Body(No)Body: PAFA MFA Program + Brodsky Center at PAFA

Jill Adler  Ev Arnold  Lynda Benglis*  Laura Carden  Autumn Casey  Bernadette Colburn  Victoria Davis  Parastou Forouhar*  Lily Furniss  Chitra Ganesh*  Leon Golub*  Carmen Cartiness Johnson*  Hew Locke*  Suji Kanneganti  Dori Miller  Morgan Osburn  Farah Ossouli*  Juan Sanchez*  Sterling Shaw  Joan Snyder*  Buzz Spector*  Lisa Volta  Tess Wei

*Artists in the Brodsky Center collection at PAFA

An online exhibition with Young Space curated by members of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Art’s graduate seminar, Artist as Curator, their professor Alexis Granwell, and in collaboration with The Brodsky Center at PAFA

Body(No)Body celebrates the spirit of experimentation and how the complex nature of identity can be explored through the artistic process. Featuring selected prints from the Brodsky Center and artworks by PAFA’s graduate community, this exhibition looks to how different aspects of one’s self emerges through new investigations in making and media. This space of exploration allows for nuanced aspects of individual and collective identity–ranging from the fantastical and mythic to the ideational and liminal–to be spontaneously generated, discovered and shared.

Since its founding in 1986, the Brodsky Center has promoted the importance of collaboration in the artistic process through partnerships between artists and the center’s master printers and papermakers. The center’s artists-in-residence program allows participants to learn from explorations in new media and processes, highlighting the importance of experimentation

in the generation of new work. In focusing on paper-based and printed matter, both emerging and established artists have the opportunity to translate their contemporary practice and visions to media with which they may be unfamiliar. In fostering a space for unique investigations, the Brodsky Center’s artists-in-residence create works that are outside of or expand upon their typical practice. PAFA’s MFA Program echoes this sentiment through promoting students to expand the purview of their work.

Experimentation as a crucial educational tool is prioritized in both the Brodsky Center
and PAFA’s MFA Program. In placing these works in conversation, Body(No)Body offers open-ended parallels to be drawn between the environments cultivated in the Brodsky Center’s artists-in-residence and PAFA’s graduate programs. Both spaces promote personal and artistic discovery via sustained investigation, imagination, and collaboration.

Adaptability is another key factor in the conversations surrounding this exhibition. Originally scheduled to be on display in the Anne Bryan Gallery at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in March 2020, the school closed to student access several days before the planned installation due to the coronavirus pandemic. In the weeks following, this online exhibition with Young Space Gallery became a new expression of the same foundational idea of creative investigation and resilience in the face of uncertainty when exploring new territory.

Tess Wei and Julia Way Rix (PAFA MFA ’20)

Philadelphia, PA, April 2020