ATLANTA—At the recent 4th Annual Graduate Conference for Research, Scholarship & Creative Activity, Ernest G. Welch School of Art & Design MFA candidate, Eden Scroggins, impressed judges and guests alike with her thought-provoking artwork and was awarded the Sustainability Award in the Artistic Display category for her textiles display “Narratives of Wear: Stories of the Disassembled Body.”
Scroggins’ textile work responded to this year’s conference theme, “Shaping Tomorrow Together: Discover. Create. Innovate,” which drew over 200 students from across the university who presented oral presentations, poster presentations, film, artistic and creative presentations, musical performances and artist talks.
A first-year MFA candidate, Scroggins presented two textile artworks. The first “Darn It” is a sculpture made of donated socks with holes that individuals still held onto, despite their inability to fix them. The exaggerated "darning" stitching across negative space at the top and along the sides of the piece speaks to this absurdity, fixing everything but the holes.
Her second piece, “Chimera” consists of donated damaged scraps of clothing and upholstery. While working on the works, she interprets and channels the memories left by the people who owned them previously, creating new hybrid narratives and stories of the body reassembled into new life.
Scroggins’ abstract asserts…
In utilizing discarded and used clothing as the primary material in my work, I am unraveling narratives of wear as I disassemble and reassemble garments into sculptural forms. The garments that I work with are ones that are damaged past the point of being able to be realistically used again, despite how often many of us tend to hold on to these things regardless. There is an absurdism to be found in the cycle of cheaply made clothing that lives on forever as waste, while having a much shorter lifespan of function, due to both the quality of materials and the reality of how unattainable and unrealistic of a practice mending is to many already buckling under the pressure of capitalism. Read full abstract here.
“Winning this award meant a lot to me because I think it speaks to the way that sustainability is a complex conversation with many different points of entry,” said Scroggins. “I think art can allow us to become more aware of the ways that we interact with the world and does the important work of asking personal questions about large, complicated issues. My practice starts with research in terms of understanding these systems of textile waste and then goes to questioning what the individual and collective experiences within these systems are.”
Fellow Art & Design MFA candidates also showcased their arts practice and research with oral presentations by Haylee Fucini-Lenkey (Photography) and Ayodeji Akinyemi (Painting).
Fucini-Lenkey presented “On Fatigue and the Creative Process”
Fatigue is one of the most exasperating side effects I endure while living with autoimmune disorders. In the United States, fatigue affects a span of 5-45% of the general population. This is due to multiple reasons, some of the most crucial being a defunct COVID-19 response, amplified expectations of labor, lack of societal safety nets, and autoimmune diseases. It is defined formally as debilitating periods of exhaustion, but culturally can be considered laziness or ignorance. The concept of fatigue is nebulous, and attempting to understand it can offer limited resources that contain traditional and tangible imagery. I respond to this by working with alternative photographic collages, traditional darkroom processes, along with performative sound and movement. Read full abstract here.
Akinyemi presented “NeuroEmpathy: A Living Atlas of the Mind”
A multisensory and interdisciplinary artistic installation that visualizes the inner weather of the body, its stress, breath, pulse, and emotional fluctuations through an Afro-digital and Ifá-inspired visual language. This project integrates biomedical signals such as heart-rate variability, gut-based interoception markers, and proprioceptive data with traditional Yoruba cosmologies of divination, transformation, and spiritual attunement. Read full abstract here.
The 4th annual Graduate Conference for Research, Scholarship & Creative Activity was sponsored by GSU’s Graduate School. Click here for a complete list of conference awardees.