2019 MFA Thesis Exhibition | Faith Goodman

On view:
Friday, April 5–Sunday, April 28, 2019

Reception:
Friday, April 5, 2019 | 6–9 p.m.

See the work of emerging artists and designers at the CCAD MFA & MDes Thesis Exhibition. For the first time, the show will include strategic and service design projects from MDes candidates. MFA candidate work spans a number of different media and genres, such as painting, sculpture, photography, design, video, illustration, and animation. The exhibition and reception are free and open to the public.

Artist Statement:

My art asks the question, “How do you define American Blackness?” Is it the way one speaks, the music one listens to, or the religion one practices? Conversely, how does one define American Whiteness? Is it all things that society defines as normal, good, or right? Regardless of one’s opinion, it is easy to develop stereotypical categories as definitions. Yet how do we define the individual who sits on the border between White and Black, sometimes referred to as the “Oreo.” In my childhood, I was deemed the “Oreo” by my peers. Growing up in a majority White school system, I stood out as the Black who practiced the White religion of Catholicism. As I was subjected to ridicule by both races, I wondered what by definition is an “Oreo?” By discussing the American racial polarity between Black and White, I intend through my work to dissect set definitions of race and to expose the grey, messy in between.