THE DIGITAL ARENA
Parsons The New School for Design showcases annual Junior exhibition
By Connor Coleman, Naomi Ebenstein, Adriana Furlong, Hannah Nergaard & Elaina Yip
April 10, 2021
NEW YORK CITY, NY –The junior class in the Bachelors in Fine Arts program at Parsons The New School for Design have organized an online exhibition showcasing their work. In a normal year, the exhibition takes place in person, however the 2020 pandemic has thrown a curve ball, launching artists into the digital exhibition arena.
The online platform becomes a place where physical works engage themselves in new conversations as to how the world experiences art and how artists share their work, and with the impact of a global pandemic, artists showcase their work in three online exhibitions: “In Disarray”, “Uncertain Gestures”, and “<div class = “us”>”,
In Disarray is first and foremost an attempt. It makes an effort to document, compile, and recontextualize the precariousness of our newly nebulous, everyday quotidian reality. The COVID-19 pandemic pushed artists to consider what “artmaking” would look and feel like, resulting in an unprecedented shift towards the virtual. Here, in this online arena, In Disarray sees itself as a speculatory space to explore the possibilities of both showing and experiencing the spectral expressions of human experience in a contactless, distanced world.
Uncertain Gestures explores the notion of uncertainty by investigating the “space” a global pandemic has made in their lives. From works exploring domesticity, to the emotive state of the world, to how the body exists, in the home and in the metaphorical – the effects of quarantine and restrictive spaces have made their presence abundantly clear through the exploration of the intangible. In a digital age, the intangible seems like a close friend, a place that we’ve come to know as humans through our own forced internal reflections, and the notion of digital as intangible is a commentary that Uncertain Gestures begins to dissect.
<div class = “us”> attempts to speak the unspeakable: the world under COVID fled to online, amorphous non-spaces, the collective experience of this process creating dents too deep and wide to be easily expressed. How can we speak of this immense shift, this digital turn, which has opened new private spaces where community formulation now takes place? The exhibition poses the question: how can we embrace the digital to engender community? How can we engage with digital realities to make new work, new ways of collaboration, new worlds? What results from this digital turn is not an attempted facsimile of physical institutions, but entirely new forms of perception, language, structure, and work-making.
The Junior exhibitions will be showcased via online platform from April 16th through April 30th, 2021 – complete with live panel discussions, scheduled recording performances and artist spotlights.
The digital arena awaits…
Exhibitions can be found at
