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Written by Elizabeth Young '20 and Isabelle Sakelaris '19 Passing through the atrium of the E. Craig Wall Jr. Academic Center, visitors can’t help but notice the giant video wall often used for presentations and lectures. When the wall is not being used for presentations, you can see a number of digital artworks, initially selected by members of the Art Collection Advisory Committee, as well as by a few Davidson College Faculty and Staff. This year, the Van Every & Smith Galleries hosted a contest to decide which of thirty new works by contemporary digital artists to acquire for the...

Angy Rivera is a Colombian-American immigrant who fled to the U.S. with her mother due to violence in Colombia when she was just a child. Now in her 20s, she is one of the most vocal undocumented youth activists. Rivera has two siblings who are American-born, and is experiencing the unique struggles of being in a mixed-status family. Although an undocumented immigrant Rivera doesn’t let documentation define her. However, starting at a young age, barriers resulting from her immigration status stood in her way; even scholarship applications are a different reality for undocumented youth. While her teachers encouraged her to...

Yinka Shonibare’s Wind Sculpture (SG) I (2018) made its debut in New York City this past March with much media attention. Resembling a large scrap of fabric or a sail waving in the wind, the sculpture features Shonibare’s signature use of Dutch wax print and remarkably was the artists’ first public work in New York. Thanks to the Public Art Fund, the 3-ton solid fiberglass sculpture remained on view in the Doris C. Freedman Plaza of Central Park through October 14. In advance of Wind Sculpture (SG) I’s permanent installation on the Davidson campus, we collected some of the exciting...

Regina José Galindo's performances are often shocking and degrading. Sometimes naked, she is tasered, hit, bloodied, anesthetized, urinated on, or left for dead. "Bearing Witness," at North Carolina's David son College last fall, was Galindo's first solo show in the United States. Curator Lia Newman gathered an intense selection featuring video and photographic documentation of past performances, performance artifacts and props, and a new work commissioned and produced by the college. Although the form of Galindo's work is indebted to '70s performance art, its content has little relation to art historical tradition; instead, it raises an immediate, intensely personal expression...

You’ll see vibrant evidence of a painter maturing and developing in “Russ Warren: Works 1971-2015,” a 44-year survey of the longtime Davidson College art professor’s career. It’s now on view at the college’s Van Every/Smith galleries. Warren, born in Houston in 1951, grew up surrounded by art, from Picasso to Mexican muralist Rufino Tamayo, and says he’s always been inspired by Mexican masks, “Day of the Dead” folk art and colonial paintings – especially in their disinterest in realism. A student of art history generally, he’s been more recently influenced by Roy de Forest, fellow Texan James Surls and Chicago...