Florida State University’s Museum of Fine Arts (MoFA) presents three exhibitions touching on themes of identity, migration and media consumption.
“This season, MoFA will be providing new perspectives on a variety of subjects,” said Meredith Lynn, curator and interim director of MoFA. “We have worked with guest curators to bring in contemporary artists from across the globe who are deeply engaged with ideas our community cares about.”
Lynn said MoFA strives to respond to and provide context for conversations students and community members are having.
“We are also excited by the range of work — from films to sculpture to NFTs (non-fungible tokens) — that we will have on display this semester,” she said. “We are confident that every person who walks into the museum will connect with something.”
The museum is open Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Thursday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
All exhibits are free and open to the public and support MoFA’s mission to connect FSU and the broader community to the arts.
Cut Frames, Captured Pixels: Found Footage Film & Video
Jan. 12 – March 18
Cut Frames, Captured Pixels is the museum’s first all-moving-image exhibit and will showcase found footage — a filmmaking process where previously shot footage is remixed and cut together to create a new work.
“Each work asks its audience to critically question how its source material is produced, circulated and consumed, in addition to how we, collectively, find meaning in them,” said Dave Rodriguez, curator of the exhibit and digital services librarian at FSU. “I hope that the exhibit will expose MoFA visitors to thoughtful, funny, incisive and inspiring work that they might not have experienced otherwise.”
This exhibit will display a variety of artists and be divided into three phases: “Cinematic Surfaces,” “Video and its Discontents” and “Expanding Screens.”
Un sentimento di libertá | A Feeling of Freedom
New Italians in the Work of Luigi Christopher Veggetti Kanku
Jan. 19 – May 6
Un sentimento di libertá | A Feeling of Freedom celebrates the diversity of “new Italian” identities by displaying the expressionist art — including portraits and digital paintings — of Afro-Italian artist Luigi Christopher Veggetti Kanku.
“Historically, celebrations of Italian art have excluded Afro-Italian artists, and as a response to this, Veggetti Kanku has organized international exhibitions that display his digital artworks,” said Tenley Bick, guest curator and assistant professor of global postwar and contemporary art. “Conceived in relation to those exhibitions, the show at MoFA also includes the artist’s works on paper, some shown for the first time.”
This exhibition will showcase the importance of cultivating a sense of belonging and pride in one’s culture.
“These works shed light on the power of the visual to disrupt popular imaginaries around identity, race and place, and to create a feeling of freedom that can come with being at home in one’s own country,” Bick said. “Veggetti Kanku’s digital paintings provide an ‘Afro-Pop’ sensibility and a subversion of iconic examples of historical Italian modernist paintings.”
Are We Free to Move About the World: The Passport in Contemporary Art
Feb. 2 – May 20
Curated by Grace Aneiza Ali, curator and assistant professor in the Departments of Art and Art History, this exhibit contends with artists’ perceptions of the passport as a response to the global migration crisis. “Are We Free to Move About the World” dives deep into the concept of the passport and how it can both enhance and restrict people’s freedom of movement.
“This gathering of global artists examines the great paradox of the passport — its ability to grant freedom of movement as well as curtail it,” Aneiza Ali said. “And it’s an invitation for all of us to ponder a world ordered by the passport and how we negotiate our place in it.”