Nicole Buchanan

Strange Fruit

December 4, 2020 - January 23, 2021

Nicole Buchanan is a documentary photographer based in Atlanta, GA and a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design where she received a BFA in photography. She utilizes her skills and experiences to explore innovative ways to invoke emotional insight into cultural and political events that shape our world. She believes that art can bring light to hot topics in a way that inspires real change in the world. She uses her photography as a weapon to influence, trick, and even change the minds of others.

Strange Fruit, contains images made during the Atlanta protests in 2020.  Not as an observer but as a participant, Nicole captures the energy and diversity of the crowd…children to older adults, multiple races…all together making their voices heard trying to bring about change.  

Vanessa Leroy

there’s a place i want to take you

September 4 - October 17, 2020

Vanessa Leroy is currently a student in the photography program at Massachusetts College of Art & Design scheduled to graduate in 2021. We are honored to be exhibiting Leroy’s series, there’s a place i want to take you.  She has created a book of cloth cyanotypes of journal entries from the 5th grade, family scrapbook photographs, passing thoughts, as well as photos she has taken between 2014 and 2019.

I wanted to re-contextualize these images by exposing them to light, creating diptychs, inserting test + illustrations, and binding the timeline with thread…I see photography as a tool for social justice, and with it I hope to create worlds that people feel as though they can enter and draw from, as well as provide a look into an experience that they may not personally recognize. -VL 2019

We share a young girl’s diary of her experiences and balance that against what is the reality of today. We will be showing both Leroy’s handmade book as well as individual pieces.

Vanessa Leroy is a 23-year-old photographer from Waltham, Massachusetts. She is currently completing her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She remains on the hunt for new ways of seeing, remembering, and altering the world through photography. She is drawn to image making because of the power it holds to create nuanced representation for marginalized people and uplift their stories. She sees photography as a tool for social justice, and with it she hopes to create worlds that people feel as though they can enter and draw from, as well as provide a look into an experience that they may not personally recognize.

Zhidong Zhang

Natural Impersonation

July 19 - August 31, 2020

I see my practice as manifestations of vulnerability, of defiance, and of my beliefs. Caught between my hometown Ningyuan and the U.S, Natural Impersonation explores the construction of sexuality and identity in the context of the repression and censorship of homosexuality in China. Engaging in the dialogue of how this “inappropriate desire” can be manifested and subverted through photographic representation, I construct alluring and voyeuristic scenes inflected with fantasy, trauma, fetish, and violence through staged portraits of close friends, family members, myself, and still life made with low value objects I collected from dollar stores. By introducing the private realm of same-sex romance and intimacy into a public sphere against the backdrop of a heteronormative and phallocentric structure, my photographs reexamine how the exteriorization of homoerotism is made visible and accessible in a state of grotesque masquerade and performance, which consequently mimics a proximity to an alternative reality that challenges the rigid and stereotypical codes of gender roles, identity construction, and traditional cultural values. -Zhidong Zhang

Zhidong Zhang is a lens-based artist from Hunan, China. He holds a B.Sc in Applied Mathematics from Central South University and an MFA in photography at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. His work investigates the intersection of representation, identity construction, and the role of imagery in contemporary culture.

Kevin Bennett Moore

Dissimulation

July 19 - August 3, 2020

Inspired by film and societal constructs of femininity, my work is an exploration on the formation of character, narrative, and identity. Drawing inspiration from domestic space, I construct each image in order to direct my own narrative. These photographs are a world created to speak freely without interruption. By utilizing the past--both historic and cultural references--I am able to juxtapose queer existence with classic Americana. Although my work is made up predominantly of self-portraits, my goal is for viewers to consider their own responses to queerness as they see it. By applying my own identity and queer experience, I hope to engage the viewer in an unfamiliar set of circumstances. The photographs ask: can we live comfortably outside the norm? How does this character challenge the societal ideas of masculinity? Driven by emotion and intuition, I utilize melodrama to discuss ideas of visibility and invisibility, what is acknowledged, and what is not-- questions that remain relevant in today’s politics. -Kevin Bennett Moore

Kevin Benett Moore (b. 1996) is a recent graduate with Departmental Honors from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design (BFA ‘20). The Boston-based photographer chooses to work with self-portraiture in order to discuss his own experiences translated through historically inspired fabrications. Aiming to relay queerness on camera, he interprets intuitive ideas into narrative stills by setting up scenarios that allow him to speak freely without interruption. Moore is influenced greatly by gender performativity and films, ideals of mid-century American culture, what goes into creating a set, and how far he can transport the viewer. Most recently he was awarded third place in the Lensculture 2020 Portrait Awards and was chosen to have his work featured on a billboard in Los Angeles.

Michael Lafleur

The Prospect of Peacefield

March 6 - April 11, 2020

We are pleased to introduce you to Michael Lafleur and his The Prospect of Peacefield.  With an 8×10” view camera, Lafleur takes us on his journey as he explores the complexities of time in this beautifully maintained and timeless garden.  These black and white compositions are quiet and layered with intricate details of the garden.  Our only sense of time is not in years but in the life of the plantings – annuals representing a seasonal change and many of the trees where age might require their replacement.

Lafleur graduated from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design with a Bachelors of Fine Art in Photography in 2016.

Azita Moradkhani

Five New Drawings

January 24 – February 28, 2020

Born in Tehran where she was exposed to Persian art and culture as well as Iranian politics, Moradkhani developed a profound sensitivity to the dynamics of the vulnerability and violence. She’s since turned that into her work and art-making.

As Moradkhani writes, the female body, and its exposure to different social norms, is central to her work. Through her drawings and body castings, she is examining displacement as an unnatural state we experience when we find ourselves insecure in our own body.

Drawings of intimate lingerie—beautiful, delicate, and seductive—use an aesthetics of pleasure to shift our focus to possibility, to hope.  Yet as we look more closely, through the layers of colored pencil, past the details of lace and filigree, disruptive iconography becomes apparent, narrating inherited histories of nation and belief, engaging us in more complex ways.

Since graduating in 2016, Ms. Moradkhani has participated in 10 residencies.  Residencies are very competitive and require an intense jurying process.  During a residency, the artist focuses entirely on making their art and is often asked to teach.  A few of the more notable residencies she has attended are:  Munson Williams Proctor Arts Institute, Artist in Residence, Utica, NY from August, 2017 until May, 2018; Yaddo, Artist in Residence, Saratoga Springs, NY from December  15th, 2017 – January, 2018; Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA), Artist in Residence, North Adams, MA from November 7th – December 4th, 2018; and McColl Center for Art & Innovation, Artist in Residence, Charlotte, NC from January 6th – April 28th, 2020.

These Five New Drawings are being shown at this time as a preview to her major exhibit which will take place in December, 2021.  However, in light of the current situation with Iran, I feel it important to provide a platform to encourage an ongoing dialog about people and not governments…about artists and their works. -Arlette Kayafas