2016 Queens College MFA exhibition:
Dining with Vultures
May 15–28, 2016
Gallery open Thu – Sun 12 – 6pm

OPENING: Friday, May 20, 6–9pm

Sideshow Gallery
319 Bedford Ave
Brooklyn, New York

qcmfa.com
socialpracticequeens.org
www.qc.cuny.edu

Curated by Sarah Fritchey

Queens College MFA in Studio Art, City University of New York (CUNY), is pleased to announce Dining with Vultures, an ecologically-minded exhibition that contemplates art school as an ecosystem of scavenged thinking, gregarious collaboration, intergenerational slaughter and material transformation. The show features recent work of 21 emerging artists from nine countries, currently enrolled in the MFA and Social Practice Queens programs.

This exhibition is fascinated with the eating habits of urban vultures who remove death and decay from city spaces as they feast. The show highlights five behaviors characteristic of the vulture that the exhibiting artists share, including an ever-present resourcefulness, an ability to transform death into new forms, an openness to working collaboratively, a propensity to look long and work slow, and an attraction to consuming marginalized material.

In addition to works created during their time at Queens College, the artists will present new works produced specifically for the show that scavenge material from the cutting blocks, trash bins, laptops, and floors of each other’s studios. This assignment was conceived by Curator Sarah Fritchey, who will present the results as a Food Web that charts lines of production, consumption, and material concern.

Featured artists: Ghazaleh Abbasnazari, Tabitha St Cyr, Scott Braun, Nancy Bruno, Alejandro Salgado Cendales, Alix Camacho, Amy Cheng, Arber Dabaj, Eliesha Grant, Floor Grootenhuis & Setare S. Arashloo, Effisleeps, Zaid Islam, Jeff Kasper, Maria K. Karlberg-Levin, Alan Lien, Jenna Makuh, Raina Marie Panagiotopoulos, Gina Minielli, Nicole Mouriño, Uno Nam, and Erin Turner

*Image above: Alan Lien (MFA Sculpture ’16), older than Caligula but not quite there, 2016. Found hardware, cement, aluminum pipe, aluminum chain, artificial grapes, dimensions variable. Photo: Gina Minielli. Courtesy of the artist.