Andrea DeFelice presented her MFA thesis exhibit, "Please Adjust Accordingly," dedicated to the worst year of her life, in Klapper Hall's student gallery on Nov. 18.
A culmination of two years' work, the exhibit included pieces that dealt with the psychology of human adjustment, relationships to identity and reaction to sudden change.
DeFelice has always been interested in "how people have to adjust themselves mentally, or even physically, to cope or reinvent themselves."
She said, "Every piece in this [exhibit] has a common thread with those ideas."
DeFelice engaged in a performance as part of her work, an aspect that she intends to continue to pursue. She heated up glass bowls in a small oven, bringing them to the temperatures of their set thresholds. They were then exposed to their molecular opposite, ice water. The glass reacted with the water and shattered. According to DeFelice, this is a metaphor for human adjustment to change. Just as pieces of glass have different set thresholds, so do people. Some people, when exposed to their polar opposite at the set threshold, explode.
One of her most complex pieces, completed less than a month ago, was a sheet of drafting film with holes in it. DeFelice collected a bunch of different charts based on the global economy, dating from the 1920s (just after the market crash), and charts about the recent election and cut holes in selected parts of those charts. She then plugged this into "Google Earth" and changed it into terrain. After this, she put the data into the "Google Earth" flight simulator and taught herself to fly. A recording of this was projected onto the original drafting film in the exhibit.
"The delicate surface made it look like a game," DeFelice explained. "The stock market is a giant game." She noted the fluctuations in topography and height. She said her intent in this piece was tied into the way America is focused on the word "change."
Other parts of the exhibit included a cochlea created from the artist's fingernails. "The work is very personal," DeFelice said, about the use of parts of her body in the work. She also explained that her fascination with sound and the ear is because she is half deaf. Her inability to hear certain sounds, such as birds chirping and footsteps, was documented on a black TV screen, where sounds were expressed through subtitles, but not emitted.
DeFelice was one of the students selected to go to Romania as part of the "Periferic 8" exhibit. This trip influenced her tremendously.
"Traveling always inspires," she said. "Everything you do changes you in a way."
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