Exhibit depicts trauma from a year of COVID-19, racial violence

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Catherine Spencer started having repressed and manipulated memories at 5 years old, caused by a change in how her body read DNA. She experienced physical and emotional pain.

“My art practice was born out of this pain that I experienced and is a reflection of my own resilience and evolution after suffering,” said Spencer, who, along with Alvin Huang and Jihun Choi, is one of six featured artists at Syracuse University’s Masters of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition at Point of Contact Gallery.

In some of her work at the “Carrying the Thick Present: Fabulation” exhibition, which runs until May 21, Spencer explores misinformation and the overindulgence of digital spaces as a metaphor for her experiences. Digital spaces provide an escape from reality — similar to the wishes of those suffering.

The artists investigate what makes humanity difficult and complicated in their work in the exhibition, said Sara Felice, director of Point of Contact Gallery. Inspired by the pandemic, the exhibition aims to present the communal trauma of the past year, she said.

Spencer makes art to help cope with her past trauma. For much of her childhood, she lived in the rural town of Scott, New York, and she would escape to the nearby woods to isolate herself from others. In the woods, she would observe the rusty, sharp farming equipment and how the plants pushed back against it.

Inspired by the pandemic, the exhibition aims to present the communal trauma of the past year. Christopher Scarglato | Asst. Culture Editor

“It was like they were reclaiming it and thriving despite this foreign object invading this natural space. I would see a lot of visual patterns and relationships between the plants themselves,” Spencer said. “I was always really curious about understanding how the ecosystem worked perfectly together so that these spaces could exist.”

Felice said she and curator Manuela Hansen wanted to unite feelings of isolation, stimulation, grief, loss and community through the exhibit. The pandemic created an overarching theme that connected the art, and Felice thinks of the exhibition as a conversation — one that can only happen through art.

Huang added that he is often frustrated over the lack of conversation about social issues. The M.F.A. candidate was born in New York, grew up in the U.K. and currently lives in Taiwan. He said that his complex identity rarely bothers him. Instead, he sees it as an advantage, often looking at his work from all three cultural perspectives.

In doing so, Huang, whose work is at the exhibit, considers biodiversity and nature — two of his childhood passions — as road maps for dealing with social issues. “The modern society system creates an illusion that we are apart from nature,” Huang said. He added that many people lose sight of diversity in wildlife because they feel distanced from it, using the movie “Zootopia” as an example.

“Carrying The Thick Present: Fabulation” features work from six M.F.A. students. Christopher Scarglato | Asst. Culture Editor

“If we can accept a fictional world where rabbits can get along with foxes, I see no reason why we can’t live in a world where all races live in harmony,” Huang said. “This same notion applies to nationality, gender, class and so on. In this sense, I choose to use biodiversity as a figure of speech to address these conflicts and issues.”

Choi has felt the need to speak out since watching the #NotAgainSU protests unfold, he was disappointed with the response from SU officials. Being an international student, he was surprised, frustrated and confused about how to contribute to the movement, and had fears about joining it.

Since he has transformed his anger about hate crimes against the Asian and Asian American communities into energy. He has spent months working on films about racial inequity, and as the pandemic hit and anti-Asian racism intensified, his passion for expressing his Asian identity did, too.

“Seeing stories of physical violence and harassment and an ‘unseen’ look in people’s faces towards Asian people brought me to questioning the humanities and my identity deeper to find out why this thing is happening and how I could contribute to the community,” Choi said. “Experiencing these moments shifted my artistic intent and research into the complexities of humanities.”