Category Archives: FINA Gallery Exhibitions

The FINA gallery in the foyer of the Creative and Critical Studies Building hosts exhibitions throughout the year.

Materiality

Materiality features interactive works on the relationship between nature and technology by David Kadish and Jeannette Angel. The exhibition runs in conjunction with The Interdisciplinary Graduate Students’ Conference, Rethinking Sustainability, The discussions of the conference is intended to generate conversation on the role of the arts in sustainability across multiple communities.

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(147.001+105.002)

University of British Columbia students from within two distinctly different FCCS courses developed this collaborative exhibition of works. VISA 105 students are producing sculptural works in their first year of the BFA program; here they are experimenting with occupying space in a sculptural and interactive way. VISA 147 students are members of a wide range of departments, from Management to the Sciences and beyond. They are taking the course as an elective in which they have the opportunity to learn about the world of contemporary art while also developing their own art-making abilities.

Each student’s work was juried into this exhibition by their peers, and it has been our pleasure to help them curate and hang the selection. Special thanks go to Crystal Baird, Devon Hess, Wenloong Loh, Rachel Mercer and Melanie Oberg for their hard work installing the show.

Kyle Miller and Kacie Auffret

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Animal Tested – an installation by MFA Student Kacie Auffret

Kacie says about her work:

My artwork takes a critical view on the human and “non­human” relationship. I examine how animals are seen as tools or resources to be used by humans and, more specifically, how
the “non­human” is used for food, clothing, or research purposes. My work seeks to draw the audience in with the subject matter through the strategic use of video installation, photographs, performance art, and printmaking. A question that I pose through the installation, Animal Tested, is, how would an eco­feminist artist address the theme of what eco­feminist Lori Gruen calls “entangled empathy”? (Strangers to nature: animal lives and human ethics) What Gruen, a philosopher and critical animal studies scholar, means is that

“[e]ntangled empathy is a process whereby individuals who are empathizing with others first respond to the other’s condition (most likely but not exclusively, by way of a pre­cognitive empathetic reaction) (Strangers to nature: animal lives and human ethics).

My goal in Animal Tested is to foster a conscious experience of entangled empathy through the installation by encouraging the viewer to acknowledge all the suffering and death of non­humans that takes place in laboratories throughout Canada. My hope is each viewer will feel compassion for the non­humans that suffered either before they entered the gallery space or once they have left.

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