Emergency Contact
Emergency Contact
MFA Thesis Exhibition
2026
Emergency Contact finds significance in everyday life while living in a country that actively alienates most people. The sculptures and drawings facilitate an alternative attention to our surroundings and each other. Artworks composed of natural materials are contextualized by recent global and local emergencies, including snow gathered on the first day the US and Israel bombed Iran, soil collected at the entrance of an ICE detention center in rural Pennsylvania, and water from Tyler School of Art and Architecture's recent flood. By using banal objects as reference points (a bucket, a sandwich bag, plastic straws), our shared physical reality is rearranged in unexpected, sometimes humorous ways. Meaning and connection can be felt through moments of synchronicity and invisible phenomena made perceptible: a radio broadcast of dreams from Temple University's neighbors and student body, a sliced-up letter from my eugenicist great-grandfather, drawings of physical sensations. Videos and sounds unfurl over time, exposing connections typically obscured by systems of imperialism, white supremacy, and corporate predation. By proposing inventive ways to orient ourselves, I hope to reveal patterns that influence how we relate to each other.
Emergency Contact was exhibited in the Edgar Heap of Birds Family Gallery at Temple Contemporary in 2026. Dream Radio was made possible by a Dean's Support Research Grant. Photos by Constance Mensh and John Carlano