Flotsam & Jetsam

Curated by Artist in Residence Claudia Sohrens in dialogue with the first-year MFA Art Practice cohort, FLOTSAM AND JETSAM is a one-night cross-disciplinary installation exploring contamination as collaborative practice, featuring works by Heather Bergerson, Brett Boshco, Katie Neylon, Shawn Rhea, Olga Sidilkovskaya, Kenzie Sitterud, Kim Foster Yardley, and Iliad Terra, in collaboration with curator and artist in residence Claudia Sohrens.

Each artist reimagines contamination as a generative force influencing both form and experience:

Iliad Terra cultivates a living painting of mycelium and mushrooms, inviting dialogue between organic growth and human intervention. Terra explores the symbiotic relationship between human consciousness and the infinite universal mind inherent in everything, investigating the boundaries of how we perceive and know ourselves and our world.

Brett Boshco creates sculptural forms that embody tensions between structure and fragmentation, inviting viewers to navigate physical and conceptual obstacles.

Katie Neylon transforms everyday materials like milk cartons into layered narratives, exploring porous intersections between medium, process, and mythology.

Kenzie Sitterud envelops the gallery with the immersive sound of a ping pong game, allowing auditory “contamination” to shape spatial perception.

Heather Bergerson and Shawn Rhea transform the gallery walls into a living site of dialogue. Through expansive wall writing, they record reflections on the encoded effects of the seen and unseen interventions and provocations that we encounter in everyday life. The text invites visitors to consider the dynamic transformations fueled by exchange, uncertainty, and encroached-upon boundaries.

Kim Foster Yardley foregrounds vulnerability and accumulation through iterative self-portrait drawings, revealing process as collective formation.

Olga Sidilkovskaya presents a sculptural animation of collaborative process documentation, destabilized through reflections and distortions to interrogate memory and objecthood.

FLOTSAM AND JETSAM transforms the space into a living ecology where visitors navigate transitional spaces marked by chalk, sound, and dirt or plant matter—soft traces that redistribute and “contaminate” the installation. This exhibition embraces kinship, transformation, and experimental inquiry while dissolving singular authorship.

Process, documentation, and experimental failures remain visible, cultivating intimacy and ongoing dialogue. Ambient sound and fragments of conversation further shape the visitor’s experience, reinforcing the installation as a continually evolving space for collaboration and transformation.