UC Davis grad exhibition moves online to showcase student projects during coronavirus

Higher education’s shifting dynamics amid the coronavirus pandemic have affected commencement ceremonies, postgraduate plans and celebratory get-togethers. But for the University of California in Davis, a re-envisioned platform hopes to put a spotlight on student success.

UC Davis’ graduate exhibition, an annual interdisciplinary showcase of student work, has been housed in the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art for the past three years. But due to the pandemic, the showcase has moved to the museum’s website, beginning Thursday.

“While we would prefer to be able to welcome visitors to the museum to see this exhibition, almost everybody has had to respond to a new reality and accommodate change. We’re grateful we’re able to offer students a virtual showcase,” said Rachel Teagle, the museum’s founding director. “This has only been possible because of outstanding collaboration with the Office of Chancellor and the Provost, the College of Letters and Science, and individual departments and students dedicated to making it happen.”

For several Aggies, their works have followed suit in reshaping historical norms and parsing everyday surroundings.

Tracy Corado, a master of fine arts candidate at Davis’ school of design, utilized augmented reality as part of her educational, ecology program, “Nature unBOUND,” which relays images of local fauna based on location.

The images are accompanied by informative links that tap into resources from educational institutions. Corado says the idea was inspired by the closure of such facilities, following the coronavirus outbreak.

“Overnight, all of these organizations released a bunch of content, and I thought, ‘How can I bring more traffic to these places?’ I saw more people going on walks and noticing things about their neighborhood, taking pictures of birds. I wanted to create an experience that can make people more interested in their local environments and help them explore further,” Corado said.

Old stories, new voices

The event’s move to a digital venue coincides with the inaugural inclusion of the department of Native American studies, which will be represented by doctoral candidate Haley Rains.

Rains’ work features photographs of her peers from Haskell Indian Nations University, where she earned her bachelor’s degree in indigenous and Native American studies.

Rains’ documentation of various tribes will be presented in film format, where they will be contrasted by selected works from photographer Edward S. Curtis.

“What I’ve tried to do with my project is reimagine what his work would look like if he was still alive and photographing Native American people today,” Rains said. “In doing so, my goal is to bring Native American people into the present because when you look at Native photography, or particularly Edward Curtis’ photography, it tends to relegate those people to the past. By photographing these Native Americans in a way that’s compelling and diverse — I’m humanizing them, I’m bringing them into the present. They are here, and they have a stake in the future.”

Rains points to instances of Southwestern tribes being garbed in plains Indian regalia as a point of contention, in addition to the rustic motifs and color palates inherent to early photography.

“I do photograph a lot of pow-wows. I try to make it really bright and colorful because I think that, a lot of the time, when we see photos of Native American people, they’re always in sepia tone or black and white, and I feel that kind of contributes to relegating them to the past,” Rains said.

Sarah Wald, a doctoral candidate in music composition and theory, will unveil a project in keeping with her dissertation, which focuses on the musical traditions of the Sephardic Jews.

For Wald, the new venue necessitated a shift from an opening-night recital to presenting recorded performances. The pieces, both derived from a tune called “La Prima Vez,” feature performances by Wald and piano duo, Zofo.

Wald cited unwelcome accompaniment from her pet birds as nixing any plans for a live online recital.

Wald traces her fascination with the genre to her youth, when she discovered the album, “Songs of the Sephardim: Traditional Music of the Spanish Jews,” in her parents’ collection.

“I have Jewish ancestry, but not Sephardic. My Jewish ancestors are from Eastern Europe. So I’m kind of approaching this as an outsider, and doing what basically amounts to ethnographic research on the tradition,” Wald said. “I want to be as knowledgeable and respectful of the tradition as I can be, but at the end of the day I’m not aiming for authenticity or anything like that. I’m really very conscious of the fact that I’m on the outside, and I’m bringing my own perspective to this.”