When Sisson was planning course content for Contemporary Directions in spring 2021, she was asked by Nancy Burns, the Stoddard associate curator of prints, drawings, and photographs at the Worcester Art Museum, about co-curating an exhibition exploring race and ethnicity that focuses on the visual strategies used by diverse artists.<\/p>\n Together, Sisson and Burns developed the course and accompanying exhibition, and now the museum is ready to unveil “Us Them We | Race Ethnicity Identity,” which explores how contemporary artists since the mid-1970s have used formal artistic devices like text, juxtaposition, pattern, and seriality to explore socio-political concepts in their work.<\/p>\n “Given that the early exhibition planning was taking place during the rapid rise in awareness of BLM, after the murder of George Floyd, and students were organizing ‘Day of Refusal’ and ‘Abolition May’ protests on campus last year, the work we’re doing around race, ethnicity, and identity is especially timely and important,” says Sisson.<\/p>\n The exhibition opens Feb. 19 and runs through Juneteenth on June 19. It includes works from dozens of artists, drawn from the museum’s collection and several significant loans. Featured are photography, prints, painting, and sculpture, including major works by Edgar Heap of Birds \/ Hock E Aye Vi, Byron Kim, Roberto Lugo, Shirin Neshat, Lorna Simpson, and others.<\/p>\n “With this exhibition we hope to generate a new conversation about how identity can be revealed through form itself. An artist’s decision to use certain visual motifs like repetition, movement, language, and contrast can serve to emphasize larger concepts about race and ethnicity,” says Burns. “There’s truth to the idea that ‘The medium is the message.’ Art allows us to receive certain messages. However, too often, big ideas like those of political protest allow viewers to bypass a rigorous critique of a work’s individual elements.”<\/p>\n Students were tasked with selecting two works in the exhibition that resonated with them, then creating artwork inspired by those pieces.<\/p>\n “Interestingly, several objects were chosen by multiple students although what they created in response was quite distinct in form, content, and medium,” says Sisson.<\/p>\n One important element of the project was allowing students to examine their own identity in relation to the artist and work they selected.<\/p>\n “We spent considerable time exploring multiple aspects of identity and students were encouraged to express various parts of themselves in their own work (e.g., race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity, nationality, socioeconomic status, language, ability, age, religious commitment, or political perspective). The recognition of how an artist’s identity is manifest in their work and how the lived experience of historically marginalized groups can, in fact, be every bit as universal as those of the dominant culture was an important focus of the course,” says Sisson.<\/p>\n![\"Clark](\"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2017-Toby-Sisson-300x215-4.jpg\")