PROJECT OVERVIEW
The genesis for this experimental project, an extended artist-in-residence program for undergraduate students, was twofold: a celebration of the establishment of the Binghamton University School of the Arts and the loan of David Hammons’ Untitled from Art Bridges. The project reinforces the Binghamton University Art Museum as a space of co-curricular learning and active, interdisciplinary engagement with original works of art. The project encouraged the artists-in-residence to begin with Hammons’ wit, sarcasm, compassion, and complex practices but to move beyond them to explore questions of identity, culture, ritual, and artmaking.
The three Artists-in-Residence, Bryan Fernandez, Santiago Parra, Fahim Rahman, our student production assistant, Dahlia Bekong, and videographer, Ellie Borzilleri, have passionately and deeply engaged with Hammons’ work. We have considered his work both in person via the BUAM exhibition Street Specific (curated by Tom McDonough) featuring Untitled (1988, Art Bridges) and Phat Free (1995/1999, Latner Family Art Collection, Toronto), through seminar-style conversations about Hammons work, considering the ways that he interrogates the framework of the art world and confronts stereotypes, racism, and socioeconomics in his practice, and through AiR-designed workshops for other Binghamton students.
The proverbial fruits of this labor were on view at Spool Contemporary, which has, in many ways, functioned as another personality in the project. It provided the AiRs not with a blank slate but a site-specific framework with a deep history of its own, with which they had the opportunity to respond and engage through the creation and installation of their work.
Support for this project was generously provided by Art Bridges.
Artists-in-Residence
Bryan Fernandez is a senior studying music theory and composition. He composes for solo musicians, small combos, full orchestra, and anything in between. His work strikes a balance between humor, melancholy, and the weird and obscene.
Santiago Parra (b. 2000, New York City) is a first-generation Colombian-American multimedia artist and designer whose work intersects virtual and physical forms. His work combines digital processes (audio/video editing, 3D modeling) with tangible media (sculpture, installation, mixed media objects). Parra's work evokes an attachment to his cultural history, aided by emerging technologies.
Fahim Rahman is a Bangladeshi interdisciplinary artist from Bronx, New York. He majors in Graphic Design at Binghamton, exploring both digital and traditional media. While he is a graphic designer at heart, his work expands to painting, drawing, murals, animation, video and photography.
Support Team
Dahlia Bekong (student production assistant) is a sophomore, multidisciplinary artist & performer from Bronx, NY. Intending to enter into the Individualized Major Program, her creative and academic work centers around issues of Black and Queer Storytelling.
Ellie Borzilleri (videographer) is an interdisciplinary artist based and raised in New York. Currently a senior working towards a BA in Cinema, her work spans across film, digital media, painting, animation, and projection art – exploring feminine identity, attachment theory and the natural world. Bridging the gap between analog and digital media, she aims to translate the nuances of emotion into tangible art forms – capturing the raw essence of lived experience.
Project Curator
Claire Kovacs
INSTALLATION PHOTOS
Installation photographs courtesy of Katherine Keogh
COMPOSITIONS
DOCUMENTARY
EXHIBITION MATERIALS
All materials were designed by Fahim Rahman with assistance from Santiago Parra and Ellie Borzilleri.