Of Roses and Jessamine
2016
November 17 – December 11
LNC Gallery
Contributing Artists
Cassandra Davis
Exhibition Statement as Preserved in the SUGS/SITE Archives:
Opening reception with special performance by Industry of the Ordinary Of Roses and Jessamine, a solo show of interdisciplinary works by Cassandra Davis (MFA 2017), investigates spatial and corporeal sites of ritual. Taken from the devotional and erotic poetry of Saint Teresa de Avila, the show’s title, Of Roses and Jessamine, embraces the deeply sensual nature of personal worship and spiritual ecstasy. Additionally, works in the show flicker between states of revival and destruction. These sites for collective spiritual and social identity simultaneously surround and separate the viewer from the experience promised within. What, if anything, is being revived? Or are these structures instead collapsing from within? Davis’ work draws deeply from her Pentecostal upbringing and rural Midwestern identity. Through sculpture, image-making, video and installation, Davis’ practice is fixated on locating the phenomenological within rural Evangelical America. Her work seeks to critique systems of belief while also indulging the unknown. It questions power structures, yet invokes the power of the supernatural and personal experience. Her practice is tensioned between a desire for belief and existential loss. Material explorations across works explore cloth as a form of establishing shroud and sanctuary, seeking to capture the spiritual ecstasy experienced by devoted believers. Davis’ work embodies an aura of obsessive devotion, expressed in the hand-woven, hand-sewn, and queering reclamation of ritual. In dialogue with the visual explorations of Davis’ work, curated performances and an ecstatic film screening will extend the exhibition narrative into an expanded discussion around ritual, spiritual experience, and ecstasy.
Programs
November 17, 4:00 – 6:00 PM
LNC Gallery
Program statement from the SUGs/SITE archive:
“Of Roses and Jessamine, a solo show of interdisciplinary works by Cassandra Davis (MFA 2017), investigates spatial and corporeal sites of ritual. Taken from the devotional and erotic poetry of Saint Teresa de Avila, the show’s title, Of Roses and Jessamine, embraces the deeply sensual nature of personal worship and spiritual ecstasy. Additionally, works in the show flicker between states of revival and destruction. These sites for collective spiritual and social identity simultaneously surround and separate the viewer from the experience promised within. What, if anything, is being revived? Or are these structures instead collapsing from within?
Davis’ work draws deeply from her Pentecostal upbringing and rural Midwestern identity. Through sculpture, image-making, video and installation, Davis’ practice is fixated on locating the phenomenological within rural Evangelical America. Her work seeks to critique systems of belief while also indulging in the unknown. It questions power structures, yet invokes the power of the supernatural and personal experience. Her practice is tensioned between a desire for belief and existential loss. Material explorations across works explore cloth as a form of establishing shroud and sanctuary, seeking to capture the spiritual ecstasy experienced by devoted believers. Davis’ work embodies an aura of obsessive devotion, expressed in the hand-woven, hand-sewn, and queering reclamation of ritual.
In dialogue with the visual explorations of Davis’ work, curated performances and an ecstatic film screening will extend the exhibition narrative into an expanded discussion around ritual, spiritual experience, and ecstasy. The opening reception will begin this dialogue with a special performance by Industry of the Ordinary.”
Click here to view official programming press release
November 30, 2016, 4:00-6:00 PM
LeRoy Neiman Center Gallery
Programming Statement as Preserved in the SUGS/SITE Archives:
“Join us for a special evening of performance in conjuction with the show Of Roses and Jessamine. Performances by local artists in the SAIC community will extend the show’s narrative into an expanded discussion around ritual, spiritual experience, and ecstasy. Works will address issues surrounding disenfranchised bodies, embodied trauma, and reclamations of pwer through personal agency and spiritual expression. Viewers are encouraged toconsider how the queering of ritual might offer oppressed bodies paths of freedon to shift structures of power. In collaboration with the Industry of the Ordinary.”
Click here to view official programming press release
December 7, 2016, 4:00-6:00 PM
LeRoy Neiman Center Lobby
Programming statement from the SUGs/SITE Archives:
“Please join us for the screening Films for Ecstasy in conjunction with the SUGs exhibition Of Roses and Jessamine. The screening will take form of a collective viewing experience inspired by the installations of Pipilotti Rist. Works by SAIC faculty and students will be projected on theceiling and visitors encouraged to view at a slower pace while watching from the floor. Mary Ancel (MFA 2017) will be installing psychedelic soft pillows for the audience to lay on while watching a program of short films taht indend to bring the viewer into a transcendental/ ecstatic state.”
Participating Artists: Faculty: Tatsu Aoki, Claudia Hart, Mike Andrews, Snow Yunxue Fu, and students from Experimental Film: Celluloid, and Joe Albert Houlberg, Lal Avgen, Elana Adler, Benji Blessing, Dylan Fish, Elana Adler, and Adam Bach.
Click here to view official press release
Exhibition Material
In December, 2016, SAIC’s student-run fnews Magazine covered the Of Roses and Jessamine exhibition and the resulting student response.
Religion, Memory, and Selfness Incarnate: ‘Of Roses and Jessamine’ Triumphs