Co-Education Art Exhibit
By: Jett Goetz, Selim Kim, Stacy Chen, and Lauren Kim
Magazine cutouts tied together, formatted into a sprawling collage. Rosebuds constructed with intertwining letters. Entire books with text engulfed in black paint, save a few phrases here and there. An umbrella, a canopy of positive affirmations and graphics. Culture. Co-Education. Queerness. Freedom. Walk into the Lamont Gallery anytime after May 4, and these are the sights that await you. Containing a collection of student work regarding feminism and transformative justice, the gallery is now home to a plethora of critical bookmaking, curatorial activism, and feminist theory artworks.
The 50th anniversary of co-education at the Academy calls for a tribute to unsilenced truths from female-identifying trailblazers, and the artists of the Co-Education Art Exhibit accomplish just that. Artists, student organizers, and instructors alike agree that the contribution of artwork to a transformative cause is a positive celebration of co-education at the Academy.
Headed by English Instructor Mercy Carbonell and Activism in Art club co-heads Ailla Crossman ’21 and Danielle Sung ’22, the Co-Education Art Exhibit is now on display in the Lamont Gallery from May 4 to June 1. The exhibit includes work from both Activism in Art members and students of the course “Bookmaking as Feminist Archival Practice: Reinscribing Histories,” which aimed to express key messages pertaining to feminism and co-education.
The exhibit was a collaboration between other adults as well, Carbonell explained. “There were multiple possibilities for the exhibit and the ways in which it evolved may be a stunning metaphor for how feminist coalitions can generate creatively in a community,” Carbonell said. “Ms. Durand & Mr. Schuetz & I started talking & then Ms. Durand came to our Zooms to teach us differing bookmaking techniques. When half the class arrived in mid February, Ms. Durand invited us to work in the Gallery & sent tools to everyone who was remote. Over the February stretch, Ms Durand and Mr. Schuetz & I wondered if perhaps we could open some of the space for an Exhibit & merge with the Arts & Activism Club, who wanted to bring in some of their work & so it began, we began, the space began.”
The exhibit was created for community enlightenment. “It was created partly to offer ART to the Community & to create an ending to the Feminist Bookmaking course & to bring the students' vastly diverse creations to a curation,” Carbonell said. “Our mission was to lift the voices of those who have been histrorically marginalized, silenced, delegitimized; to give space for BIPOC/Queer/Intersectional perspectives & some white wom(x)n/women trailblazers.”
Sung expressed that the idea of hosting an exhibition started last year, but came to fruition this year due to the pandemic. “Due to COVID-19 last year, however, we weren’t able to share our works that were centered around the theme of Gender, Sexuality, and Identity. Fortunately, Ms. Carbonell, Activism in Art’s faculty advisor and the teacher for the Feminist Bookmaking course, was willing to collaborate with us and create a huge exhibition that focused on Exeter’s 50 years of co-education theme!” Sung said. “It’s really amazing that this exhibition happened because Ms. Durand and I had been planning an Activism in Art exhibition since last year, and we’re really fortunate to have worked with the Feminist Bookmaking class.”
Exhibit organizers came up with the name “A Collective Curiosity” to be inclusive of the exhibit’s diverse array of content. “There's a wide range of topics and mediums covered in the galleries, so I feel like [A Collective Curiosity] is a good overarching theme. It does help to be inclusive of identities and experiences that aren't within the gender binary and also, not everything in the gallery is about gender,” Crossman said.
Carbonell described the exhibit as a “beautiful collaboration of Feminist Imagination.” “In so many ways, the exhibit is an Act of Care, of Community Care, of the care rooted in criticality, of Feminist Coalitionary Care—At the core are some essential truths from Audre Lorde ~ to honor our differences, to name our differences, to come to reflect on the sources of our power, to name what systems are not allowing us the freedom we want, to legitimize our feelings—‘I Feel, therefore I can be free.’ As one student said at the Opening: ‘beautiful rage.’”
“[The exhibit was] a space where visitors and creators would wander in and allow their imaginations a chance for flight, to sit with what may be some discomfort, to reconceptualize history, to experience the queering of that space, to let ambiguity be present, to ask ourselves what we are feeling as we interact with the Art—‘The space speaks,’” Carbonell explained.
The art was meant to pose questions to viewers as well. “What voices do you hear in new ways? What silences begin to echo? How might what you see & touch & read & listen into ask you to consider history, power, testimony, truth, systems of white patriarchal oppression in new ways? How can seeing this exhibit inspire us to imagine into radical coalitions, to recognize the beautiful value of the Resistors, the Liberators, the Feminists in our Midst?” Carbonell asked.
Lower Alysha Lai created a collage with magazine cutouts to emphasize the feeling of “freedom and knowledge.”
“I love using magazines because they often reflect highly edited cultural and societal standards. It was a simple yet meaningful piece, and the use of magazines tied together well with the bookkeeping class,” Lai said.
In her artist statement, Lai emphasized co-education. “We all enjoy that burst of excitement when we learn something new, and curiosity is the motivating force to hold on to and deepen that information,” Lai wrote. “When something seems previously so incomprehensible or unattainable, we cry of joy or satisfaction when we finally find it. This is why co-education is essential to fueling that familiar desire to seek out new information. It’s time to celebrate our common love of learning which we all share as fellow lifelong learners.”
After interviewing several figures who played notable roles in Exeter’s journey to co-education, senior Sarah Huang created five books for the exhibit as part of the “Bookmaking as Feminist Archival Practice: Reinscribing Histories” course. “I had so much fun because originally I thought it was going to be in the traditional sense of a book, but with [Ms. Carbonell], nothing is traditional,” Huang said. “In the interviews, I by no means could get a sense of everything they do and how amazing each person was. But for each of my books, I tried to focus on a specific part of the interview, maybe something they said or something that I learned about them, and then kind of explore that in the art itself.”
In a reflection on the process, lower Hannah Rubin shared their thoughts on their piece, a poetry collection titled “What Can Fill an Empty Space?”
Rubin’s collection consisted of five poems. “Writing poetry allows me to see the world in new ways. There's this quote that I was just thinking of by the first Lamont Poet [Jorge Luis Borge on April 27, 1983], I think that something along the lines of, ‘art is fire plus algebra.’ So I think that the algebra aspect of poetry is being able to express X in terms of Y which allows you to create beauty out of your experiences. I express something in terms of something else when I'm writing, and that allows me to see the world in a new way, which is really beautiful,” Rubin said.
Rubin explained that they found inspiration from quotes by Louis Kahn, the architect behind the Class of 1945 Library. “I have them right here…‘A [person] with a book goes to the light. A library begins that way.’ I was really interested in the idea of the action of going to the light and how that could represent perhaps these women coming to Exeter and learning in the same way that the people with the books go to the light in the library they give towards the window and that representing enlightenment,” Rubin said.
“So that's one thing too, the idea of an empty space and specifically what can fill it. And my idea was that with the beginning of co-education, the women Exeter had filled an empty space,” Rubin continued.
Prep Vedika Amin created a depiction of an umbrella titled "Mindscape.” She shared in her statement that she used the umbrella “to project my innermost thoughts, optimistic ideals, positive beliefs, values, imagination, expectations, and hopes connected to the role of gender, sexuality, and identity in cultivating a progressive co-educational environment.”
“‘Mindscape’ is a canopy of positive affirmations and graphics which help to remind, empower, and inspire me and others,” Amin said.
Upper Siona Jain created five books from a series of interviews she conducted about co-education, where each book featured a different perspective on co-education. “One person talked about how we view coeducational as a binary—educating both girls and boys. They pointed out how we rarely examine how race, all genders, and sexuality play in,” Jain said. “For their book, I made a folding accordion that could be flipped and turned to be read multiple different ways. I eliminated the binary image that comes with a book, which is only read in one direction with two-sided pages.”
Senior Frankie Getman painted a picture of youth climate activist Greta Thunberg. “I really just wanted to accurately portray Greta, and I also tried to use a more posterized style than how I usually paint. I wanted to keep it simple, with no background, so that all of the focus is on Greta and her stoic presence,” Getman said.
Senior Violet Goldstone created a collection of three untraditional “books” from interviews with alumni about their unique passions and experiences. Goldstone’s goal was to “convey the experiences of each interviewee through exemplifying something that made their time here at Exeter unique.”
Prep Sophie Zhu explained how she choreographed her own dance to represent her experience as a woman of color. “I choreographed a piece of dance to the song, ‘Godspeed,’ by Frank Ocean. From hearing about the club, Activism in Art, during club night to final decisions, I knew I wanted to share what I’m most comfortable with, which is dance. Because this was the first piece I’ve ever choreographed, I wanted to show something special,” Zhu said. “Being a POC woman, I have had my share of discriminative experiences, and I decided to create a piece about these occurrences.”
Sung spoke about the progress brought forward by co-education. “Co-education, to me, means progress. It’s amazing to see how much Exeter has changed in the past 50 years—while we started from an all-male institution, we are at a school where all genders learn together, sit openly at the Harkness table and discuss any topic without being restricted because of their gender or identity,” Sung said. “Exeter has shown me that we, as students, have so much to learn from each other, and I think one of the most essential parts of the Exeter learning experience is the diverse backgrounds the students have, and the environment we have managed to create.”
“I really can’t choose a single ‘favorite moment’ from the exhibition, because the entire exhibition was amazing. I visited the Lamont Gallery the day it opened, filled with excitement because of how long we had been planning this,” Sung continued. “I could feel the effort and love everyone poured into their works, really creating something they felt passionate about.”