WPU Galleries

OPEN NOW!
Here/Now: A Juried Exhibition of Student Artwork
April 7 – May 1
 
Award ceremony: Tuesday, April 15 | 12:30 p.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Followed by an opening reception: Tuesday, April 15 | 1:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m.
Court Gallery, Ben Shahn Center for the Visual Arts
 
Here/Now, an annual exhibition featuring William Paterson University student artwork, will be on display in the Court Gallery, Ben Shahn Center for the Visual Arts from April 7 to May 1, 2025.
 
This exhibition showcases a variety of media including drawing, illustration, painting, photography, sculpture, textiles, animation, and graphic design. William Paterson University Department of Art faculty members James Blasi, Andrea Geller Jablonski, Michael Rees, and Robin Schwartz juried the exhibition.
 
Artists featured in the exhibition include: Olivia Thompson (Glen Rock NJ), Dante Blucher (Woodland Park, NJ), Jasmine Hurtado (Garfield, NJ), Alexzander Taliaferro (Garfield, NJ), Yael Jose Tapia (Park Ridge, NJ), Cynthia Boyd (Bronx, NY), Saoirse LeFebvre (Sussex, NJ), Kate Maitland (Hopatcong, NJ), Gianna Ballesteros (Waldwick, NJ), Katrina Pascale (Newton, NJ), Jonelly Campos (Hackensack, NJ), Ray Bruton-Moore (Burlington, NJ), Samir Hargrove (Somerset, NJ), Christina Lavorini (Sussex, NJ), Bobby Fenton (Hawthorne, NJ), Gianluca Vittorioso (Wayne, NJ), Rana Kizil (Wayne, NJ), Kimberly Cardenas (Clifton, NJ), Ariel Vallejo (Montague, NJ), J. Dylan Wilson (Wayne, NJ), Jeschelle Manansala (Hackensack, NJ), Jolie Conerly (Fair Lawn, NJ), Nicolas Minadeo (Totowa, NJ), Oliver Bornheimer (Lyons, NY), Nicole Prior (Hopatcong, NJ), Abby Herring (Wayne, NJ), Christian Montanez (Paterson, NJ), and Rachel Kim (Sicklerville, NJ).
 
Also on view is Before, After: Reflections on the Armenian Genocide, which traces generations of Armenian resiliency through the common thread of loss and survival. The exhibition examines the connections passed down through blood, migration and history; from genocide to diaspora to belonging. 

Post-Memory as Resistance: Documentation and Cultural Resilience in the Aftermath of Genocide 
 
Post-memory describes the relationship that the generation after those who witnessed cultural or collective trauma bears to the experiences of those who came before, experiences that they remember only by means of the stories, images, and behaviors among which they grew up.  

This conference will focus on hearing from descendants who have transformed traumatic events through documentation that includes photography and other modes of art making, gathering testimony from oral histories, and reassembling family histories from journals, letters, and genealogical research. Building on the foundation of our fall programming which introduced audiences to what the genocide was, this event will share how Armenians, Armenian Americans, and others have cultivated resilience, recovery, and genocide prevention amid ongoing conflicts. Our hope is that this programming will provide concrete examples of how individuals are actively transforming their trauma and will empower audience members to feel agency over their own stories. 

Schedule 
9:30 AM – Check-in and Breakfast 
10:00 AM – Introduction 
10:15 AM – Panel I: The Importance of Oral History in Genocide Education 
11:15 AM – Break 
11:30 AM – Panel II: Post-Memory, Photography, and Documentation 
12:30 PM – Lunch 
1:15 PM – Gallery tour of “Before, After” in South Gallery, Ben Shahn Center for the Visual Arts with Ara Oshagan and Diana Markosian 

This event is open to the public. In-person and virtual attendance is available, and the required registration link is in our bio. 

Sponsored by the William Paterson University Galleries, the William Paterson University Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, and supported by funds from the Passaic County Cultural & Heritage Council. 

.casey .oshagan.artworks  

“In these haunting black-and-white photographs, the subjects have been stripped of their surroundings. Their pasts, the lives they had known, had been obliterated. The darkness behind these survivors represents the silence from which they have now emerged, articulating their experiences for the world to know.

The photographs preserve the two essential markers of one’s physical identity: the face and hands. Noticeably, the passage of time, manifested in the furrowed foreheads and wrinkled, vein-marked hands, has not erased the reality or the pain of the Genocide. The intense emphasis on the face and hands ensures that each survivor is identified and accounted for. These are not headless torsos or indistinct faces. Rather, each instance of survival has been remembered.

These portraits, like the survivors themselves, function as testimonies of the Genocide and the subsequent lives in the Diaspora. In other words, these works are images of resistance. The survivors’ direct, confrontational gazes are no longer those of terrified young children fearfully looking into their perpetrators’ eyes begging for their lives, but rather, they are the defiant eyes boldly looking out and claiming a place—a voice—in history.”

Come see sixteen portraits from the iwitness series by Ara Oshagan & Levon Parian, as well as the work of 11 other Armenian and Armenian American artists in “Before, After: Reflections on the Armenian Genocide” in South Gallery and East Gallery, Ben Shahn Center for the Visual Arts.

Ara Oshagan & Levon Parian, Sixteen portraits from the “iwitness” series, 1996-2006, photographic pigment print, each print 20 x 20 inches, courtesy of Jessica Talos

.oshagan .oshagan.artworks

“This work is part of a process of what preceded it. Each piece has influenced the next. My interests are to paint and to create textiles. My instincts are to challenge the surface by connecting the two, or by simulating fiber with paint on a canvas.
My inspiration comes from all the connections I make to my past. From learning at a young age how to thread a needle, and then, later, working as a textile colorist and a painter. As well as all the new insights I gained while creating this work”.

Come see “Will Get There” and “Frayed” by Miriam Bisceglia, as well as the work of 10 other artists who are faculty in the Department of Art, in our 2024 Faculty Exhibition in Court Gallery, Ben Shahn Center for the Visual Arts.

Slide 1: Miriam Bisceglia, 2024, courtesy of Jessica Talos
Slide 2: Miriam Bisceglia, Will Get There, 2024, dyed linen, cotton yarn, glue, hand-stitched, 58 x 38 inches, courtesy of Jessica Talos
Slide 3: Miriam Bisceglia, Frayed, 2024, dyed linen, cotton yarn, glue, hand-stitched, 30 x 24 inches, courtesy of Jessica Talos