Critical & Curatorial MFA Thesis Exhibition how to gently unpack an empire

How are we then to imagine belonging, beauty, joy and liberation, entangled as we are in the archive of our complex pasts, at the mercy of an empire which does not reckon with its own excesses, does not provide justice and does not apologize?

View a list of virtual scheduled public programs here

Bringing into conversation three artistic positions rooted on the West Coast of this land now called the United States, and expanding outwardly, how to gently unpack an empire investigates the capacities and possibilities of living fugitively within the US empire both in opposition and alongside it.

Featuring the works of Demian Dinéyazhi’, Vinhay Keo and Gelare Khoshgozaran and accompanied by a suite of public programs—Chitra Ganesh and Mariam Ghani on Index of the Disappeared; lauren woods and Kimberli Meyer on American Monument, Sean Connelly on Hawai’i Futures, and a closing listening session with Arshia Fatima Haq of Discostan —this project is an unpacking of this dialogue through the mining of personal and historical archives of a rapacious empire that both promises and takes away.

Image: Demian DinéYazhi, Promise Me You Won’t Colonize Me, 2018