Over the coming weeks, we will spotlight some of this year’s Lamar Dodd School of Art master of fine arts degree candidates. Though the Georgia Museum of Art is currently closed to the public, the museum has shifted the MFA candidate exhibition online. Join us tomorrow at 6 p.m. on Facebook for the opening reception.
AC Carter is a musician, performance artist and garment designer who, through character creation, investigates ideas about love, gender deviancy and authenticity. Originally from Birmingham, Alabama, Carter earned a bachelor of fine arts from Watkins College of Art, Design and Film in Nashville, Tennessee, before attending the University of Georgia.
With a background in painting and sculpture, Carter utilizes internet profiles, fashion, video and marketing to create a variety of characters. Their current main persona is Klypi, a wannabe pop star whose music is inspired by 80s synth pop and early 2000s industrial music. Klypi’s supporting characters include fashion brand Lambda Celsius (Λ°C) and Vixcine Martine, a PhD student doing her thesis on the work of Klypi.
With this roster of characters, Carter challenges the idea that the individual is singular and examines how identity is ever-evolving, likening identity construction to both a building and a web page. As a musical artist, Klypi is a self-identified elf, hoping to expand our ideas beyond boy and girl. Their music video “I’m Fine” showcases a collaboration of music, video and clothing design that treats materials and bodies as non-gendered, aiming to foreground notions of fluid identity and transcend societal norms.
Cristina Echezarreta focuses on the ways in which material culture affects how people identify themselves. Raised in Miami, Florida, Echezarreta attended Florida State University as an undergraduate before pursuing her master of fine arts at the University of Georgia. She is now a teaching assistant, with the interaction between community and art at the forefront of her graduate work.
While at the University of Georgia, Echezarreta has engaged in community projects such as the Georgia Beekeeping Prison Project. She is also earning a certificate in museum studies, through which she has interned at the Georgia Museum of Art in both the education and design/installation departments.
Echezarreta’s Florida background inspires her examination of objects and consumer culture in relation to Hispanic-American identity. “As a second generation Hispanic-American raised in Miami, my daily life was filled with Spanish-American items and products that influenced my ideas of what it meant to be an American,” she says. “Sazon Completa, Goya, Pilon and Jupiña are all products that have filled the shelves of my upbringing.”
Echezarreta works in printmaking and sculpture. Through these mediums, she examines how consumer products serve dual functions as pieces of nostalgia and comfort for her family while also existing as staples of consumerism. Her work investigates how these contrasting functions influence her identity.
“Material culture allows us to identify ourselves with such products, which in turn affects how we view ourselves in comparison to the world around us. Aspects such as advertisements, marketing and consumerism are all explored within my work,” Echezarreta says. “In order to understand my identity, I must seek the interactions within my culture and lifestyle.”
By Hana Rehman
