Uncovering the Third: Material as Relation

An exhibition reception will be held on June 20, 2023 from 6 – 8 p.m. Food and drinks will be provided. 

Uncovering the Third: Material as Relation is a group show consisting of work by 12 University of Michigan students and recent graduates. 

• Natalie Bultman
• Alexandra Collins
• Brooke Dodderidge
• Nehema Kariuki
• Gabrielle Mack
• Caitlin Martens
• Jay Petrowski
• Casey Rheault
• Mira Simonton-Chao
• Catherine Small
• Gray Snyder
• Eli Underhill-Miller

Exhibition Statement:

Uncovering the Third: Material as Relation (2023), features multimedia work investigating how materials and metaphors can inform and expand the way that we understand our permeable relationships with one another and our larger environments. The contextual history of the various mediums used; clay, fiber, mycelium, carries an accumulation of associations and existing discourses. By bringing together these potent mediums, the artist creates an opportunity to explore a ​“third space” through the particularity of their own experiences. Metaphors form in the production of objects and things, new arrangements produce additional spaces which can only exist in this form within the specific circumstances.

We place these materials in situations and contexts so that they might be reframed and repurposed to offer a deepening or a shift in subjectivity. The multi-ness of the whole thing creates space for forms meant to turn us inwards or into each other. Through their work with the materials, each artist creates their own metrics, for positioning and understanding themselves in corporeal, ecological, digital, ephemeral relationships. Our language is porous and so are we. This space between things, this absence between atoms is spilling over with magic and potentiality.