Last Friday was the last day to see the first part of the Pratt Institute’s annual MFA theses exhibition at the Pfizer Building on Flushing Avenue in Brooklyn. From March 27 to April 7, Making Place: Stories and Heritage, hosted by former Pratt Sofía Shaula Reeser-del Rio, officially featured the practices of 21 Pratt MFA candidates. Spanning both traditional and new media, the works on display explored and restructured collective and personal narratives within the framework of race and culture, sex and gender, language and geography, and beyond.
Upon entering the 7th floor gallery space, I came across a curious but inviting threshold flanked by two large-scale painted portraits covered in intricate designs. Examining notions of belonging and being a stranger between two cultures, painter Monica Srivastava painstakingly painted her self-portraits intertwined with the jali pattern, or the lattice-carved wooden or stone screens that inform and embellish Indian architecture. Srivastava rendered her self-portrait 10 times with varying levels of figurative ambiguity through the colorful reinterpretation of the jali and its fragmentation of light, placing herself in the landscape of ancient Indian temples and tombs to solidify her identity as an Indian woman in light of the diaspora.
Beyond the door, Srivastava curated a selection of sari textiles hung and draped from the ceiling in a warm, dimly lit mini-room with a painted tile floor, further exploring how fabric connotes family and cultural connectivity and lineage. . Srivastava literally conveys the comfort and discomfort of existing on the threshold between two cultures – neither of which would willingly claim you as one of its own.
Just beyond the Srivastava section was a large multimedia installation by Sarah Wang Pitts, a half-Chinese artist from London, unpacking the concept of language loss as a mixed-race experience. Made from “broken” drawings, prints, sculptures and calligraphy, Wang Pitts’ 2022 installation “Family of Memory” addresses stories told orally and the holes that ensue when native languages are not spoken. not transmitted to the next generation after the diaspora.
Ethan Tasa used his technical skills in drawing, painting, and printmaking to come to terms with his internalized conflicts surrounding the culture and expectations of being raised in South Dakota. In calm, washed-out acrylic paintings that allude to interspecies relationships and pastoral landscapes and exaggerated postcard replicas of tourist attractions such as Mount Rushmore and Badlands National Park, Tasa examines disconnection with larger preconceptions. of South Dakota in relation to lived experiences. Tasa also represents herself in oppositions – both figurative and symbolic, colorful and black and white, realistic and arbitrary – to appropriate her narrative and personal history, her contradictions and all. I especially liked the parrots lovingly rendered by Tasa that appeared frequently in her section.
The textile practices of Miranda Ratner and Olivia Terian immediately grabbed attention with explosive colors and inviting tactile fantasy. Through their own devices, Ratner and Terian independently highlight the world’s irresponsible creation, consumption and disposal of textile and plastic waste through the reuse of said materials. Engaging viewers with the sensory excitement of a ceiling installation that emulates a baby maze roller coaster toy coupled with utilitarian yet abstract woven bags and blankets, Terian uses materiality to reflect on experience through NYC excellence of “convenience is king”. And Ratner marries opposites through his waste-based fractal wall hangings and sculptures that reference the ceremonial elements of Jewish weddings.
Pakistani artist Noormah Jamal drew on layers of nuanced representation and generational baggage through her paintings, pastel works and ceramic sculptures rooted in the culture and aesthetics of her Pakhtoon (Pashtun) upbringing. On the ground, Jamal planted her Bloom (2023) series, a variety of solemn-looking glazed ceramic human faces bursting with leaves like heads of cabbage, on a mound of dark mulch interspersed with smaller ceramic Weeds (2023). These sculptures address the complexities of ancestral lands and boundaries, neglect and trauma, and resurrection from the ruins of global repression. Through his 2D works, Jamal colorfully renders everyday life folded into imaginary stories and exaggerated landscapes that resist stereotypical depictions of Muslim people in contemporary art.
Each of the artists featured in Making Place: Stories and Heritage developed a unique and individual language to represent their stories and personal autonomy in an environment that relies on division and prioritization of those with privilege. If you couldn’t see the first part, be sure to put Making Place: politics and the body on the calendar for the second part, opening on April 24 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Featuring the thesis work of the remaining 20 artists from the 2023 cohort, Part Two will be available until May 5.
