By Maya Johnson
UC Santa Barbara student Emilie Risha describes the art showcase Originalia as “a student-driven pedagogical experiment.” She and collaborator Anastasia Senavsky mounted the student-facilitated art exhibition at the UCSB Glassbox Gallery this spring. The two devised Originalia to express their passion for reproductive biology in an interdisciplinary manner—one that went beyond their fields of study in Art and Anthropology.
“It doesn’t matter what your background is —if you have a drive and a passion, you’re going to propel yourself towards your goal,” Senavsky said.
The student-curated art show Originalia on display at UCSB’s Glassbox Gallery.
The Originalia exhibit featured the paintings, sculptures, and interactive artwork of 11 students. The artists worked in collaboration this past year to create art interpreting their experiences and understandings of reproductive biology. Many of the pieces displayed the visual aspects of this this theme, depicting genitalia and reproductive systems. Some other art pieces used audio and physical interaction to explore their topic, such as a circular chair covered in dollar bills, where people were invited to sit and listen to a dissonant piece of audio through headphones.
To create the body of work for Originalia, Senavsky and Risha created an independent study course under the mentorship of Art professor Kim Yasuda and Anthropology professor Amy Boddy. In this course, scholars of reproduction biology and some related studies, mentored a group of artists interested in the subject.
“Reproductive biology as a topic is so broad and also very loaded,” Senavsky said. “Mentorship helps to guide us… in a way that accurately conveys the topic.”
Anastasia Senavsky, an honors art student double-majoring in anthropology, was undergoing an academic identity crisis when she happened upon Originalia a year ago. She had passion for science outside of her art studies, but lacked the confidence to pursue a double major.
Anastasia Senavsky in the UC Santa Barbara Honors Art Program studios.
“I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” said Senavsky. “I thought, I don’t have to divide these two parts of my life.”
During the winter of her third year at UCSB, Senavsky was studying the hormones of human reproductive systems under one of the project's guiding advisors Amy Boddy, a biology specialist in UCSB’s anthropology department. Senavsky reached out to Boddy to propose an exhibit that integrated art with reproductive biology. At the time, she was creating art that reflected this passion.
The two paintings and one sculpture that Senavsky contributed to the Originalia art exhibition were largely inspired by her time studying with Boddy. Her sculpture Intertwined is a visceral exploration of maternal-fetal conflict through the lens of microchimerism, a phenomenon that occurs through the exchange of cell material between a mother and fetus during pregnancy. In the piece, blocks of knitted organs and baby doll limbs are connected by strings of yarn to depict the “delicate push and pull of resources” that occurs during pregnancy.
Intertwined, a sculpture by UCSB Art student Anastasia Senavsky.
“The literature around microchimerism presents itself as a philosophical question of who the self is,” said Senavsky. “If we have all of these cells of other people in our body, who are we?”
Senavsky described her own tumultuous family dynamic as the background for much of her art prior to Originalia. “This project gave me a way to tell my story without having to put my heart on my sleeve all the time,” Senavsky said.
Emilie Risha, UCSB student co-facilitator of the Originalia art show.
At the same time that Senavsky was exploring ways to combine her differing academic interests, Emilie Risha, a fourth-year anthropology student with an emphasis in biology, was experiencing conflict in her own academic journey.
A year before Originalia, Risha’s time studying microchimerism in Boddy’s research lab was coming to an end after working for more than a year. She now needed a pathway to continue research into microchimerism on people and with art. Boddy suggested she and Senavsky collaborate on a project.
Risha said that her own pedagogy was guided by a “focus on uplifting the student and valuing their perspective.”
With the help of faculty mentors such as Boddy and Kim Yasuda, the two students created a syllabus and pedagogical method for their class. As facilitators, she and Senavsky prompted dyads, or two-person exchanges, on topics including the gender binary, birth control and menstruation, to open the students' minds on the directions of their projects.
UCSB student Emilie Risha performs a piece of spoken-word poetry at the reception for the Glassbox Gallery’s Originalia exhibition.
During Originalia’s live reception last month, Risha performed a piece of spoken-word poetry that used vox-pop audio of students and Santa Barbara community members discussing their experiences of menstruation.
“What does menstruation really mean,” Risha asked in the performance. A clip of audio from one of her unnamed interviews was played in response, which spoke to the sacred nature of this biological phenomenon.
“It was intended to expand our cultural definition and attitudes towards menstruation,” Risha said of the performance. “People see it as a burden…it's a beautiful physical reminder of how humans are nature.”
While the audio played in the background, Risha encouraged those gathered at the reception to participate in a community song circle.
“At a certain time in my life it was very wonderful and healing to be in a space and sing together and hum,” said Risha. “We need to create, sustain, and uphold community.”
With funding from the Undergraduate Research and Creative Opportunities (URCA), an independent research grant for UCSB undergraduates, Risha and Senavsky plan to do another presentation of the body of work produced through the class on June 5th in the UCSB Library. Moving forward, they hope that the group involved in creating Originalia will continue the class they created, as the exhibit’s legacy.
Maya Johnson is a fourth-year UC Santa Barbara student majoring in Writing and Literature. She is a Web and Social Media Intern with the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts.