Amira OguntoyinboThe 20-3rd once-a-year Delta Sigma-Delta Upsilon Art Show opened in Lamarche Gallery on Monday, showcasing a varied variety of artwork from Bowdoin learners who participated in the competition hosted by The Delta Sigma Alumni Company. The five winners had been Khalil Kilani ’25, Ereny Morcos ’24, Jilly Sher ’23, Aadhya Ramineni ’23 and Cheng Xing ’23.
A few judges with backgrounds in visible art picked the winners: Freeport-centered photographer Jack Montgomery ceramicist, encaustic painter and fiber artist Lonie Loffely Ellis from Brunswick and Mary Bourke, a Maine-primarily based abstract artist.
This is the very first 12 months that the artwork demonstrate accepted online video submissions as a medium. Kilani’s successful piece, a video titled “Wander in My Sneakers,” showcases a time lapse of him hand-portray on a pair of Nike Air Drive Types.
“I made a timeline from the get started of my existence, when I had the most significant times,” Kilani explained. “The initially shoe is the portion of my daily life before I came to Maine. That was a sadder a single, and the other shoe is meant to be a happier one particular.”
Kilani considers his piece an experimental exploration of his curiosity in cinematography, which captures the powering-the-scenes of the art process.
Sher also drew artistic inspiration from her lived encounter. Her piece “Untitled” captures her partnership with her human body.
“When I was in 3rd grade, I was diagnosed with this syndrome that created a single of my vertebrae get crushed,” Sher stated. “It impacted me for about a yr, and I had to hold myself up with my arm close to my back again. That time was seriously significant to me because I uncovered how to turn inward and choose up hobbies like portray and drawing to occupy myself due to the fact I experienced to prevent dancing.”
Sher also regarded as her recent expertise of harassment at Bowdoin as she crafted the piece.
“The circumstance with my back healed by itself, miraculously, and [years later] I was equipped to get support for my experience of harassment with Title IX at Bowdoin,” Sher reported. “The portray was influenced by people times of trauma, but also healing—finding pieces of myself by all those experiences, layering my appreciation for splendor and coloration, like self-appreciate and self-self-confidence, on leading of people topics.”
Energy and energy are also central to Morcos’ piece titled “Black Female Splendor,” a master analyze of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s do the job.
“I truly liked the way that [Yiadom-Boakye] portrays Black people today, Black electrical power, Black magnificence and Black people, but she hardly ever has a goal to what they are symbolizing or what they are contemplating,” Morcos claimed. “When I was painting it, I created my personal narrative from what that girl was sensation, keeping, carrying as she was just staring. The to start with thing that came to intellect was Black mothers and Black women—the volume of sacrifice, the volume of suffering that they carry, to just be scared to enable their youngsters stroll in the streets, to be afraid to have their young ones go to college, to be concerned for them even when they improve up.”
Morcos’ piece is intertwined with her passion for social justice and her contemplations on race and equality each on and off the Bowdoin campus.
“When you’re heading to an art clearly show, you are expecting to see some stunning issues, and you operate throughout one particular that depicts a Black guy dying thanks to police brutality,” Morcos stated. “It truly would make you just end and you’re like, ‘Not everything’s about me. There is points heading on in the planet that are way even bigger than me. There are issues that are way extra vital.’ And that’s what I preferred my piece to do.”
