Video Selections from “Sic Semper Tyrannis”
Showing through summer.
An established highlight in the VCUarts calendar, the annual Undergraduate Juried Exhibition showcases the best of undergraduate creative production at VCU. In a departure from past years, for the 2018 exhibition students submitted works in response to a themed call. Issued by juror Alex Klein, this year’s call Sic Semper Tyrannis asks students to engage critically with historical and contemporary implications of the famous Virginia state motto.
The prompt for this exhibition takes its title from the Latin motto for the state of Virginia, Sic Semper Tyrannis, or “thus always to tyrants.” Underwritten by a complex, highly charged set of historical and political associations, the phrase raises the fundamental issue of how artworks grapple with questions of power. These can range from the personal to the geopolitical and from humor and satire to critique and protest. The prompt thus invited students to think in broad terms about power at the level of content, media, and form. For example, on the one hand, one might consider how techniques of abstraction seek to overturn the “tyranny of the image.” On the other, one might consider the ways that artistic representation can “speak truth to power” and to amplify marginalized voices.
Showing on the Cabell Screen are excerpts from two videos included in the exhibition. Videos by:
- Nima Jeizan (Sculpture + Extended Media, Class of 2018): Reincarnation in the Best West
- Brianna Perry (Sculpture + Extended Media, Class of 2019): Towards a caress