Friday, Jan. 19–Saturday, Feb. 24

 

TACOMA, Wash. – University of Puget Sound’s 2018 Art Students Annual opens Friday, Jan. 19, with an unveiling party at 5 p.m., in Kittredge Gallery on campus.

See the best work from the last two academic years of art classes—including pieces by everyone from first-year students to seniors. Awards for the most outstanding artworks will be made at the opening night party.

 

The Art Students Annual show is a Puget Sound tradition. Students enter their best work, and a juror selects artwork for the free, five-week public exhibit.

The juror for this year’s show is international exhibitor Anida Yoeu Ali. Ali is a Tacoma-based artist whose works span performance, installation, video, images, public encounters, and political agitation. She is a first-generation Muslim Khmer woman, born in Cambodia and raised in Chicago. After residing for more than three decades outside of Cambodia, Ali returned to work in Phnom Penh in 2011 as part of her U.S. Fulbright Fellowship. Employing an interdisciplinary approach to artmaking, she creates installation and performance works that investigate the artistic, spiritual, and political collisions of a hybrid transnational identity. Below is Ali’s response to the student works she judged.

 

Anida Yoeu Ali | Juror Statement

"As I begin to sift through the submissions for the Art Students Annual show in Kittredge Gallery, I see courageous acts of artistry— of what it means to create in this moment of uncertainty and divisiveness. And, of course, artworks need not be political to offer voice and value.

The works gathered here reflect emerging voices in a vast array of mediums expressing, crafting, and making art out of moments that evoke life, memory, and meaning. They offer viewers a moment for metals to bloom, giant pencils to bend wildly, monsters to emerge, statements to block print, faces to stare into, and so much more. The artworks represent hours and hours of labor, created with human hands and thought and perspective.

These analog-based processes of creating offer respite from our fast-moving digitally driven lives. I cannot help but feel echoes of hope and wonder looking at this collection of student artworks at Kittredge."

Opening Reception and Awards, Friday, Jan. 19, 5–7pm

Gallery Location: University of Puget Sound, N. 15th St. at N. Lawrence St., Tacoma, Wash.
Directions and Map: pugetsound.edu/directions
Regular Hours: Monday–Friday, 10 a.m.–5 p.m.; Saturday, noon–5 p.m. 

Website: pugetsound.edu/kittredge
Facebook: facebook.com/KittredgeGallery

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For accessibility information please contact accessibility@pugetsound.edu or 253.879.3931, or visit pugetsound.edu/accessibility

PRESS PHOTOS are available upon request.
Photos on page: From top right: Work from 2017 Art Students Annual; work from 2016 (by Ross Mulhausen); Campus Dining, from juror Anida Yoeu Ali's The Buddhist Bug Series.