It is easy to overlook an inconspicuous door to the Broad Arts Center tucked away on the edge of north campus. But not this week, as on a platform, male genitalia painted white greet professors and guests as they enter the New Wight Gallery.
On Oct. 23, 10 Design | Media Arts students from the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture revealed their most recent pieces at the New Wight Gallery in Broad Art Center. The exhibition, titled “.CALM,” will run through Friday, and is open to the public free of charge. The exhibition features experimental work by graduate MFA students. Guests walk through a maze of Japanese trinkets on a blanket alongside a moving sock to watch geometrical shapes change rapidly across a black screen.
Right behind the doors lies an installation equivalent to a pornographic video game. Atop a platform, the penis acts as a control mechanism for a game projected onto a screen before the viewer. The game has no obstacles and the purpose is to fill random objects, such as a teddy bear and uterus, with sperm emerging from a penis projected onto the screen.
At the opening while participants clutched the joystick, Aliah Magdalena Dark, a Design | Media Arts graduate student, walked over to assess reactions. After hearing professors say they weren’t sure what to do with the joystick and listening to students applaud the game’s originality, Dark then told guests she was the artist.
Dark said her game, titled “I’m So Glad You Came,” is meant to be an escapist fantasy about what it would be like not to deal with issues of gender and race.
“Gender issues are confusing and overwhelming – sometimes you just want to take a break from them. With my game, you can turn off these issues for a few seconds and say, ‘Okay, I’ve got the big balls now,’” Dark said.
After finishing with Dark’s game, guests disappear behind a giant black curtain spanning the length of the wall. Behind its mysterious folds, a dark room emerges, lit solely by a projection of the moon. Viewers sit down in a moment of calm. The moon ventures all about the wall in slow, swirling movements, surrounded by millions of stars that exist within the Southern Cross constellation.
The installation’s artist, Jane Mi, a Design | Media Arts graduate student, has worked closely with world-famous navigator Nainoa Thompson, who inspired her work. The installation, named after the famous constellation “Hanaiakamalama” is a concept Mi was able to put in motion when she sailed through French Polynesia on a boat.
“My work is a reflection of a visceral understanding of nature and its connection to human beings,” Mi said.
As for the exhibition as a whole, Dean Christopher Waterman of the School of the Arts and Architecture said he had no favorite piece.
“That’s like asking me who’s your favorite kid,” Waterman said.