The 2023 visual theme is THIS IS A TEST, true to the spirit of experimentation that first brought True/False into the world and has kept us going for 20 editions. The festival remains a work-in-progress, always reaching for new forms of understanding; our collective evolution, innovation, and exploration continue to be essential in forging a way ahead, as a festival, and as humans.
ART INSTALLATIONS
ANTHOZOA REDU
Artist: Tracy Greever-Rice
Location: Showtime Theater @ The Blue Note
This fiber art examines patterns and life on a micro and macro scale. Originally designed for the Blue Note in 2013, it explores oceanic stalactites and stalagmites, and the wonders of the undiscovered.
BARB THE BUFFALO
Artist: Sabrina Braden, Camellia Cosgray, & Jamie Kroll
Location: The Globe lobby
Lovingly and painstakingly handcrafted with thousands of keyboard keys, everyone’s favorite buffalo, Barb, has embodied the creative spirit of the Fest for the past 11 years.
CABINET OF WONDER
Artist: Laura Haynes & Students
Location: Missouri Theatre
We asked Laura Haynes and her students from Hawthorne Elementary and the students of Locust Street Expressive Arts Elementary School, what would be in their Cabinets of Wonder? Through this artful installation, collect a “curiosity” which only a child’s perspective of the world can give.
COLONY
Artist: Marika Arellano Christofides
Location: The Blue Note lobby
An infestation/installation of over 1,000 laser cut, hand-printed bug girls created by digitally manipulating imagery from vintage valentines, Colony embodies a spirit of hybridity, experimentation and play. While one small bug may represent an interruption in the viewer’s visual field, as a collective they have the power and menace to redefine a space.
THE DRAGON
Artist: Willy Wilson
Location: The Globe lawn
Our charming and playful Dragon is once again featured on the lawn of the Globe. After 14 years, this will be its last hurrah at the Fest before retiring to the True/False Art archive.
DREAMSCAPES
Artist: Owen Lowery
Location: Party Art
Offering partygoers a set of four interactive projection tests, these visual & soundscapes are activated through touch, play, and exploration.
GREETINGS
Artist: Gabe Meyer
Location: Alley A
A jovial invitation to community members, patrons, guests, artists, and volunteers alike to uncover the backdrop of celebration and nostalgia returning artists bring to True/False and Columbia.
GROWTH
Artist: Tavia Sanza
Location: Showtime Theater @ The Blue Note balcony
An exploration of concepts related to memory and loss through frenetic use of embroidery. Utilizing a series of traumas and reconstructions her work accumulates and sheds material in the process of adapting to fit each new environment, this causes the work to remain in flux. Previous “eras” of the work are visible only in fragments or around areas of trauma, but they form the foundation for each new epoch within this newest iteration.
A LIVING MACHINE
Artist: Mollie Hosmer-Dillard
Location: The Picturehouse (upstairs, outside the theater)
Interest in the relationship between the part and the whole led Mollie to experiment with wooden, laser-cut tessellation tiles and come to see its power for working with groups. The resulting images are a vision of a different, radically inclusive social reality, a visible disruption of Western society’s isolating focus on the individual. For this project, she hosted nine workshops, and more than 150 people painted elements of a “contraption” on a single, wooden, laser-cut arrow…and the arrows fit together to create something else entirely.
THE MAP
Artist: Camellia Cosgray
Location: The Globe
As permanent as tissue-paper would ever possibly dream of being, this constant and beautiful work comforts as it puts our world in perspective.
MAPACUS
Artist: The APW Collective
Location: The Globe lobby
This playful and creative collaboration by Ashley Nagel, Tracy Greever-Rice, Glenn Rice, Jamie Kroll, Doug Sonnenberg, and Camellia Cosgray is timeless in the joy it gives.
PICTUREHOUSE PORTRAITS
Artist: Nate Truesdell
Location: The Picturehouse (inside the theater)
This is the final year to witness these iconic Picturehouse Portraits, a favorite reflection of the past Columbia community made with support from Sam Spencer, Steve Rice, Rick Agran, Nick Michael, Chelsea Myers, Livvy Runyon, Haley Padilla, Katie Canepa, and the MU Micro-Doc class.
SOUVENIR
Artist: Mee Jey
Location: The Picturehouse lobby
Inspired by the Indian traditional technique of bundling and suspending precious things from the ceiling, this piece was started in 2019 and it has continued to grow in content and intent ever since. A work-in-progress bundling the cherished memories and emotions as well as everything that defines its creator—as a mother and artist—to be bequeathed to her child.
STAIN GLASS
Artist: DSOMB Collective, Shea Boresi, and Jamie Kroll
Location: The Globe Theater
A narration of Fests past, our Stain Glass panels play with the theater’s lights and colors and acclaim the return to the Globe as a screening venue.
TRY TO GET CLOSER
Artist: Sukanya Mani
Location: The Picturehouse lobby
From St. Louis-based, Indian-born interdisciplinary artist, Her artistic process is a practice of sustained curiosity and constant learning through asking questions. The artworks result from pursuing inquiry borne out of a community-based, research-driven process. an experiment with various media to find the best fit to deliver this core idea to its intended audience.
UNFOUND TAPESTRIES
Artist: Tracy Greever-Rice
Location: The Globe lobby
Created in 2016, these tapestries continue interweaving the stories which only worn and recycled fabric can hold.
WARNING STONES
Artist: Philip Gresham
Location: The Sculpture Yard on Ninth st.
Referencing the Czech Hunger Stones, Japanese Tsunami Stones, and the proposed Long Term Nuclear Waste Warning Messages (as well as common gravestones), these sculptural pieces are built to represent the lithic ways in which humanity has sent messages of warning and mourning up from the past. Using light, temporary materials, the resultant stone of these works resides in the viewer’s mind as a cautionary message of the dangers that human industry poses to the environment and our collective future.
YOU ARE MAGIC
Artist: Alicia Eggert
Location: The Picturehouse lawn
This interactive inflatable sculpture is designed to inspire wonder and evoke the power of collaboration. When two or more people touch the handprint sensors and hold hands, a small electrical current passes through their skin to complete a circuit, and the deflated sculpture comes to life. The inflatable fills with air, growing larger the longer participants hold hands, expanding into the words “You Are Magic.” As soon as they release their hands, the circuit is broken, and the sculpture deflates into a lifeless pile of fabric.
ARTISTS-IN-RESIDENCE
NIKI DIONNE
Niki Dionne is an Illustrator and Fiber Artist based in Dallas, TX, whose work illustrates her biggest inspiration; care-free black women. As an artist who has struggled with her identity as a black woman, every piece she creates has a part of her and the work invites viewers to find bits of themselves—or the women in their life—in the faceless women.
This project is generously funded by Mid-America Arts Alliance, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the state arts agencies of Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas.
MAMI TAKAHASHI
Mami Takahashi is a multidisciplinary artist from Tokyo. Using photography, performance, installation, and urban intervention, her practice explores the complexities of being Asian and a woman living outside of her home country.
EXHIBITIONS
COMMUNITY THREAD
Artist: Carrie Elliott & Esther Stroh
Location: Columbia Art League
True/False, in partnership with CAL, presents artists Carrie Elliott and Esther Stroh’s, quilted tapestry created by volunteers and community members. In keeping with the 2023 theme of THIS IS A TEST, this quilt is created from multiple techniques, such as embroidery, applique, and batik that are inspired by a 20-year history of Fest experiences.
Exhibition runs Feb 28 – March 24
FELT BY NUMBERS: A SOFT COMMUNITY DRIVEN MURAL
Artist: Niki Dionne
Location: Orr Street Studios
In partnership with Orr Street Studios, artist Niki Dionne brings to True/False her week-long fiber workshops, where participants learn how to needle felt. Their collective efforts will contribute to an 11ft mural, displayed at Orr Street. Also on display are Niki’s small felted framed portraits—inspired by the female form, titled Dress Rehearsal. Sign up to participate in the workshop here!
Exhibition runs Feb 27 – April 1
SEEING YOU/SEEING ME: CONVERSATIONS IN MISSOURI
Artist: Mami Takahashi
Location: stop-gap projects (810 East Walnut St)
Artist-in-Residence Mami Takahashi uses photography, video documentation, street performance, installation, poetry, and urban intervention in her practice as she explores the complexities of being an Asian woman struggling with the US immigration system. Mami’s performance, SEEING YOU/SEEING ME, is a visualization response to social, cultural, and political questions that you can witness Friday at 4:30pm & 7pm at stop-gap projects.
The “Seeing You/Seeing Me” exhibition runs March 3 – 22.
TRIAL AND ERROR
Curator/Artist: Rebecca Allen
Location: Hittsville Gallery (10 Hitt St)
This exhibition spotlights the many True/False photographers and their work over the past 10 years. Photography is essentially trial and error, each photograph is an attempt to get a good shot, but most often, the best you can hope for is to learn what to do better next time. T/F photogs are at their hearts professional experimenters, taking on unpredictable environments and scenes and giving audiences the best frames by which to remember those experiences. This exhibition is made up of the works they felt were their best shots capturing—and celebrating—what T/F means to them.
Exhibition runs Feb 28 – April 1
Visit our archives for previous years’ programming:
