Jerry Allen, To Sir, with Love (1967), 2007.
Oil on canvas, 35.6 x 27.6 cm.
Collection of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, The University of British Columbia.
Gift of the artist, 2008.
Every undergraduate student at UBC is invited to participate in an essay contest considering the relationship between representations of the face and notions of subjectivity.
The exhibition Faces poses the questions, you provide the answers. Essays should address some of the following questions: How do representations of faces invite modes of viewing that rely on particular notions of subjectivity? Confronted by the paintings, photographs, sculptures, and installations in Faces (at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery from January 14th to April 10th, 2011), how do we read raced, gendered, and classed identities into these representations? How might such processes of what Deleuze and Guattari call facialization be conceptualized? What would it mean to approach artworks not only as things we look at but also as things that look back? What types of ethical and/or political obligations might we assume if we regard acts of viewing as face-to-face encounters?
The Guidelines:
Essays must be no longer than 1,000 words in length and submitted (4 hard-copies) to the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery no later than 5:00 pm on Friday, February 25th, 2011. Contestants must be full-time students registered in an undergraduate program at the University of British Columbia.