2022 ART INSTALLATIONS
The 2022 visual theme is In/visible Villages. Through this prompt, the unseen is made visible, veils are lifted, and a newfound spirit is awakened. We take on a triple consciousness, performing acts of provocation, presence, and in/visibility. As always, we look to artists as the vanguard of discovery, partners in imagining new structures and broadening our collaborative spaces.Â
BARB THE BUFFALO
Artist:Â T/F Art Volunteers
Location:Â The Sanctuary @ First Presbyterian Church
Lovingly and painstakingly handcrafted with thousands of keyboard keys, everyone’s favorite buffalo, Barb, embodies the creative spirit of the Fest. This corporeal spirit remains tethered to her familiar haunt in a staunch promise to return to the Globe in the future.
CERTAIN EXCLUSIONS
Artist:Â Amanda Burnham
Location:Â Orr Street Studios
T/F welcomes our latest Artist-in-Residence, Amanda Burnham. Throughout the duration of the festival, Amanda will be installing her large, site specific drawings composed of hundreds of quick, gestural acrylic paint sketches, collaged onto the walls of Orr Street Studio Gallery. Stop in the gallery and witness the ever changing narrative as anecdotal moments recorded and observed from her explorations of Columbia, evolve to enfold idiosyncratic, personal iconography that emphasizes the darkly comic and absurd. This work will be on display through March 25.
COMO SEA
Artist: Carrie Elliot
Location: The Sculpture Yard on Ninth st.
Via large-scale diorama, local artist Carrie Elliot brings to life a Mississippian period reef from the Paleozoic era (359-325 million years ago). Featuring creatures found as fossils in our local rock outcrops, these sculptures include crinoids, brachiopods, gastropods, bryozoans, trilobites, and other creatures that thrived in mid-Missouri in the shallow sea present during the Mississippian. Magical as well as educational, this ancient reef provides mystery and wonder as you wander back in time.
CONSUME
Artist: Matthew Zupnick
Location: Missouri Theatre
Consume by Missouri artist Matthew Zupnick, treats the viewer to a playful satire confronting the instability of our current geopolitical and environmental situation. This masterful bronze sculpture elicits laughter and will be found in the gilded lobby of the Missouri Theater.
COSMIC TEMPLE
Artists: Marley Magner & Caleb Powell
Location: The Sculpture Yard on Ninth st.
Premiering the work of local artists Marley Magner and Caleb Powell, we are happy to present Cosmic Temple. This standalone installation aims to reduce stress and spark creativity by immersing you in a sonic and visual experience. Inspired by sacred geometric art and symbols, this installation searches for unity and meaning while providing a slice of the Cosmos.
DRAGON
Artist: Willy Wilson
Location: Picturehouse Lawn
Willy Wilson’s familiar Dragon, makes his appearance as beloved guardian of and guide to the festival. A constant and enduring force, this creature continues to represent the heart of True/False.
ENTANGLEMENT OF HOPE
Artist: Anne Labovitz
Location: Picturehouse Lobby
Entanglement of Hope activates color, light, and energy in this large-scale paper installation hanging in the lobby of the Picturehouse. All you have to do to engage in this visceral and emotional piece that challenges isolation, loneliness, and disconnect, is look up. This dramatic and unrepentantly beautiful paper sculpture explores expressions of humanity’s entanglement with hope and its generative promises for the future.
FORREST TREES
Artist: Michael Marcum
Location: Synapses Venues
Tree by tree, our local metal bending wizard, Michael Marcum, presents this metal reforestation project—a series of finely handcrafted metalwork trees that has grown organically over the past sixteen years. This year, its tendrils can be found in the Forrest theater, as well as wherever Synapses are afoot.
NON-PORTRAITS: IN/BETWEEN
Artist: Askia Bilal
Location: Uprise Bakery Gallery & Alley A
Askia Bilal presents Non-portraits: In-between-being, a series of paintings featuring nebulous figures painted predominantly in black against vibrant colors. Exploring notions of invisibility and hypervisibility, the seen and unseen, the known and unknown, these powerful pieces raise questions and challenge perceptions of Otherness and the Self, creation and de(con)struction of human identity. The gallery exhibition runs from Feb 27 through April 10.
THE OBSERVER AND THE OBSERVED
Artist: Sukanya Mani
Location: Picturehouse Lobby
Fusing physics, philosophy, and visual art, St. Louis artist Sukanya Mani explores the shift between the visible and invisible through her The Observer and the Observed. These large-scale suspended abstractions and tapestries interweave light and shadow on the ceiling and walls of the Picturehouse lobby. As you walk around the delicately cut paper installations—experiencing how your movement and breath causes the artwork to move gently—you become immersed in visual complexity and the relationships of individual elements.
PATHS UNKNOWN
Artist: Jane Georges
Location: Showtime Theater @ the Blue Note
Compositions and responses created from full body stretches and intuitive movements, Paths Unknown by Jane Georges positions large reflective pieces along the walls of the Blue Note. As you settle into your seat, search across the theater to view these ever changing explorations of nostalgia, intuition, and memory.
TENSEGRITY
Artist: Pneuhaus
Location: The Sculpture Yard on Ninth st.
Our favorite inflatable-design collective from Rhode Island, Pneuhaus brings to the 2022 Fest a new piece called Tensegrity. Playing with the constraints of material and tension, this playful design confounds the viewer with its discontinuous construction of compressed elements and opposing balance. With its ever changing light show, Tensegrity is not to be missed during the twilight hours.
TREE, BROKEN TREE
Artist: Dylan Mortimer
Location: Picturehouse Lawn
Tree, Broken Tree, by Kansas City artist Dylan Mortimer, visually revives a dying tree in this sculptural manifestation of life and death. As a symbol of his own recovery, surviving two double lung transplants, this impactful sculpture combines the temporal and the spiritual in an embrace of hope.