New Visual Arts course examines installation pieces

Most art teachers tell their students to color within the lines— Professor Denyse Thomasos, the newest addition to the Program in Visual Arts, tells students to forget traditional boundaries and, if it suits them, the canvas all together.

For the spring semester, Thomasos will head VIS 451: Installation Art, a new onetime only studio course that challenges students to use their preferred medium (photography, painting, sculpture, etc.) to define a physical space.

"I really want students to think about architecture and transforming space and to think about this in relationship with the concepts they want to communicate," said Thomasos, a Yale and Toronto University graduate.

Installation art, she explained, breaks down the barrier between art and its physical environment by literally installing art into architecture and essentially turning space into a value.

It is a form that Thomasos, an internationally acclaimed abstract artist and professor at Rutgers University, has herself experimented with in the last five years.

Most of her work draws deeply from her Trinidad heritage, "the aesthetics of art in Africa and the black experience."

Since her pieces are largely concept driven, Thomasos finds installation art liberating because it provides an added dimension for expression.

"The psychology of many of my ideas, especially the idea of imprisonment, are better realized with the actual architecture," Thomasos said. "I can manipulate the space so that it absorbs the viewer physically."

Even though Thomasos does revert to the canvas format, according to the subject matter of her piece, many of her recent, high-profile projects are installation works.

In January, art critic Franklin Sirman will publish a catalogue on Thomasos that documents the history of her work with a particular focus on her recent installation show, "Tracking." The exhibition, which opened in Halifax and Quebec, Canada, traces her recent journey to China and Southeast Asia and centers on many political and social themes.

"The show incorporated my travels and marked our time politically. It was also about 9/11. It was about war, genocide, revolutions. It incorporated all of that," Thomasos said.

With a Guggenheim fellowship and numerous international exhibits under her belt (notably a recent show in Vienna called "Quiet as its Kept," with David Hammond, one of the best known black installation artists), Thomasos hopes to bring her experience to 185 Nassau.

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"I'll bring my research, recent travels to the class and introduce contemporary artists with a global perspective," Thomasos said. Like other visual arts classes, her students will also travel to New York to experience contemporary installation art first hand.

However, unlike most classes, Installation Art's curriculum will be less structured. Students have the opportunity to work inside and outside the studio, transforming everything from hallways to stairwells, and there won't be set assignments in the traditional sense. Instead, Thomasos will account for the various mediums by working individually with students on their independent projects.

Interested students can still apply at 185 Nassau by signing up for an interview.