Maria Villanueva and Sean Lopez: The 13th Chair

Ruffin Gallery at the University of Virginia presents The 13th Chair, a multimedia installation and live performances by Maria Villanueva (UVA Assistant Professor, General Faculty, Digital Art) and Sean Lopez (University of Maine, PhD Candidate in Interdisciplinary Studies), with choreography by Rori Smith (University of Maine, PhD Candidate in Art & Philosophy). 

The 13th Chair explores transformation through a contemporary reenactment of the Last Supper, using this pivotal moment as a mirror for our own time of necessary change. Like the apostles gathered around that table, we find ourselves at a threshold confronting an uncertain future that demands we let go of what we have known.

Through performance, video, installation, and abstract movement, this multimedia experience examines how we carry our cultural histories and personal mythologies forward into an unknown phase of existence. The performers, moving as geometric forms that reshape and reconfigure, embody the tension between holding on and letting go between the weight of what we’ve accumulated and the necessity of transformation.

We interrogate the decisions we have made, the objects and artifacts we have given meaning, and the belief systems that have sustained us. As a generation standing at our own last supper, we prepare to release our grip on relevance while claiming the strength and responsiveness of minds that have witnessed profound change.

The thirteenth chair remains empty perhaps for the audience, perhaps for the betrayer among us. Who or what sits in that chair? The world that abandons us? The systems that fail us? Ourselves, complicit in our own undoing? This experimental work asks not just what we must become, but what we must reckon with in the process of becoming.

Maria Villanueva is a multimedia artist and her studio art practice focuses on the human and natural ecologies that shift and form in the urban and natural environment. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Columbus College of Art and Design in Ohio in 2009, and an MFA in Drawing and Painting from the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas in 2021. She is currently Assistant Professor of Digital Art at UVA.

Sean Lopez is an intermedia artist and educator who explores the boundary between conscious and subconscious realms through performance, projection mapping, and installation. Currently teaching at George Mason University’s College of Visual & Performing Arts, Lopez combines poetry, theater, folklore, and digital media to profane how humans both create and destroy their own dreams. Lopez is a PhD Candidate researching intermedia studies at the University of Maine and holds an MFA from the University of North Texas.

Rori Smith is a dancer and researcher of bodily experience based in midcoast Maine. Her work intersects environmental performance art, ecosomatic movement practices and phenomenology. She holds an MFA in Dance from Temple University and is currently a doctoral candidate in Art & Philosophy at the University of Maine and Associate Director of the somatic arts nonprofit Watermark Arts.

Peformers & collaborators: Rory Adams, Bree Bozeman, Spirit Chavis, Sophie Chung, Shane Everhart, Carson Harter, Asha Hussain, Annie Kang, Anika Kashyap, Mysha Mosharaf, TS Richter, Isaac Thorne, and Raisa Mumtaheena.

Exhibition reception: October 30, 5–7pm, Ruffin Hall. Performances: October 30, 6–7pm and December 4, 6–7pm, Ruffin Hall.

Ruffin Gallery at University of Virginia
Since 2008, the Ruffin Gallery has been an active part of the Studio Art program. Each year the gallery hosts four to six exhibits that serve as one of the University’s most important showcases for contemporary art and are an integral part of the Studio Art experience. Students are involved with the production of these exhibitions and gain valuable experience in the handling and hanging of exhibits. Every Spring the gallery is the site of the Fourth-Year Thesis and Aunspaugh Fellows Exhibitions. The openings are important occasions when the Studio Art program celebrates the successful completion of the major.

Press contact: Elena Yu, Gallery & Visiting Artist Project Manager, University of Virginia Art Department, ruffin-gallery [​at​] virginia.edu.

Follow @uva_artdepartment on Instagram to stay up to date on Ruffin Gallery happenings. This exhibition is supported by the UVA Department of Art and the Peter B. and Adeline W. Ruffin Foundation.