University Hall Gallery
2020 Fall Programming
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Corey Escoto
Booed Off the Stage, 2016
All artist talks will take place online with exact times and links to be announced. See below for details on the artists.
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Letter from the Director:
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To our valued audience members,
2020 has been an immensely challenging year for the arts. At UMass Boston, we have been forced to adapt to the new paradigms of social distancing and the struggles of remote learning amid the ongoing global pandemic. These realities have forced the university to close the campus out of an abundance of caution, and we stand in solidarity with this decision for the safety of our community. The University Hall Gallery will continue to operate remotely until further notice by bringing impactful artworks and art experience to the students and classrooms of UMass Boston, as well as the larger community of Greater Boston, through online programming.
Despite the challenges that the pandemic has posed, we have seen a cultural revolution in this country around civil rights, the imperative of equity, and the course of the state of politics in this country. We must all claim the immense responsibilities inherent in continuing the push of towards racial justice. As Chancellor Marcelo Suárez-Orozco so eloquently wrote in a recent open letter on the injustice of Breonna Taylor’s murder by police, “We must all act in a way that embodies an ethos and practice based on respect for the dignity of all human beings.” The dignity of humanity is why I have dedicated my life’s work to caring for artworks and supporting artists. In this moment, at a confluence of so many crises caught in the center of a contentious presidential election, it is important to turn towards the arts to renew and recenter our humanity by finding inspiration in the wisdom, creativity, and keen sense of empathy that art can so beautifully convey.
It is with this sentiment that we are happy to announce our 2020 fall programming, which brings artists talks to the public through online events focused on artists that deal with issues of redemption, loss, humor, and platonic intimacy. I hope you can join us at these events and that you remain engaged with our program, as our work at the gallery is completed with your viewership and participation.
I would like to thank all of the students, viewers, artists, colleagues and collaborators who have made our program possible this year. As always, our exhibitions and events are free and open to the public. If you would like to support our mission by bringing original art experience to the students of UMass Boston and the general public, please follow the link here to contribute. All proceeds go directly to supporting our program through artist honoraria, publications, and production costs for new exhibitions and events. This year’s programs are made possible with such contributions from generous individual donors, as well as support from the Paul Hayes Tucker Fund, and an unrestricted gift from the Paul and Edith Babson Foundation.
I would like to wish you all good health, peace, and safety during this difficult time. Please stay in touch and stay involved. We can get through this together.
Sincerely,
Sam Toabe
Gallery Director
University Hall Gallery
Arts on the Point
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MOHAMAD HAFEZ
10.22.20 | Time TBA
We are excited to host internationally recognized artist Mohamad Hafez as part of our fall programming. We were set to open a solo-exhibition with Hafez in September of 2020, which has been delayed due to the pandemic. We will present a survey exhibition of his work when the gallery is able to safely reopen.
Mohamad Hafez
Framed Nostalgia 2, detail, 2019
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A Syrian-American artist and architect, Mohamad Hafez was born in Damascus, raised in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and educated in the Midwestern United States. Expressing the juxtaposition of East and West within him, Hafez’s art reflects the political turmoil in the Middle East through the compilation of found objects, paint and scrap metal. Using his architectural skills, Hafez creates surrealistic Middle Eastern streetscapes that are architectural in their appearance yet politically charged in their content.
Responding to the atrocities of the Syrian war, Hafez’s recent work depicts cities besieged by the civil war to capture the magnitude of the devastation and to expose the fragility of human life. However, in contrast to the violence of war, his art imbues a subtle hopefulness through its deliberate incorporation of verses from the Holy Quran. At the core of Hafez’s work, the verses offer a distinct contrast between the stark pessimistic reality of destruction and the optimistic hope for a bright future. Scenes reiterate narratives from the Qur’an to affirm that, even during the darkest of times, patience is necessary for the blossoming of life and that, eventually, justice will prevail.
Mohamad Hafez, Nostalgia Framed 2, 2019
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COREY ESCOTO
10.29.20 | Time TBA
Corey Escoto
Fake Tears, 2016
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Corey Escoto is a multidisciplinary artist whose recent work, a body of experimental large format analog photographic works created with a "Polaroid" format, seamlessly fuses multi-exposure image-fragments into visually flummoxing illusions of space and text. With the Hollywood film industry and common cinematic tropes as their subject, Escoto’s photographs both embody and examine the idea of illusion building, and by extension reinforces the mutually causal relationship between the events that comprise the contemporary social and political everyday, and the mass media machine (in all of its forms) that attempts to describe it.
Additionally, Corey is creating a new series of bronze tissue box sculptures exploring the emotional response to a sustained climate of fear and uncertainty.
Corey Escoto, The New Normal, 2020, bronze and tissue paper
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DELL HAMILTON
11.10.20 | Time TBA
Dell Hamilton
Emulsions of Desire #23, 2010
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Dell Marie Hamilton is an interdisciplinary artist, writer and independent curator whose artist talks, performances and collaborative projects have been presented to a wide variety of audiences in New York at Five Myles Gallery, Panoply Performance Lab, and MOCADA, as well as in the New England area at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, MIT, Boston University, the Museum of Fine Arts/Boston, the ICA/Boston, and the Rhode Island School of Design Art Museum.
She has also frequently performed with Afro-Cuban artist Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons at venues such as the Guggenheim Museum (New York), the National Portrait Gallery (Washington, D.C.) and the Peabody Essex Museum (Massachusetts). Most recently, Dell became the first visual artist to present a performance artwork at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown and participated in the 13th Havana Biennial as part of Campos-Pons’s curatorial project “Intermittent Rivers,” which was ranked by Hyperallergic.com as one of 2019’s top international exhibitions.
Working across a variety of mediums including performance, video, painting and photography, she uses the body to investigate the social and geopolitical constructions of memory, gender, history and citizenship. With roots in Belize, Honduras and the Caribbean, she frequently draws upon the personal experiences of her family as well as the folkloric traditions and histories of the region.
In 2019, Dell also presented her first solo show “All Languages Welcomed HERE,” which was recently reviewed by NKA: Journal of Contemporary African Art and her curatorial project “Nine Moments for Now” was ranked by Hyperallergic.com as one of 2018’s top 20 exhibitions in the U.S.
Dell M. Hamilton, Blues\Blank\Black, 2016, Performance at the Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African and African American Art at Harvard University, December 22, 2016. Photo: Melissa Blackall
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JILLIAN FREYER
11.19.20 | Time TBA
Jillian Freyer
Drag, 2018
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Jillian Freyer (b. 1989) holds a BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design and an MFA from the Yale School of Art, where she has been awarded the John Ferguson Weir Award for overall excellence in the Yale School of Art. She has exhibited her photographs throughout the US and internationally, including the Aperture Foundation, The Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, LTD Los Angeles, Back Gallery Project, and David Zwirner Gallery. A forthcoming excerpt of the artist's series '42 Wayne' will be exhibited at the Giardini di Porta Venezia in Milan, hosted by Vogue Italia, and an exhibit at the Benaki Museum for the Athens Photo Festival in Greece. Her work has been featured in various publications, such as T Magazine and GUP Magazine, and commissioned by GQ, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Wallpaper Magazine, The Atlantic, and INC Magazine. Jillian's work employs still and moving images to explore the notion of experience as touch and emotional and physical endurance performed through female bodies. She is interested in using the camera as a mediator to observe the tension and sensuality between her subjects.
Jillian Freyer, Three Women, 2018
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SHELTER IN PLACE GALLERY
Eben Haines & Delaney Dameron
12.03.20 | Time TBA
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About Shelter in Place Gallery:
"Run by Eben Haines and Delaney Dameron, our main goal is to show artists' work during a period when galleries and museums are closed, studios are often hard to access, and both monetary and social resources for artists are slim. The gallery began as a rainy day project, to serve as a background for maquettes of larger works Eben had neither the space nor budget to produce.
When the pandemic hit, and stay at home orders went into place, it became clear that many artists might not be able to make or show work for some time. The miniature scale of the gallery works to counteract this in a multitude of ways, most notably the fact that being small means that artists don't necessarily need access to their studios to create work, and can do so from home. Even without studios, artists are able to make much more ambitious work than they could ever afford to at full scale, let alone have shown in a commercial gallery in Boston. Hopefully we allow people to make the work they've always wanted to make.
We know how important art is to building our impression of the world around us. Right now, when the world is seemingly falling apart, we look to those who are able to distill their own experience into something visible. Art not only allows us to take in multiple perspectives far outside of our own, but also reminds us that the anger, the fear, the joy and suffering and triumph that we cycle through each day is not ours alone to bear and witness. We look to art to educate, to let information filter in through a familiar channel, and we are increasingly reliant on alternative spaces to show us work that speaks truth to power, that reflect society outside of the increasingly beige art market.
We make no claim of having met this demand, but it is our aim to elevate the voices in our community that speak to our shared issues through art, especially when brick and mortar spaces are unable to.
Since its inception, the mission of the gallery has grown as the art world continues to change drastically. We hope to continue to run a platform that makes both showing work and viewing work more accessible for all.
The project is supported by a Transformative Public Art grant from the City of Boston Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture."
Delaney Dameron and Eben Haines pictured in their apartment, the Shelter in Place Gallery behind them, with the work of Loretta Park
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The University Hall Gallery will remain closed until further notice.
About the gallery:
The University Hall Gallery at UMass Boston was founded in the Fall of 2016. It produces exhibitions and events for the Art Department with a mission to make artwork accessible for the public and students across disciplines with an emphasis on pluralism and fostering visual literacy.
For more information, email us at: UHGallery@umb.edu
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