Exhibition Statement

Once the object has been constructed, I have a tendency to discover in it, transformed and displaced, images, impressions, facts which have deeply moved me.

Alberto Giacometti

We believe in the value of objects of cultural significance, and the power of the object to cultivate community. These objects invite you to investigate: to discover their secret lives, to interpret their inscribed meaning and their universal resonance.

‘What We Carry’ tells the important stories of our community through the valued objects that twenty-three students and their faculty members carried with them to Eugene from fifteen states and four countries. The exhibit evolved from a desire to build community and personal engagement among members of a single cohort in the Arts and Administration graduate program at the University of Oregon.

Thirty physical objects communicate our individual histories, heritages, and identities through a multi-modal combination of storytelling platforms. As a collective body, they represent our differences and commonalities, and facilitate a safe place to explore our community’s interrelatedness.

The exhibition opens with a public story-circle performance, designed from a community cultural development model to simultaneously build connections within our cohort and strengthen the immersive experience of audience members. A film of the story-circle performance will be projected in the gallery for the remainder of the exhibition to superimpose human connections in the center of the objects on display.