A robust extra credit project in Lecturer Jiha Moon's Selected Topic in Drawing and Painting class engaged interested undergraduate students in a project designed to bridge the transition between college and career with real-world experience. The end-of-the-semester project began as a usual class assignment to create a work of art and expanded to allow the student artists to take on the roles of curators, administrators and exhibitors. “Doppelganger,” the culminating student exhibition, opened April 13, 2021 and ran until April 29 in Room 543 and the surrounding hallway.
A curatorial statement, issued by students Magda Dumitrescu and Kimberly Fulton Orozco, contextualizes the project as one examining each student's self-reflection during the COVID-19 pandemic through the creation of self-portrait masks in addition to painted interpretations of those masks.
Students were asked to depict the different selves they created to understand their current inner worlds. Several reflected the wearer's thoughts about interactions with strangers or processing everyday racism in micro-aggressions, while others featured decorations for personal celebrations or were constructed to allow for growth.
The sixteen students involved created both a three-dimensional work as well as a two-dimensional painting depicting the object in use. The only remaining question for these students was how to then exhibit their work when the community remained socially distant or otherwise entirely closed to in-person activities.
"I told my students that if no one offers you an opportunity, you should make one for yourself," said Moon of their next steps. Modeling their approach after contemporary innovations and COVID-related alterations from local and national museums and galleries, the students opened up multiple paths of opportunity to experience their work.
In collaboration, students self-selected their roles in the culminating exhibition based on their personal interests and abilities. Students with an inclination to write essays and display their works took on curatorial roles, while those who engaged more with the arts administration angle organized a QR Code checklist and exhibition poster to facilitate and market a virtual online exhibition. Some students were prepared to engage socially with the project and staffed the gallery, located in Moon's campus office, for the limited closing day reception.
In seeing the project through, from creation to curation to exhibition, these student artists gained a circumspect experience of the many aspects that must come together for a single art show. "It was well done and well-received," said Moon of the entire project, which will now strengthen each student's resume with credit as participating artists and the real-world experience of mounting an exhibition.