VSCI Faculty Exhibition

Tue, 10 May 2022

United Arab Emirates University (UAEU) - Top Universities in Middle East

The CHSS, Visual Studies & Creative Industries Faculty Exhibition, curated by Stacey Kalkowski, took place from May 10th 2022 through the end of the month as the inaugural exhibition in the new UAEU C4 Art Center Galleries. The professional creative research that was shown was the result of years of work by Toomas Altnurme, Stacey Kalkowski, Sarah Nesti Willard and Aysha Ayaz. Several hundred students, faculty and staff attended, along with HE Chancellor Zaki Anwar Nesseibeh and Dean Hasan Al Naboodah of CHSS.

Statements about the work:

	Stacey Kalkowski is an artist, educator and filmmaker from California. Her current work explores connections lost and made while existing in one’s own safe place. This place is represented as a spiraling cocoon form with red thread as the means of connection. Formally, she uses spirals to represent life force. Recycled Amazon packing paper is integrated into the sculptural forms, connecting the solitude during the quarantine with personal growth and transformation. insta@stacey__kalkowski www.staceykalkowski.com
Toomas Altnurme My art is for everyone anywhere, who are able to go beyond words. I am looking for the answer by searching for meaning through color and shapes. I hope that my inner world, which has been expanded by various media and techniques, may form a global language that can bridge cultural differences, promote greater understanding and tolerance, which will help to make the world a better place. The process is a dynamic condition of balanced movement, that brings along the need for peace in the world, love in relationships, harmony in the universe and complete freedom of artistic expression. @toomasaltnurme https://altartxxx.wixsite.com/toomasaltnurme
	Sarah Nesti Willard has been working as a free-lance illustrator, graphic artist and muralist in different European countries before becoming an art educator, in 2010. Sarah’s interests are Middle Eastern illustration, Islamic children’s books, Middle Eastern comics, and fandom trends. She also illustrates children’s books for British and Emirati’s publishing houses. www.sarahnestiwillard.com @sarahnestiwillard
Aysha H. Ayaz is a Fine Artist from England, UK; specializing in a range of Art Practice including Painting, Sculpture, Assemblage, Installation Art forms. Her research interests focus on: Eastern/ Western Art Practices, Identity: Artist and Audience, Materiality and Transformation. Her artworks use a combination of sculpture and installation using delicate, domestic materials, within an industrial medium - fusing the attributes of both within one structure. By maintaining the four-sided cube structure as a motif, she manipulates the space designated within the four walls to form a dialogue with the surface in which her pieces are placed: exploring issues of containment/openness, inside/outside, control /submission. Within the physicality of handling materials, she explores dualities – as a set of polarities and the margins in between: the ruptures. ayshaayaz@uaeu.ac.ae