CCA Student Spotlight
In collaboration with California College of the Arts, the ICA SF invited CCA graduate students to propose creative exhibitions in the ICA SF bathrooms, continuing our mission of supporting the local arts ecosystem and encouraging artists to push the boundaries of their practice. In the coming months, these spaces will feature site-specific installations by four CCA Graduate Fine Arts students: Kelley Finley, Deena Qabazard, Dottie Lo Bue, and Jason Stern.
On view November 11, 2023 - February 4, 2024: Kelley Finley and Deena Qabazard: Mutability Stalls.
Kelley Finley (MFA Fine Arts ‘24) and Deena Qabazard (MFA Fine Arts ‘24) will each occupy one of the bathrooms, with their work in dialogue with one another as they individually visualize the persistent, adaptive survival of organic bodies. They both encapsulate changing states as resistances or miraculous evolutions. As Finley’s ginger root changes around environmental circumstances, Qabazard ‘s knitted limbs mold to the container that holds them. Through their project, we are able to reflect in the privacy of the bathroom on organic bodies as dynamic systems capable of incredible movement, mutability, and decomposition.
On view February - May 2024: Dottie Lo Bue and Jason Stern.
This project is organized by Samantha Hiura (ICA SF Curatorial Fellow, CCA MA Curatorial Practice & MA Visual Critical Studies ‘25).
Date
November 11, 2023–February 4, 2024
IMAGE
Deena Qabazard, Beginnings, 2023. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Nicholas Lea Bruno.
Deena Qabazard, Beginnings, 2023, yarn. Image: Nicholas Lea Bruno.
Kelley Finley, Lotus House, 2023.
Kelley Finley, Amity, 2023, steel and ginger.
Deena Qabazard is a Kuwaiti American artist currently working in San Francisco, CA. She weaves together materials, dance, and movement to experiment with the physical and mental capabilities of the human body– both its lived experience and its visual representation. A duality of familiarity and strangeness fuels her work, originating from within her experience of growing up between California and Kuwait. Qabazard is currently an MFA Candidate at California College of the Arts.
Kelley Finley is an interdisciplinary artist primarily working in sculpture and performance. Finley received her BFA in Sculpture at Kutztown University (Kutztown, PA) and is currently pursuing her graduate degree at California College of Arts. She is a visual artist who explores personal identity and labor as a biracial woman, and formal aesthetics that investigate the relationship between the body, fragility, and solidity. Her work has been shown internationally in Hong Kong and Italy.