BFA student Stephanie Tennert works in her home studio on a drawing in preparation for the year-end exhibition.
Bachelor of Fine Arts graduates present final work with a virtual show
What: UBCO Visual Arts Graduation Show: Up Close from a Distance
Who: Graduating artists in the Bachelor of Fine Arts program
When: April 12 to 26, 2021
Where: Virtual Exhibition
Each spring, graduating visual arts students at UBC’s Okanagan campus prepare a final exhibition as they complete their program. This year’s Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) show, titled Up Close from a Distance, will be shared as a virtual exhibition.
The BFA exhibition will highlight a wide variety of work created by 18 emerging artists during the course of the year. The collection will include sculpture, performance, installation, painting, drawing and animation.
“Up Close from a Distance represents the intimacy that connected this cohort as they shared their varied and unusual studio situations, that crossed geographical borders and time zones, through Zoom,” explains Visual Arts Instructor Katherine Pickering.
The artworks showcased in the exhibition will examine themes based on identity, personal histories, cultural traditions and some that are spirituality-specific to individual world views.
“Some students saw this year as an opportunity to learn a new skill, and all of them took difficult creative risks as they created a space for themselves to work in this new reality,” says Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies (FCCS) Professor Renay Egami.
BFA graduating student Stephanie Tennert says the experience of creating art from home taught her more than just art.
“I believe this unusual learning experience has set us up for a lot of future success,” says Tennert. “Learning to do printmaking and large-scale drawings from my own bedroom is a wonderful asset. And seeing the range of works my classmates have been able to make from their homes is inspiring.”
“Travel and many of the usual opportunities to connect were severely limited, yet this class brought us into the world through their work,” adds Egami. “This year was more difficult than anticipated. But for this cohort making art has been cathartic and liberating as they acknowledge their own resilience and ability to overcome obstacles.”
The exhibition opens on April 12 and will run until April 26. The show is part of the FCCS Spring Festival of the Arts and is free and open to the public. For more information, visit: ubcovacu.org
