Photos by Samantha Beatty
Models Alissa Sugawara and Kevin Mize for Neal Hamil Agency
Styling by Elizabeth Farrell
Hair by Zackery Chapa for Hue Salon
Makeup by Yeraldi Contreras for Arched Beauty
Photography Assistance by John Lewis
Styling Assistance by Greta Connolly and Natalie Abbott
Molina and Thirumalaisamy
This year's commissions are from Lorena Molina and Sindhu Thirumalaisamy, who will both speak at an opening reception Wednesday evening (6-8pm). The artists were invited to create large-scale works to foster conversation and community over the course of the school year.
Molina, a former UH professor of photography and digital media, uses art to "explore questions of identity, intimacy, and social inequities." For the Tent Series, she created La Tierra Recuerda, a depiction of the lava fields of the San Salvador volcano; that geographic area was used during the Salvadoran Civil War as a place to abandon the bodies of civilian casualties. Molina acknowledges the far-reaching impacts and the dual tragedy of the land in her piece.
For her part, Thirumalaisamy is a current professor at Rice, where she teaches interdisciplinary arts courses that incorporate environmental and feminist issues. The Tent Series piece is a projected-video work called provision, which uses "culturally significant materials and fleeting glimpses of the human body as an investigation into narrative structures, untold stories, and the passage of time."
Molina's and Thirumalaisamy's art will be on view through July 31, 2025. Parking and walking directions for viewing their works are posted here.
Molina's 'LaTierra Recuerda'
Thirumalaisamy's 'provision'