Graduate Humanities Forum

Points of Departure:
Inner and Outer Journeys in Contemporary Art

Organized by Naomi Beckwith, Shayna V. McConville,
and Liliana Milkova

February 6–23, 2007
Fox Art Gallery, Logan Hall, Penn Campus

Gallery Hours: M-F 9:00 am – 5:00 pm
Special hours, Friday, Feb. 23: 9:00 am – 7:00 pm

Conceived as the visual counterpart to the year-long Penn Humanities Forum on Travel, the exhibition “Points of Departure: Inner and Outer Journeys in Contemporary Art” presents over 80 works by 60 artists from the US and abroad. As the title suggests, the show explores representations of travel and its cultural, physical, and psychological connotations in mediums as varied as painting, photography, video, installation, and performance. With works that incorporate materials ranging from food, surprising found objects, sound, and textile, the selected artists offer views on travel that range from apprehensive to idealistically humorous.

“Points of Departure” presents travel not as a destination-driven occurrence, but rather as a process, accumulative with its accessories (maps, suitcases), necessities (passports), and memories (photos, postcards, tastes, smells). The artworks are organized according to seven main themes—cartography, mementoes and memory, travel and the body, migrations and displacement, tourism and trade, inner and outer travel, site/landscape—and are exhibited in four interconnected galleries, thereby creating a traveling experience for the visitor traversing the Fox Gallery's spatial expanse. Through these several vantage points, the exhibition investigates different types and means of travel as culturally constructed, economically enabled, politically conditioned, physically experienced, and emotionally sensed.

Participating artists

Scott Andresen, Brooklyn, NY
Kinga Araya, Philadelphia, PA
Todd Baldwin, Lambertville, NJ
Sibylla Benatova, Philadelphia, PA
Gail Biederman, Croton-on-Hudson, NY
Milana Braslavsky, Philadelphia, PA
Ben Cain, England and Croatia
Hector Canonge, New York, NY
Christine Catsifas, San Antonio, TX
Didier Clain, Philadelphia, PA
Ben Colebrook, New York, NY
Genevieve Coutroubis, Philadelphia, PA
Keith Crowley, Philadelphia, PA
Alex Da Corte, Philadelphia, PA
Benjamin Donaldson, New Haven, CT
JoAnne Dubil, North Wales, PA
Steven and Billy Blaise Dufala, Philadelphia, PA
Jeff Fichera, Philadelphia, PA
Tim Fitts, Philadelphia, PA
Richard Garrison, Delmar, NY
Daniel Gerwin, Philadelphia, PA
Monika Goetz, Berlin, Germany
Patrick Grenier, Hoboken, NJ
Ryan Griffis, Urbana, IL
Sharka Hyland, Philadelphia, PA
Alexa Firat and Jessica Jacobs, Philadelphia, PA
Katarina Jerinic, Brooklyn, NY
Ya-Chu Kang, Taipei, Taiwan
Lisa Kereszi, New Haven, CT
Julia Lambois, Philadelphia, PA
Thessia Machado, New York, NY
Diane Meyer, Santa Monica, CA
Jason Paradis, Glenwood Landing, NY
David Politzer, Brooklyn, NY
Jessica Puma, Philadelphia, PA
Peter Rose, Philadelphia, PA
Marco Roso, New York, NY
Caroline Santa, Philadelphia, PA
Elizabeth Smolarz, Brooklyn, NY
Biliana Stremska, Oakland, CA
Wun Ting Wendy Tai, Philadelphia, PA
James Thurman, University Park, PA
Beth Uzwiak, Philadelphia, PA
Elysa Voshell, Philadelphia, PA
Thomas Walther, Chicago, IL
Deborah Wasserman, Brooklyn, NY
Louise Weinberg, Long Island City, NY
Letha Wilson, Brooklyn, NY
Molly Winston, Philadelphia, PA
Tammy Wofsey, Brooklyn, NY