Five Artists Selected as Finalists for ARCH Project's On-Campus Public Artwork
Bryn Mawr College’s ARCH Project (Art Remediating Campus Histories), in partnership with Monument Lab, is proud to announce the five finalists that have been selected by the project’s Artist Advisory Committee to commission a lasting campus monument that responds to the legacy of exclusionary practices at the College.
The five artists have been selected from 110 applications from 22 states and nine countries and were chosen based on the quality of their artistry, their understanding of the ARCH project themes, and an interest in engaging with the Bryn Mawr community. The call for artists to apply for the project was announced in October.
In late March 2023, the five finalists will be invited to share their final proposals with the Bryn Mawr College community in a public presentation. Informed by community feedback, the Artist Advisory Committee will make recommendations that will be delivered to Bryn Mawr College’s President and Board of Trustees. The Board will make a final decision by late April 2023.
The ARCH Project is a multi-year collaboration with students, staff, faculty, and alums to commission a lasting campus monument that responds to the legacy of exclusionary practices at the College. The project responds to the question, “What stories are missing from Bryn Mawr College?” Informed by a year of on-campus engaged research led by Monument Lab, this commission builds on ongoing grassroots and College-supported efforts to reveal and repair harm from Bryn Mawr College’s history with the hope of providing a path to a future of inclusion and reconciliation.
The Artists
Nekisha Durrett
From vast freestanding sculptures to intimate gallery installations, Nekisha Durrett’s work leverages unexpected materials to make visible the historical connections and connotations that places and materials embody but are overlooked in our day-to-day lives. Whether reimagining pre-Colonial landscapes, bygone Black communities, or family lore, Durrett’s research-driven practice strives to carve out contemplative spaces and offer opportunities for viewers to consider what is revealed or concealed when information is filtered across time.
Amanda D. King '11
A conceptual artist, cultural strategist, and social justice advocate, Amanda D. King uses arts and culture to envision possibilities for transforming individuals, communities, and society. King's multidisciplinary expertise in jurisprudence, art history, fashion, and culture inform her socially engaged practice, which utilizes visual communication & design, creative consulting, and arts education to mobilize her community and reciprocate grace. King was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and lives in Cleveland, Ohio, where she manages her studio practice and serves as creative director of Shooting Without Bullets. King earned an A.B. in history of art at Bryn Mawr.
Risa Puno
Risa Puno is a New York City based sculpture and installation artist who uses interactivity and play to understand how we relate to one another. She has exhibited with national and international organizations, including: NYC Department of Parks and Recreation, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Socrates Sculpture Park, El Museo del Barrio, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Rose Kennedy Greenway in Boston, SPACES in Cleveland, Onassis USA, New Children’s Museum in San Diego, MMX Open Art Venue in Berlin, and Science Gallery in Dublin.
Jean Shin
Jean Shin is known for her sprawling and often public sculptures, transforming accumulations of discarded objects into powerful monuments that interrogate our complex relationship between material consumption, collective identity, and community engagement. Often working cooperatively within a community, Shin amasses vast collections of everyday objects—Mountain Dew bottles, mobile phones, 35mm slides—while researching their history of use, circulation, and environmental impact. Distinguished by this labor-intensive and participatory process, Shin’s creations become catalysts for communities to confront social and ecological challenges.
Sharon Hayes & Michelle Lopez
Sharon Hayes is an artist who uses video, performance, sound, and public sculpture to expose specific intersections between history, politics and speech, to unspool reductive historical narratives and to re-ignite dormant pathways through which counter-understandings of the contemporary political condition can be formed. In her work, she lingers in the grammars—linguistic, affective, and sonic—through which political resistance appears. Hayes’ practice is in conversation and acts in collective force and resonance with the heterogeneous field of actions, voices, and practices that resist normative behaviors, complicit and unjust social agreements, and proscriptive temporalities to open up new ways of being together in the world.
Michelle Lopez Michelle Lopez is an Associate Professor in Fine Arts, sculpture (UPENN) and a multimedia artist known for her rigorous conceptual practice and boldly experimental approach to processes and material. Lopez’s installations and sculptural works are grounded in research on the iconography of cultural phenomena that transcends material properties and investigates the way the viewer’s body interacts with architectural space to re-orient the possibility of empowerment for the disenfranchised. Her work has been exhibited at Fondazione Trussardi (Milan, Italy), LA><Art (Los Angeles, USA), Harvard Carpenter Center, PS1 MOMA, Simon Preston Gallery (NYC), Commonwealth & Council (LA) among others. She has received a New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Sculpture Fellowship (2011), and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2019).