With its turn-of-the-century Branford House mansion and a lawn that stretches to a lighthouse that serves as its iconic landmark, UConn\u2019s Avery Point campus is an elegant location that draws visitors to enjoy a panoramic view of Long Island Sound, complete with sea breezes and waves breaking on the shore.<\/p>\n
In the midst of a pandemic that has limited indoor activities at art galleries, the Avery Point campus offers an ideal location for an outdoor art exhibition, including sculpture, short films, and video artworks projected on the lighthouse and Branford House. Open Air is an exhibition of 11 outdoor installations through Sept. 30 and a selection of short art films, video artworks, and light installations presented in the evening on Thursday, Aug. 27 through Saturday, Aug. 28, from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.<\/p>\n
Charlotte Gray, curator of the Alexey von Schlippe Gallery at Avery Point, says after all campus buildings across the University moved to limited access in March, she began to think about how to continue presenting art to the public.<\/p>\n
\u201cLooking at other responses in the community and our beautiful campus grounds, I came up with the idea to offer an outdoor sculpture exhibit,\u201d Gray says. \u201cIt ended up turning into a much more dynamic show than we\u2019re able to offer in our indoor space at Branford House. It\u2019s one of those COVID silver linings exceeding our own ambitions and expectations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Putting out a call to artists through various online art forums, Gray had what she describes as \u201can incredible response from artists all over the world,\u201d because so few art galleries and museums could present a new exhibition during the pandemic.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause of COVID the availability of artworks and the excitement that artists felt about the show was greatly increased,\u201d she says. \u201cArtists have also been extremely accommodating in delivering and installing their artwork and helping each other. It\u2019s been a wonderful experience as a curator to see how our community is pulling together to produce something different than our usual exhibitions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many works link to the Avery Point campus\u2019 academic focus on marine science: there is video art that relates to whales and sandpipers, a sculpture made from driftwood, and wind-responsive works such as an aeolian harp that makes a humming noise, and a labyrinth constructed of flags that flap in the breeze. The sculpture portion of the exhibition is \u201cOpen Air by Day\u201d and the film portion is \u201cOpen Air by Night.\u201d<\/p>\n
The one work with a direct UConn connection is the short film \u201cMother of the Blueness\u201d (2020) by Shadia Heenan Nilforoush \u201920 MFA, a multidisciplinary artist working in video and performance. Her work seeks to reconcile polarizing senses of identity and re-contextualize ancestral trauma through her family archives and personal narrative. She is the recipient of the Crandall-Cordero Fellowship, the Barbara Bullitt Christian Memorial Award, and is a 2020 semi-finalist for the US Fulbright Fellowship. Her work has been exhibited nationally, including showings in New York, Hartford, Boston, and New Orleans.<\/p>\n
Nilforoush\u2019s film interweaves performance art, film, and cut-paper animation. The film progresses through a slow series of moving images that travel between moments of reflection and contemplation and then abruptly shifts to moments of neurosis and absurdism. Beti, the protagonist, portrayed by Nilforoush, seeks to heal the weight of blue in others, using the color blue to speak to the sensory, visceral experience of trauma.<\/p>\n
Nilforoush says she uses her multicultural background as an Iranian-American as part of the film\u2019s theme. Her mother was born in Kentucky, her father is Iranian, and her stepfather is Pakistani. She was born in Denver, grew up in Houston, and lived in Kansas City, Chicago, Washington, D.C. and in Louisville, where she earned her BFA from the Hite Art Institute at the University of Louisville, with a minor in psychology before arriving in Storrs. For several years, she has taught a form of yoga that promotes an enhanced feeling of safety for traumatized individuals.<\/p>\n
\u201cMother of the Blueness definitely does pull from my ancestral lineage, but the real seed of it is about trauma,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s something I studied not only in the context of art classes, but I teach yoga and I focus on trauma informed yoga, the whole area that connects yoga and psychology. That\u2019s what \u2018Mother of the Blueness\u2019 was about for me — exploring that seed of trauma. How can we face the trauma and break the cycle?\u201d<\/p>\n
Nilforoush continues to create new multimedia works, currently working on a photography project near her rural Connecticut home, documenting the landscape with the working title \u201cGarden of Salt.\u201d She says her multiple interests will continue to expand, with an eye toward teaching.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we weren\u2019t in a pandemic, I would love to teach art. I love helping students figuring out their skills and attach them to something meaningful, an idea or concept,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019ll always continue making work. Right now I\u2019m excited to be moving more in the direction of making work that\u2019s conceptual and meaningful but maybe not as heavy; having fun with materials, my hands and making things just for the sake of making it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Among the other works in the exhibition are:<\/p>\n