Join us for a celebration of Respond/Resist/Rethink: An Exhibition of Student Art for Change at Stamelos Gallery Center, U-M Dearborn. The exhibition features work by U-M students from across all three campuses.
In conjunction with the Fall 2023 Theme Semester: Arts & Resistance, Stamps Gallery (Central Campus, Ann Arbor), Duderstadt Center Gallery (North Campus, Ann Arbor), Riverbank Arts (Flint), and Stamelos Gallery Center (Dearborn) are partnering with the U-M Arts Initiative to expand the 4th annual Respond/Resist/Rethink student art exhibition. All undergraduate and graduate students enrolled at the Ann Arbor, Dearborn, or Flint U-M campuses in Fall 2023 were invited to apply to this juried exhibition that explores what can be done to create more just and equitable futures in the 21st Century and beyond.
The 2023 exhibition will include art of a variety of mediums and will be displayed in all four galleries across all three U-M campuses.
The arts play a central role in shaping cultural and political narratives. Artists, designers and creatives of diverse backgrounds have been at the forefront of social change by offering alternate models and ways of thinking, making and creating that do not perpetuate dominant regimes. Creative processes have been used time and again to reveal under-told stories and to resist simple narratives. Regardless of one's personal politics, an artwork's potential to change hearts and minds is urgent and necessary.
Respond/Resist/Rethink invited students to leverage their creativity to (re)imagine what they can do to create a more just and equitable community in the spaces that they inhabit.
Respond/Resist/Rethink: An Exhibition of Student Art for Change is co-presented by Stamps Gallery and Arts Initiative in partnership with the Duderstadt Center Gallery, Riverbank Arts, and Stamelos Gallery Center.
Disco Diaries, Kaitlyn Parker, Lithographic crayon and ink on paper
Big World, Avery J., Mixed Media
State of Denial, Elena Mills, Collage
Opening Reception (Stamelos)
Thursday, November 16, 2023, 5:30 p.m. - 7:30 p.m.
Student artists will speak at 6:00 p.m.
Reception is free to the public. Complimentary beverages and hors d'oeuvres provided.
The Stamelos Gallery Center is located on the first floor of the Mardigian Library at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. For more information, see below for contact information. Anyone requiring accommodations under the provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act should contact lacotton@umich.edu.
Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000), Serigraph print, 1974
Gift of Gilbert M. Frimet,
Collection of UM-Dearborn (1980.065)
Photographed by Tim Thayer
This powerful serigraph print from the permanent collection was created by Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000), one of this century's most widely acclaimed artists.
Lawrence was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, but moved to Harlem, New York, at 13. He is among the few painters of his generation who grew up in a Black community, received instruction primarily from Black artists, and was influenced by the experiences of Black individuals.
Lawrence's artwork portrays the lives and struggles of the Black community, capturing their experiences through several series focused on figures such as Toussaint L'Ouverture, Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Tubman, as well as themes related to life in Harlem and the civil rights movement of the 1960s. His style is characterized by vibrant colors and abstract forms.
In the 1940s, during a time of widespread segregation, Lawrence broke racial barriers by becoming the first Black artist whose work was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
He stated, "If at times my productions do not express the conventionally beautiful, there is always an effort to express the universal beauty of man's continuous struggle to lift his social position and to add dimension to his spiritual being."
Researched and written by:
Julianna Collins, Stamelos Gallery Center former intern, UM-Dearborn art history/museum studies graduate, Class of 2025
