Join us for a compelling look behind the scenes of our current exhibition, HUMAN NATURE, where faculty artist Carla Stetson will share her research and process in preparation for creating her work on display at the Handwerker Gallery.
Human Nature: Carla StetsonOctober 31–December 16, 2018December 6, 6 p.m.: Artist TalkHandwerker Gallery Animals serve a multiplicity of functions for humans: pets, food, clothing, medicine, proxies, aides, symbols of power or industriousness, and more. Their role in relation to humans, who are, after all, animals themselves, is a murky and highly contested ground. While we revere some animals, we loathe and fear others, and pay no attention to many. Carla Stetson’s recent work raises questions about animal and human interdependency, how we imagine animals to be, and what they mean to us as we consider the natural/cultural/societal issues of the world we share. Uncanny compositions depict wild animals within domestic interior spaces where they do not belong: nesting within a braided rug, stuck under an overstuffed chair, flitting against floral wallpaper. Defying standard human convention of barricading wild things outside our homes, here they are invited inside and fed from the table. Narratives arise, psychoses are explored, and power struggles ensue in the border ecology of Stetson’s imaginative dreamscape.