Jessica Kallista is an artist working in collage, video, sound, and performance. She is also an educator, curator, and gallerist. She received her MFA in Creative Writing with a concentration in poetry from George Mason University in 2002. In November 2014 she founded Olly Olly, an alternative art space, in Fairfax, Virginia. Jessica has taught collage at the Corcoran School of Arts & Design GW and poetry, critical theory, aesthetics, and writing for artists at George Mason University. In summer 2020 she began curating and co-moderating CVPA's Arts in Context Kritikos Anti-Racist Reading Group. She serves on the GMU Presidential Anti-Racism and Inclusive Excellence Task Force.
Through her multi-faceted work in visual, literary, sound, and performance art, Jessica seeks to disrupt the passive nihilism intrinsic in much of everyday life by creating situations of surprise, play, pleasure, and experimentation while instigating dialogue and experience around embodiment, identity, race, sexuality, feminism, decolonization, commodity fetishism, spirituality, and inter-connectivity.
Jessica’s work has been exhibited at a variety of venues including Tempus Projects, Galerie Kritiku Prague, Rhizome, VisArts, Greater Reston Arts Center, Watergate Gallery, Target Gallery, The Torpedo Factory Art Center, The Fridge, Fenwick Gallery at George Mason University, Joan Hisaoka Healing Arts Gallery, and the Margaret W. and Joseph L. Fisher Art Gallery.
Boris Willis x Vivek Narayanan
Statement
Encounters works with a “metahuman creator” and Replica, a software that uses artificial intelligence to generate vocal performances, to fashion a series of nameless, interchangeable and technically imaginary but still compelling faces and voices that narrate a series of texts. The texts, all under the heading of “Encounters”, have been written by Willis and Narayanan—apart from the two epigraphs; each text has been recorded in at least two versions by different AI voice actors. Through the combination of vignettes, characters and unreal worlds, "Encounters" uses the constructs of modern games and animation to point to something real
Boris Willis
Boris Willis is Associate Professor of Computer Game Design at George Mason University the founder of Black Russian Games, and Chief Artistic Officer of Boris Willis Moves. He has performed with and Streb, Jacob’s Pillow’s Men Dancers and Liz Lerman. He is the founder of the dance video blog danceaday.com. Willis has an MFA in Dance and Technology from The Ohio State University, a BFA in Dance from George Mason University and is a graduate of The NC School of the Arts. He is the recipient of a Kennedy Center Local Dance Commission, a Virginia Commission for the Arts Choreography Fellowship, and was a 2018 Artist in Residence at The Watermill Center.
Vivek Narayanan
Vivek Narayanan’s books of poems include Universal Beach, Life and Times of Mr. S, and the forthcoming After. He teaches in the creative writing program at Mason.
Holly Mason Badra
Holly Mason Badra is a queer, Kurdish-American poet that graduated from the George Mason University MFA Creative Writing (Poetry) program in 2017. Her poems, interviews, and reviews have been published in various journals—some can be found on her website, Hollymorganmason.com. She currently lives in Northern Virginia with her wife and dog, and is on the administrative team in the GMU English department.
Statement:
Sitting down with Deb in conversation, what stood out to me was her interest in community and the collective and as related to her creation process and pieces. We talked about the dichotomies of isolation/stillness and being nourished by connection with others, even strangers—that push and pull. That balance. The idea of balance led into thoughts around spiritual practice and objects as spiritual. We talked about reclaiming spirituality and spiritual practice outside of the constraints of organized religion from childhood. We talked about care. We talked about caring for the self, for others, for plants. Collective care. This opened up space to think about touch. What emerged was a dichotomy but two elements that seem to exist together when conjuring presence or care or wellness: "grounded" and "lift." From here, a poem was born. The poem that fluidly spilled out of this conversation is interested in noticing softness, acknowledging hunger, and creating space for observation as meditation. The speaker in the poem uses the natural world as space for meditation. And the visual artist and artwork grew from the silences, sounds, tones, images, and themes that range in the poem.
Deb Sivigny
Deb Sivigny is a theatre designer and visual artist who has been working the DC area for over 20 years. She is the writer-creator of HELLO, MY NAME IS… an immersive installation about Korean adoptees which was produced by The Welders in 2017, and the subsequent design work was exhibited at the 2019 Prague Quadrennial. She received the Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Scenic Design for Forgotten Kingdoms at Rorschach Theatre and is a five-time nominee. She is on the faculty in the School of Theater at George Mason University teaching scenic and costume design.
Statement
Caught, Aloft, and Pause all explore the idea of being simultaneously protected and trapped and the cycle of emotions that flow through different points of self-awareness. Constructed of wire and paper, the elements appear to grapple with themselves and each other until they find a harmony.
As Holly and I collaborated on this project, we found common themes of grounding and lifting as we spoke about past experiences with spiritual practice and how it felt to spend time in relative isolation during the pandemic. The image of the feather and flight became a central motif in these works, imagining something both fragile and strong, ephemeral, and grounding.
Angela Terry
Angela Terry is an MFA graphic design student at George Mason. She is a graphic designer as well as a professor at Northern Virginia Community college.
Statement
i am black. i am female. i am not always seen or heard by others. but i am here.
Jordan McRae
Jordan McRae (pronouns: he/him/his) is an interdisciplinary artist and a fierce advocate for racial equity and social justice. As a performing artist, Jordan plays the saxophone (soprano, alto, tenor, and baritone), the clarinet, and is an amateur vocalist. As a visual artist, Jordan paints artwork influenced by abstract expressionism, cubism, and impressionism. As a writer, Jordan creates prose and poetry that is introspective and reflective. Currently, Jordan is working towards his M.A. in the College of Visual and Performing Arts' Arts Management program. Professionally, Jordan is the Grants Manager for Mamatoto Village, a nonprofit organization dedicated to reproductive and social justice, and maternal health equity for Black womxn.
Statement
When contemplating the exhibit theme—conjuring presence—I thought about what truly makes me present and grounded. Radical Honesty is a reflective piece that is influenced by my meditation practice. Previously, I struggled with being grounded and emotionally present in all aspects of my life. It was not until the passing of my maternal grandmother that I recognized how poorly I was coping with grief, loss, and death. Following her passing, I started a daily meditation practice. And while I still struggle with being present and grounded, my daily practice gives me space to breathe, observe my thoughts, and ground myself before the day commences. Radical Honesty aims to show my internal progression with my mindfulness journey.
StrangeLens x KS Keeney
StrangeLens
StrangeLens is an experimental multidisciplinary artist combining both physical and digital work media, as well as performance and film
Statement
My work deals with external and internal. It's broad, encrypted and on the loop
KS Keeney
KS Keeney is currently an MFA candidate in poetry at George Mason University. They also received an MA in Film Studies from Ohio University. She has been previously published in deComp, Quaker, Tishman Review, and Roanoke Review, among others. Currently, she is working on her thesis, an exploration of fashion, desire, and the body.
Statement
My work is often about desire, the desire for things, people, and emotions, and these poems are a reflection of the intersection between a relationship, and the inherent longing within, and the way those desires express themselves.
Simonne Francis x
Jax Ohashi
Simonne Francis
Simonne Francis is a third-year MFA candidate at George Mason University. She currently serves as the Blog Editor for So to Speak. Simonne strives to situate her poetry to be in conversation with poets of the past, and attempts to expand upon the experiences and narratives of her Black and Caribbean cultures.
Statement
Once Jax shared with me their idea for the art piece, I started thinking about what/who has traditionally been erased from historical texts. I’ve dabbled in creating erasures of historical, mostly legal, documents in the past, and this project inspired me to start erasing The Constitution. The resulting poem attempts to highlight who The Constitution was written for and who it is still designed to protect in present time.
Jax Ohashi
Jax Ohashi was born and raised in Fairfax, VA. He holds a BFA in Industrial Design from the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, NY. After what he hopes to be his last existential crisis, he has come to George Mason University in Fairfax, VA to complete his MFA in Sculpture.
Statement
I found common ground with my poet, Simonne Francis, on the topics of history, representation, and erasure (poetry). The piece I made for this show, which fittingly takes place in a university library, resembles the form of a book. Inside the “pages” is not an offering of content, but an “erasure” that takes the form of a stylized cut-out cross section of a human being. The ties for the accordion pages reference the form of butterflies, a universal symbol of hope, travel, and change. I’ve come to see this piece not as an artist’s book but as a maquette for a larger sculpture where viewers can peer in between the pages and wonder: how much presence do the people like me hold in history? What parts are missing? Can we ever get the whole story?
Lu Tran x Arianne Payne
Lu Tran
Primarily focusing on understanding familial ties, Lu’s work explores the concept of a homeland, a sense of place, visibility, and memory. They romanticize the mundane, cementing brief, fleeting moments, into something visual, into obsessive and recurrent thoughts, into long, meandering sentences. Their work is a monologue, an attempt at an offering, aching for connection, but consistently moving adjacently, failing to make contact. Lu is a current Studio Art MFA candidate at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Statement
Bánh tét is so simple. A sticky log of rice that clings to your dishes and fingers, strings of banana leaf you can never fully get off your slice. Adam always liked bánh tét chuối. A soft baby, cheeks full of red bananas, waiting while bà cố tied the dozens of logs for churches and shops where everyone would know me because of these perfect little gifts. Dozens, maybe hundreds for every Viet family in the community (maybe an exaggeration) including, most importantly, ours. The pork was my favorite. Almost powdery mung beans and soft, fatty chunks of pork slick with sweet fish sauce and pickles. The sweet smell that instantly launches me into celebration for lunar new year, a smell reminding me to mumble my terrible, broken Viet under my breath, practicing. A smell that ties me to her, and to mom, and to grandma, and to the young versions of me and Adam, still sweet and bright and unknowing. A smell that tethers me to home, and to an unknown place, and to the shops that still know me and the ones that don’t, and to the people who knew her and the ones who didn’t, but maybe knew someone like her.
The sticky no-longer-discernible-grains of rice coats my fingers and clings to my fork, and the fat lingers in my mouth, and on my tongue, and my teeth, and my gums, and my cheeks, and the string ties us together and makes me feel seen, and useful, and lets them know I still love them and is impossible to fully rid. And in the creases of me or the threads of banana leaf I could never fully get off my slice, it’s here, somewhere.
Arianne Payne
Primarily centering Black womanhood, Arianne Payne’s work explores concepts of intersectionality, grief, familial lineage, histories of resistance, and liberation. Originally from Chicago, IL, Arianne is currently an MFA Poetry Candidate at George Mason University.
Statement
This poem is in conversation with Lu Tran’s Something that won’t nourish, but makes me feel full. I wanted to engage with the idea of “passing down” and sometimes having to be re-introduced to cultural customs from our elders—how that is a kind of archival and citational practice to conjure presence and keep traditions alive. This piece aims to connect across time and through generations, making larger arguments about the wisdom within communities of color and the importance of cultural preservation. In fleeting moments, in sage lessons, in rice stuck to the table, in questions with unknown answers—I also wanted to highlight how grief can simultaneously be a gift and heartache.
Bita Ghavami x Eli Vandegrift
Bita Ghavami
Bita Ghavami is a multidisciplinary artist and movement + breathwork facilitator. She received her BFA from George Mason University and completed her 200-hour yoga teacher training at Beloved Yoga. Bita is interested in exploring the spiritual nature of art & somatic practices, as well as how they ground us in the world. Approaching concepts around ecofeminism, identity and interconnection, social and environmental justice, collective healing, and the human ability to shift consciousness, Bita believes that engagement through nature, art, and the body, especially in community, can create new worlds.
Statement
It begins with the body. Because we, in our aliveness, are embodied beings, our true nature is presence. Beneath imprints of trauma, egoic impressions of self and other, and capitalist/colonialist constructions, there coruscates our presence—right here, with the earth. We are abundant and multitudinal, in relationship with one another and all things through the pulse of life. Every moment is an opportunity to shapeshift our bodies and transmute our inner worlds, to tune into the thread that connects us, to experience our inherent presence.
Through somatic movement, connection with nature, and communion with the elements, I perform a ritual of embodiment—that of our true nature, of our interconnectedness, of the cyclic, fluid quality of creation.
Lokah samastah sukhino bhavantu // May all beings be happy and free
Eli Vandegrift
Eli Vandegrift (they/them/theirs) received their BA in English with concentrations in Cultural Studies and Creative Writing from George Mason University in 2020. Now a first year MFA candidate in poetry, they decided to pursue graduate school mainly to keep their library privileges. Eli is the recipient of the 2020 Joseph A. Lohman III Award in Poetry from GMU and the Academy of American Poets. They are interested in hybrid genres, hybrid creatures, and the relentless fluidity of being. Their work is featured in Pussy Magic, poets.org, Entropy, The TEMZ Review, Feral, Angel Rust, and Capsule Stories.
Statement:
While working on these poems, I was particularly interested in the idea of presence in its connection to the body, especially responding to the questions—Are we living in the present moment? What does it look and feel like to be present in our bodies? When we leave this realm, is our presence still felt? My work recently has been interested in the idea of the humanimal, or on the intersections between human identity and animal identity/embodiment. With “lichen i.” and “lichen ii.” I attempt to explore the image and embodiment of lichen as a way of navigating body and presence. Lichen is not quite animal, not quite fungi or plant, and so I was interested in the ways we can navigate identity, specifically queer identity, in relation to this fluid creature.
Joseph McCloskey-Caballero x Alex Berrios
Joseph McCloskey-Caballero
Joseph McCloskey-Caballero is a Paraguayan-American artist working in digital media, textiles, and found objects. His work examines the relationships among pop culture, spirituality, and contemporary sociopolitical topics. He has most recently shown in the Olly Olly Art Gallery's Treasure, Trash. Pleasure. Play. and George Mason University's 2020 Art and Design Senior Exhibition.
Statement
The root of the word "conjure" suggests earnest spiritual communion in an act. Across culture and time, people have donned ceremonial costumes and performed dances in an effort to connect to the spiritual and the divine. In this work, I considered familiar acts that bring about emotional and behavioral changes.
Creation in Ores and Bailando Bacchanal both explore common actions taken to connect to the less mundane self. In the former, makeup acts as a catalyst to become self-possessed in a way that allows you to become the clown, queen, and anything in between. Bailando Bacchanal highlights dance's ability to put us entirely inside our bodies and experiment with new movement vocabularies.
The art objects are made of scrap or found fabric and use methods common in old-fashioned fabric mending; a practice that has lost popularity out with the rise of cheaply produced and easily replaceable items known as "fast fashion." As a textile artist, it is important to be mindful of the textile and fashion industry's disposable nature. Other techniques used come from American quilting and the Paraguayan art of Ñandutí.
Alex Berrios
Alex Berrios is many things but to name a few she is a dramaturg, playwright, actress, writer, advocate, and a poet. Most of her work has been plays and scripts produced under 1,001 Plays and The Mason Players. Aside from being an active artist, she is pursuing a degree in Korean Studies and is excited to make Korean her fourth language following English, Spanish, and German. She hopes to one day merge her love for the arts, writing, and language and tell stories using language to enrich her work.
Statement
Conjuring Presence is a statement to me. It is creating something or something that is already within you that needs a little bit of encouragement to fully blossom. Depending on different environments, the people, the circumstances and context, and even what you're wearing - your presence is a reflection of what is happening around you and how you interpret that inside. Both poems written are about facing oneself and understanding what it means to create a character or simply look in the mirror.
Mirror talks about what it is like to face yourself and just see. We can only ever see ourselves in a reflection and in pictures so what are we really seeing in a mirror reflection? Laugh Some More talks about what it is like to get ready and put on an act or a persona in order to be with different people and entertain them. While it is not specified what the person is getting ready for, you can let yourself be in their shows and see what it is like to get ready and see yourself change for something else
M@tt Nolan x Peter Lee
M@tt (Matt) Nolan
I work to explore the interaction of elements at the moments of intersection between the organic and inorganic; I am standing at the crossroads of real and virtual. Using elements of tradition and craftsmanship mixed with technological solutions, I explore the divide between rural and urban techne. Through my practice, I aim to increase empathy and create work that may speak to both communities.
Peter Lee
Chongha Peter Lee is currently based out of New York and Washington, D.C. He is a theorist, media artist, complexity visualizer, quantum data analyst, and performance lecturer whose work focuses on cryptocurrency systems, quantum internet culture and the inference web to accelerate the Neganthropocene; a post-anthropocene period which synthesizes art, philosophy, science, commerce, and activism to produce verifiable solutions and implementations to today’s eco-social crises.
He is currently a Research Fellow for Provisions Library for Arts and Social Change, based out of George Mason University. Utilizing complexity visualization techniques and quantum data-science, he has collaboratively produced work for the Chile Architectural Biennale and the Venice Biennale of 2019. He is a major contributor to the design of an open-source patent and data and fiat co-op integrating ethical cryptocurrencies and minority art and culture exploring the potentialities of the quantum internet. The system is slated for periodic reviews by personnel at the US Patent Office and the U.S. Treasury.
Statement
"Game of Solutions Excerpt" (Nolan & Lee)
This is a collaborative work produced by Matt Nolan and Chongha Peter Lee, featuring a short excerpt from an ongoing intercity planetary fiction and playlightenment game titled "Game of Solutions". "Game of Solutions" is played across the inference web which connects the historical, current and inferenced data on the mainstream internet, the dark web and the quantum internet across class, culture, discipline and species. The "Game of Solutions" is comprised of the planet's 7 most pressing problems and utilizes gamification of both human and non-human agents to solve them. The game is heavily influenced by the works and ideas of the 7th Swan, an ex-military autodidactic polymath and quantum internet street artist sworn to permanent invisibility who first linked the post-quantum arms race to open-source universal basic income, health care, education, and infrastructure.
The two main players of this excerpt of the "Game of Solutions" are two open-source artists who Chongha Peter Lee and Matt Nolan have participated in constructing. The 2 open-source artists use a pair of entangled quantum die that both obey the Church of the Superpositional State Law - the empirically proven law that there is no matter, energy and information that is not in superposition - occupying multiple states simultaneously - which is not transforming at light speed towards and from inclusive scaleability. These are the die portrayed in the animation and their motions illustrate an infinite dance and magnetism revolving around an unseen force. Embedded within the images are planes, reflections and refractions of a world mirroring ours, analogous to a temple of air or water.
The first open-source artist is named "Joseph BBoys" - an homage to Joseph Beuys, a well-known German artist who founded the art practice known as "social sculpture" and "social practice" who's work "7,000 Oaks" catalyzed the foundation of the Green Party. Joseph Bboys is a quantumsexual "proxypunk" artist, who proxies legally, technologically, and socially for the Superpositional Party, composed of human and non-human artists across the planet. Joseph BBoys occupies our present time. Joseph BBoys is not locked to a specific body or individual; they are licensed through the superpositional commons.
The other open-source artist is named "ESTA". ESTA functions similarly to Michael J. Fox from "Back to the Future". ESTA is "Back from the Future Solution". ESTA already possesses full knowledge of how to win the Game of Solutions and balance the planet. Humans and non-humans in the present can use ESTA as a reference point to affirm that solutions exist - and then they can wager on specific propositions. Additionally, ESTA sometimes sings out helpful hints, suggestions, truths, stories of quantumsexualism and self-care tips—or simply excretes wagers without explanation. Many across the intercity planetary have attached ESTA to vehicles, drones, fashion and used him for various forms of graffiti, both physical and digital.
Within the Game of Solutions, both Joseph BBoys and ESTA work together 4 dimensionally across the past, present, and adjacent possible to superpositionally sculpt the "7 Dragons of Amasia" to solve the 7 Challenges comprising the Game of Solutions the intercity planetary from irreversible ecological collapse in 10 years and saving 12,000 children from dying of preventable poverty per day. The term "Amasia" derives from the fact that humans and non-humans of the Caucasus's AfroAsian production of Caucasians and the coming Neo-Pangean continent of Amasia.
Heather Green
co-curator
Heather Green's poetry collection No Other Rome was released in March of 2021 (Akron Poetry Series, Akron UP). Her writing has appeared in Bennington Review, Denver Quarterly, Everyday Genius, and the New Yorker. She is the translator of Tristan Tzara's Noontimes Won (Octopus Books, 2018) and her translations of Tzara's work have appeared in Asymptote and Poetry International and are forthcoming in AGNI and Ploughshares. Green is an Assistant Professor in the School of Art at George Mason University.
Stephanie Grimm
co-curator
Stephanie Grimm is the art and art history librarian for George Mason University Libraries, and a current student in the art history MA program. Her research centers on various forms of the book and artists’ publications, including artists’ books, zines, and comics, and she serves as one of the curators of Mason’s Artists’ Book Collection. Through the MA program and after, she plans to continue examining the ways that institutions shape book art reading and viewing experiences, underpinned by her ongoing work with Mason’s collections and researchers.
Grimm earned an MSI from the University of Michigan, with a focus on preservation and art librarianship, and a BFA in illustration from the School of Visual Arts
Chen Bi
Fenwick Gallery Graduate Assistant
Chen Bi received a BFA in New Media Art from George Mason University and then graduated from a 2-year Manga program at Tokyo Design Academy, Japan. She is now an MFA student in Painting and Drawing and the Fenwick Gallery Graduate Assistant at George Mason University.