Lacuna: Radha Rose Tague, Emily Jay, Molly Di Grazia, and Christina Gednalske

January 17- February 17, 2017

Elzay Gallery of Art at Ohio Northern University in Ada, Ohio

la·cu·na
ləˈk(y)o͞onə/
noun

noun: lacuna; plural noun: lacunae; plural noun: lacunas

1. an unfilled space or interval; a gap.

“the journal has filled a lacuna in Middle Eastern studies”

• a missing portion in a book or manuscript.

• Anatomy: a cavity or depression, especially in bone.

In Lacuna, SACI Alumni Molly Di Grazia, Christina Gednalske, Emily Jay, and Radha Rose Tague play within the gap that is inherent to living in a culture that is not your own.  The four artists met in Italy, and their artistic practices all examine the ambiguity of living between Italian and American cultures.

The exhibition will remain on view in the Elzay Gallery of Art at Ohio Northern University, in Ada, Ohio through February 17.

Radha Rose Tague (SACI MFA in Studio Art, 2015) and Emily Jay (SACI Alum & TA, 2014) are both on the faculty at Ohio Northern University in Ada, Ohio. Molly Di Grazia (SACI MFA in Studio Art, 2015) and Christina Gednalske (SACI MFA in Studio Art, 2015) are currently living and working in Florence, Italy.

Molly Di Grazia
The works in ‘Lacuna’ speak to a state of sustained insufficiency. From weak Baroque citations to shaky linguistic trade-offs, each piece is stuck in limbo, a simulacrum aspiring to be a genuine article. Created through minimal intervention with found materials, ‘Enigmatici’ presents a set of grids articulated by empty spaces cut into the covers of old Italian music journals. In ‘Parole Crociate’ the visual chaos of illegibility plays out in pages of ambiguous directives. Like riddles that lack answers or clues that lack mysteries, there is never enough information to reach a conclusion.

Enigmatici
found italian music journals

Parole Crociate
ink on paper

Christina Gednalske
My work explores presence as a synthesis of movement, memory, and space, reflecting upon a dual position between the United States and Italy. Using intimate, yet universal images combined with personal anthology, the included works restructure, combine, extend, mirror, and otherwise alter seemingly reliable imagery to explore what is and what is not in a position of uncertainty.

Untitled
photo collage, an archive of associated fragments of both found and personal photographs

Weight, Shoes, Fence
3 video installation, experiments of movement and place

Emily Jay
For many years I have balanced on a thread across a great expanse, connected on either end to a home: Ada, Ohio and Florence, Italy. And even when I am in one place, I am still in-between; a longing for the other is ever present. The works in Lacuna are physical manifestations, remnants of my continual reaching, grasping, and hoping to close the distance between these two lands. They are all poetic gestures, attempts to sew my homes together.

Lacuna: we sew/see the sky
Cyanotype print on cotton, gold thread, beads

and she said: “you must be who you needed”
artist’s hair, dried flowers, paint, wood

in the baptistery
22:21, sound

Radha Rose Tague
My artistic practice is an ongoing investigation into the tenuous nature of belonging and identity; an attempt to examine a universal concern through the lens of my personal experience.  I have gathered bits and pieces from myriad places and cultures throughout my life and pieced them together to form my identity, inevitably and inexplicably.  This fragmented composition of self leaves me perpetually feeling at home and displaced simultaneously.  These works are a symbolic unification of my desires; a continuation of my constant seeking to reconcile my yearnings to attain some form of satisfactory permanence. 

Vested
denim and satin

Maneras de (co)ser
digital prints on canvas, embroidery thread, mannequin

Home
oil on canvas 

Collaboration between all 4 artists

Elzay Gallery of Art
Wilson Art Center, Gilbert Street
Ohio Northern University in Ada, Ohio