Conjuring Presence is an exhibition of visual art and poetry featuring George Mason University students, faculty, and alumni, participating in a new creative venture at Mason: the Loop Collaboratory (or “Loop Lab”). Curated by Mason faculty member and artist Jessica Kallista, Conjuring Presence asks both artists and audience to think critically and examine many manifestations of presence:
What does it mean to become mindful of the presence of others? What does it mean to join our creativity as we co-sense and conspire together for the sake of enlivening our imaginations and our communities?
What does it mean to become mindful of the need to work against erasure when we understand who is not present and why?
How does our presence become a catalyst for transformation and liberation?
Who decides whether some people are or are not allowed to be present to occupy spaces in the arts and academia?
How might we work to conjure presence?
What tools and connections do we need to conjure presence? What theories and practices will help us to cultivate presence? Are we living in the present moment? What does it look and feel like to be present in our bodies? When we leave this realm, is our presence still felt? How might our decision to live a fully present life shape our reality for the better? How do we acknowledge the past, work for a just future, and still ground ourselves in the present?
In doing the work of considering, questioning, and challenging the status quo with radical honesty and presence of mind, together we embrace the power to envision, freedom dream, and co-create otherwise worlds into existence. Our presence brings them to life.