GROUP EXHIBITION

Curated by graduate students in Hunter’s Department of Art & Art History, this exhibition will showcase the work of artists currently enrolled in the school’s MFA Program in Studio Art. We Were Already Gone spotlights the diversity and holistic approach that have situated Hunter uniquely among American institutions devoted to higher education in the arts. The show will present an array of works across mediums, with sculpture, painting, and videos that confront the global cultural and political reckoning underway.

Hunter College’s acclaimed MFA Program in Studio Art is deeply rooted in and nourished by its engagement with the cultural ecology of New York City. For decades, its alumni and faculty have helped to shape the landscape of contemporary art, making significant contributions to the field as artists, critics, curators, and educators.

Hauser & Wirth’s ongoing collaboration with Hunter College reflects the gallery’s longstanding commitment to arts education and community building.

Artist Firelei Báez, Hunter College MFA ‘10 says, ‘When I went to Hunter, it was this wild thunder dome of possibilities. It was a place for unlearning all the things I mastered before, of really examining and recontextualising my place in the Western canon. And I’m very grateful to professors like Susan Crile, Paul Ramirez Jonas, and Nari Ward, for teaching me to expand beyond and acknowledge and revel in the stories in the places I grew up in, and to give room and open new doorways for people after me, just like they did. Following in their footsteps. I’m very grateful and proud to be an alum.’

About We Were Already Gone

We Were Already Gone was conceived and curated by the students of Hunter’s graduate class, ‘Curate, Create, Critique,’ taught by curator and professor Joachim Pissarro. For the exhibition, the participating students—who come from both the Art History and Studio Art departments—chose to focus upon the effects of the year 2020, with its global pandemic accompanied by political unrest, learning through a virtual sphere, and lack of human touch and connection.

Impacted individually and collectively by the turmoil of last year, the students found their organising principle in Jacques Derrida’s term ‘hauntology,’ which refers to the persistent presence of the past in our current moment. The works on view in We Were Already Gone form an invitation to assemble remnants of the past into a new foundation for a hopeful future.

At Hauser & Wirth’s building on West 22^nd Street, the exhibition will unfold across the gallery’s clerestoried fifth-floor space. The paintings, sculptures, drawings, and video works on view explore questions of memory and notions of the avatar or virtual self, and survey the effects of absence and isolation. Some of the participating artists are contemplating the past, using their work to define the ways memory shapes life in the present day.

Others are questioning how—and if—we can individually and collectively dismantle outdated, inherited systems in order to rebuild anew.

We Were Already Gone was curated by Hunter MA and MFA students Dana Notine, Jonas Albro, Daniel Berman, Dante Cannatella, Anna Cone, Sarah Heinemann, Mercedes Llanos, Amorelle Jacox, Liza Lacroix, Kimberly Nam, Joseph Parra, Lorraine Robinson, and Sigourney Schultz.

Hunter College 2021 MFA Thesis Online Spotlight

In addition to the physical exhibition, Hauser & Wirth will feature the graduating students from the Hunter College’s MFA program in Studio Art, in a follow-up to digital spotlight presented in Fall 2020. This new online showcase for Spring 2021 will include texts from each artist, as well as photographs and videos that further illuminate the working processes and vision behind their practice.

In addition to this digital exhibition that launches on 14 May, Hunter College will continue to host physical presentations of the MFA Thesis candidates this spring. For more information on the Thesis Exhibitions and the MFA Program in Studio Art at Hunter College visit: www.mfa205hudson.org.

About the Hunter College MFA in Studio Art

The Hunter College MFA Program in Studio Art offers students the time, space, and critical framework to develop their artistic practice. Located at 205 Hudson Street in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood, the affordable, three-year program provides exposure to the changing ideas and forms of contemporary art. Students have unique access to an array of opportunities in the New York art world. Hunter’s educational goal is to develop professional artists capable of sustaining their practice once they leave the structure of an academic environment.

Participating Students in We Were Already Gone:

Christina Barrera

Chris Berntsen

Dahlia Bloomstone

Noémie Jennifer Bonnet

Lele Dai

Whit Harris

Dusty Miller-Peter Macaulay

Jeremy Lawson

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Xinan (Helen) Ran

Carrie Rudd

Sydney Shavers

Shauna Steinbach

Alina Yakirevitch

Areum Yang

Participating Thesis Candidates:

Kennedy Bailey

Jenna Beasly

Nick Benfey

Simon Benjamin

Matilde Benmayor

Sisi Chen

Cristina Covucci

Anthon Cudahy

Jess Ellis

Bryan Ellingson

Rocío Guerrero

Kajin Kim

Topher Lineberry

Leo Madriz

Jameson Magrogan

Ariel Mitchell

Demarco Mosby

Ludovic Nkoth

Néstor Pérez-Molière

Simon Smith

Ting Teal

Polina Tereshina

Miko Veldekamp

Paul Vogeler

Matthew Weiderspon

Lily Wong

Special thanks to ATM Gallery, Firelei Baez, Carol and Arthur Goldberg, Laura Paulson, Will Leung, and the Robinson Family.