The Sella-Granata Art Gallery’s most recent display, “Creative Process,” showcased collaborative and engaging art.
The exhibition opened on Sept. 13 and ran through the closing ceremony on Friday, where performances by various artists commemorated the pieces on display.
Spearheaded by Oluwafunmilayo Akinpelu (Funmi OmO Moji), a Ph.D. student in contemporary English literature, the exhibition focused on artistic collaboration and the importance of creative processes over final results. As a nod to the exhibition’s cooperative nature and emphasis on process, it was presented under the group title of “Scheherazade’s Choir.”
This title is derived from “The Thousand and One Nights,” a compilation of Middle Eastern folktales popularly known as “Arabian Nights.” These stories are narrated by the character Scheherazade, wife to a murderous ruler who plans to kill her the night after their marriage. However, by telling him a series of stories but not revealing the endings, Scheherazade uses her husband’s curiosity to keep herself alive, creating a body of literature in the process.
Inspired by the tale of Scheherazade, the project focuses on how process is the art itself, and how community is the backbone of that process.
“What exactly does it mean to process? Taking a lot of information, information that you probably don’t need … to take that and then make it meaningful for yourself,” Moji said.
Aside from Moji, the exhibition included art from various UA graduate students — Amrita Bakshi, Candice Fairchild, Celeste Pfau, Debanjaly Sen, Ernest Ohia, George Wilson-Berry, Jigisha Kiran, Nathaniel Trost, Rob Alley, The Salawus and Jessica Cordes.
These artists hail from all corners of the globe, from stateside locales of Alabama and New York all the way across the Atlantic to India, Nigeria and England.
While the creative processes varied widely among these artists, one of the most intriguing was employed by Ohia and Cordes, who co-authored a poem titled “The Tenderness of Gathering What Survives.” Collaborative writing came with its setbacks, though.
“We did have problems deciding, but that’s the beauty of collaboration,” Ohia said. “You both have to reach an agreement on certain things, like the title or some lines.”
Their work was composed as an abecedarian poem where each line begins with successive letters arranged alphabetically . Throughout the process, the two authors alternated lines, each picking up where the other had left off.
“We were communicating through the Google Docs and through Instagram DMs,” Cordes said. “It was always just really exciting to see the poem turn in a way that I wouldn’t have turned it myself.”
This poem was one of three written pieces in the exhibit. The literature was joined by a multitude of other artistic mediums.
Throughout the closing ceremony, viewers glimpsed various paintings, illustrations and photographs. All of this was supplemented by student performances, whether dance or music played on the trumpet and banjo. While interesting, the myriad of elements made the exhibition feel slightly disjointed, and the closing ceremony in particular lacked a sense of cohesion.
A bright spot amid the confusion was Pfau’s “Pine Needles.” By weaving long pine needles into organic shapes, using these pieces as photography props and then building a display out of the pictures, pine needles and string, Pfau synthesizes various components in a creative yet sensible display that embraces the theme of process while maintaining unity.
“Process is super important to me,” Pfau said.“Sometimes it’s more important than the finished product. Part of the creative process involves being with people, and having that dialogue and conversation.”
