncanny detachment and discord.

Athena Nugent

My subject matter is the duality between life and death in nature. I portray flora in their various states of vibrancy and decay. In my graphic style paintings, I use a four-color acrylic palette to emphasize content. Textured paper lends depth to the background contrasting with colors that are true to life. 

Alé Salamán

The work derives from an exploration of the digital landscape and those who inhabit it. In my paintings, I use figures with distorted proportions in order to represent large bodies going through the trials and tribulations of relationships, exploring identities, and how we’re making connections today. These connections are heavily informed by the internet and social media.

Ro Maiti

I am fascinated by my chaotic and unorganized stream of consciousness. The questioning of my mind translates into the questioning of sensory perception. My material is often composed of gears, cogs, wires, and many more inner workings of domestic household machines that we are used to upgrading and discarding. The plastic shells, metal frames, and chipboards have transformed into a personal type of clay to sculpt with. While referring to the intersection between machine and sentience, hardware and software are seen as more than just their technological components. They function as allegories to our computational processes. The work blends subjective perception with external reality and reimagines a new yet familiar world.