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B.F.A. Thesis: Homeward

An art gallery with a blurred person walking past in the center
image / provided

Exhibition

Location

Experimental Gallery

Tjaden Hall

M–F, 8 a.m.–4:30 p.m.

Contact

Department of Art

(607) 255-6730

artdepartment@cornell.edu

Abstract

Homeward, a B.F.A. senior thesis group show, explores how spaces, symbols, and memories intersect to shape the resilience of identity across time.

Our individual experiences converge to examine how communities navigate and respond to change while representing sites of origin through personal histories. Bradley focuses on the landscapes of upstate New York and offers a eulogy to those displaced. Havily examines Igbo households and Nigerian women’s identity and treatment in domestic spaces throughout the diaspora. Alexa studies her family’s generational archive and their immigration to America. Amy maps the fluctuation of intersecting languages. Emily represents El Salvador and California through painted vignettes of daily life. Savannah retraces her lineage and generational trauma through traditional dyes and processes of repetition through papermaking. Chloe works with the subjectivity of material, both caring for it and exploring how it can endure in a specific place and time.

Working with mediums ranging from akara to soft sculpture, all the artists delve into personal and communal histories of movement and migration. Homeward reflects on the malleable nature of identity and the capacity for fractured experiences to intersect, fostering the reclamation of lost or forgotten narratives.

Biographies

Emily Hernandez

Emily Hernandez (B.F.A. ’25) is an artist from Los Angeles. She is a Salvadorian-American artist exploring working with drawings, paintings, and printmaking.

Havily Nwakuche

Havily Nwakuche (B.F.A. ’25) is an Igbo-American artist from North Carolina working with textiles, food, and photography.

Alexa Miller

Alexa Miller (B.F.A. ’25) is a Jewish-American artist from Long Island working with soft sculpture, papermaking, and printmaking.

Bradley Verhelle

Bradley Verhelle (B.F.A. ’25) is a photographic printmaker from Rochester, New York.

Savannah Flores

Savannah Flores (B.F.A. ’25) is an artist from Dallas, Texas, working in printmaking and papermaking.

Amy Zhang

Amy Zhang (B.F.A. ’25) is an artist from San Francisco, California, working with soft sculpture and calligraphy.

Chloe Mako

Chloe Mako (B.F.A. ’25) is an artist from Pennsylvania who works with sculpture and neglected objects.

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