STUDENT PICKS | Whole Encounters: Partial Impressions

Ana Porro is a member of the class of 2019, an Art History and Economics double major, and the curator of this month's Student Picks show: Whole Encounters: Partial Impressions. 

In this show, through a selection of portraiture in various media, I aim to emphasize the presence of veiled relationships and emotions present in a rendering of a person. Every portrait in itself is subjective—relative to both the image maker and the viewer’s own perception of the work. In other words, everything we encounter is prompted by an individual, unique interpretation—every person will interpret an event differently based on one’s distinct past experiences and history. In application, what an artist chooses to depict in an encounter with their sitter is only an impression, not representative of the whole person being captured, but solely how the image maker sees/relates to/emotes with them at a fixed moment in time—only capturing a fragment of their self. With the show consisting solely of various portraits, I urge the viewer to look deeper beneath the surface, and search for underlying ideologies and emotions that guide the presentation and one’s own reading of the work—thinking critically about what the portrait says not only about the sitter, but of the image maker and ourselves as viewers.