Tactics for existence in a state of aftermath and re-creation
August 18–27, 2023
Participating artists: Min Baek, Mel Brown, Maxime Cavajani, Mae Eskenazi, Rudy Gerson, Yihan Huang, Jingyi Li, taylor manigoult, Kevin Mulvey, Aislinn Pentecost-Farren, Adrienne Reid, Chenxi Shao, Vy Trịnh, lexi welch, and Susannah Yugler.
WORTHLESSSTUDIOS: 7 Knickerbocker Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11237
Gallery hours: Open daily (closed Tuesday), 12–6pm
Opening reception: August 18, 6–9pm
Performances: August 25, 26, and 27 at 8pm / The Company by Susannah Yugler
Website: Aftermath 2023
For press: If you have any press enquiries about this exhibition, please contact us at upenn.mfa.2023 [at] gmail.com
Aftermath is a group exhibition of tactics for existence in a state of aftermath and re-creation. Fifteen artists reach into the archive, the intimate, the ancestral, the internet, the left-over, the covered-over. Their works assert a catalog of responses to aftermath conditions: witnessing demands no/thing wasted, transgressing the violent Western logics of time is imperative, dreaming invites the participation of non-humans, archiving includes that which refuses visibility. Along paths that require engagement with fuzziness, abstraction, and ghosts, these artists walk toward what cannot be spoken. Across mediums, across sites, across bodies, a record is formed of tactics for existence in an aftermath.
All the artists are recent graduates from the Masters of Fine Arts program at the Weitzman School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania. Approaches, mediums, perspectives, and styles are vast and distinct, and speak to varied aesthetic and political paradigms. Many of these works were made side-by-side, across the hall, or along the same table saw, but the collection does not propose singularity. This exhibition represents what comes of the formalization of art practices within an MFA program, and so the works both resonate against and resist one another.
This exhibition is co-presented with Worthlessstudios and is supported by the Masters of Fine Arts Department at the Weitzman School of Design, The Weitzman School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania, The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation, and the University of Pennsylvania Graduate and Professional Student Assembly.
