Contributing Artists

Kayla Anderson, Emma Robbins, Slaveya Minkova

Exhibition Statement as Preserved in the SUGS/SITE Archives:

Kayla Anderson (BAVCS/BFA 2014), Slaveya Minkova (BFA 2013), and Emma Robbins (BFA 2013) investigate the construction of history through artifacts and respond by creating their own hybrid cultures. Using photography, video, and installation, each artist operates as a guide, leading viewers through a contested terrain of images. Like a History Channel documentary filled with dramatized reenactments, work occupies a space between historical reference and invented persona, resulting in a series of imagined realms that parallel the present. Emma Robbins translates her own intimate familial and cultural history using fabricated objects and garments, installation, photography, and performance. Her current series Reservation Royalty investigates pop culture images of First Peoples through costumes and installations that force viewers to question the authenticity of what they witness. Archollapse by Slaveya Minkova derives from cultural and architectural transformations in Bulgaria following the end of communist rule in the late 20th century. Through archival photographs, video, and an installation, Minkova performs an “archaeological dig” into her own history, creating a space where fiction and fact collide. Kayla Anderson’s work often takes root in images from archaeological studies and historical texts that she brings to life both within the context of her own home and imagined realms. In homage to personal and small-scale forms of archaeology, she recreates her living room as an excavation site.