Art students explore identity, home in national exhibits
An artist’s ultimate goal is to be nationally recognized for his or her creative works and one group of art students is getting just that.
This spring art students Rayna Hernandez and Tramika LaBranche are being featured in “I AM,”a self-portrait exhibit, and Aaron Packard is in the States Project representing South Dakota.
Rayna Hernandez is a senior painting student. Growing up with both American and Lakota culture, Hernandez works to incorporate both into her artwork, creating a dichotomy and unity between her identities. Because she primarily works with self-portraiture, Hernandez’s work was featured in Altered Aesthetics’ I AM exhibit.
Hernandez said she works with self-portraiture because it’s a reflection of herself and her world. Her work is reflective of Frida Kahlo’s, a Mexican painter, work, she added.
“(Kahlo) is one of my biggest influences for self portraits,” she said.
Like Kahlo, Hernandez said she uses painting to understand her own identity and make sense of her dichotomous heritage.
Tramika LaBranche is a junior studio art student who works in graphic design and printmaking. Without using words, LaBranche said she hopes to create a conversation, usually about race and identity, through her imagery. LaBranche said she’s influenced by the media’s portrayal of the LGBTQ+ community and people of color (PoC).
Bringing society’s heteronormative culture into question, she reads writings on identity by Michel Foucault, Mia McKenzie and Bell Hooks for inspiration.
“These authors help bring perspective to those who are PoC and LGBTQIA+,” LaBranche said. “They give us knowledge and security that we are not alone in this oppression that many feel when they are not and never will be part of the present normative in our society.”
She said this research helped her contribute to conversations about race and identity. She gave one example in particular: Uncanny M. Mask, the work featured in I AM, is possibly the face of a gorilla, the face of a PoC or a self-portrait. LaBranche said this piece makes viewers question themselves and their views.
Aaron Packard is working toward a Master’s of Fine Arts in photography. Packard has commercial experience in photography, but is now focusing on using photos as art forms.
Packard said he’s been exploring historic photographic techniques, with a focus on wet plate collodian. This technique was used extensively during the 1800s, is very labor intensive and isn’t taught to many photographers anymore. The process utilizes an on-site darkroom, otherwise the images will not last.
Packard said he uses this because he’s interested in combining historic photography techniques with contemporary techniques.
In the States Project series, Packard’s work focuses on the Black Hills and the Badlands, highlighting South Dakota’s distinctive landscape. By using the wet plate collodian process, there’s an element of chance to the products, he said.
This series began as a commission for Black Hills Ammunition, a South Dakota company out of Rapid City, which they used in their 2015/16 advertising campaign.
Packard said he had been wanting to explore this process for years, and said this commission gave him the opportunity to research and perform the technique.
He also said he finds this unpredictability and intensive process rewarding in a way that doesn’t happen with digital work. He wants to continue these explorations into historical processes, he added.
Hernandez and LaBranche were also featured in the exhibit “Candid Perspectives on Race in 2015” in Sioux Falls. Packard is in the “My Body, My Rights” exhibit currently on display at ID Weeks Library. All three artists were also in USD’s Stilwell Student Art Show in 2016.
I AM is a national exhibit which can be viewed at Altered Aesthetics in Minneapolis. The States Project is also national and can be viewed online at lenscratch.com.
