March 25 - April 25, 2024
From Wright Gallery:
“Wright Gallery presents “Lamentations,” by Lydia Bodnar-Balahutrak, Ukrainian American artist and 2022-23 Fulbright Scholar. On view March 25th through April 25th, 2024, the solo exhibition of mixed-media works on paper features layered collages of print media and pictorial metaphors of “loss, sorrow, mercy, and hope,” surrounding important current events such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the Covid-19 pandemic. In “Pandemic Lamentations,” a chronological narrative of the pandemic can be read through layers of newspapers and drawn imagery of “intertwining branches, prickly thorns, choking gnarly vines, and smoldering fires and smoke.” The artist presents a talk about her work at Wright Gallery on April 3rd at 4:15 pm, with a reception to immediately follow until 6 pm. Open to the public.
A child of World War II Ukrainian refugees, the Cleveland-born and Houston-based artist strives to “perpetuate a discourse about one’s place in the world” while “examining how information is disseminated.” Bodnar-Balahutrak collects printed materials including newspaper articles, photographs, and cultural artifacts such as Soviet bank notes, to collage as a ground for drawing and painting. Early in the global Covid-19 pandemic, during lockdown, she began her 3-part series “Pandemic Lamentations” on rolls of paper pinned to her studio wall to document, “the suffering and death, the heroic as well as destructive behaviors, the failed leaders and the emergent new leaders, the lies and the facts.” These large-scale works will be on view alongside work surrounding other historic events such as the 1932-1933 famine-genocide, Holodomor, in Soviet Ukraine. Through her unique perspective as a Ukrainian American artist, Bodnar-Balahutrak examines how the dissemination of information, both true and untrue, has a profound effect on pivotal events of the past and present.
Located in the Langford Architecture Center at Texas A&M University in College Station, TX, Wright Gallery is open weekdays 8 am – 5 pm. Free and open to the public. To learn more about the Wright Gallery, please visit www.arch.tamu.edu/inside/services/wright-gallery/.”
Reception: April 3, 2024 | 9–11 pm
Wright Gallery, TAMU College Station
College of Architecture, Texas A&M University, 3137 TAMU, Langford Architecture Building A
College Station, 77843 Texas
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