facsimiles of truth

Exhibition Info
Curated by
Melanie Delach (MFA '19)
Featuring the work of 16 graduating MFA students who take up the task of recording their own worlds, as well as exploring political identity, familial history, and the sensorial in nature.

The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts is pleased to present Facsimiles of Truth, featuring the work of sixteen students from the MFA class of 2019:

Jessica Aquino, Rachel Briggs, Melanie Delach, Samantha Dominik, rod jones ii, Michael Kondel, Sarah Kunen, Jotham Malave, Charles Mason III, Silas McDonough, Addison Namnoum, Joseph Lazaro Rodriguez, Maggie Schermerhorn, Isabelle Schipper, Lorena Sferlazza, and Emily Wiedner.

Facsimiles exist in a hierarchical relationship with truth, where truth is privileged over its copy. Truth is conventionally considered a passive state of reality. Yet the works in this exhibition situate it as an ongoing process of recalibrating and re-presenting experience after the fact. Through painting, sculpture, fiber work, and digital media, the participating artists take up the task of recording their own worlds, exploring political identity, familial history, and the sensorial in nature. The resulting “facsimiles” made from cloth, tile, petals, pigment, wood, glitter, chalk, and string manipulate reality into alternative truths.