Unsuspected
Unsuspected
October 17 – November 8, 2025
Curated by: Cecilia Fajardo-Hill
Participating artists: Julie Anand, Sybil Brintrup, Stan Buglass, Amalia Caputo, Liz Cohen, Lenora de Barros, Cameron Gainer, Mehrdad Mirzaie, Elizabeth Pineda, Patricia Sannit, and Liza Stout
About the Exhibition:
Unsuspected proposes to focus on the overlooked, the insignificant, and the forgotten. Photography has a unique capacity to capture something unseen, through either a long or premeditated creative process, experimentation, chance occurrences, as documentation of performative acts, as a transdisciplinary form, a screen shot, etc. It may be raw, traditional, constructed, edited by AI, estranged, diluted, recognizable or not as belonging to the photographic realm.
Participating artists: Julie Anand, Sybil Brintrup, Stan Buglass, Amalia Caputo, Liz Cohen, Lenora de Barros, Cameron Gainer, Mehrdad Mirzaie, Elizabeth Pineda, Patricia Sannit, and Liza Stout
About the Exhibition:
Unsuspected proposes to focus on the overlooked, the insignificant, and the forgotten. Photography has a unique capacity to capture something unseen, through either a long or premeditated creative process, experimentation, chance occurrences, as documentation of performative acts, as a transdisciplinary form, a screen shot, etc. It may be raw, traditional, constructed, edited by AI, estranged, diluted, recognizable or not as belonging to the photographic realm.
When a photographic image exists with intention -conceptual, intuitive, political, humoristic, critical, etc.- within and beyond the medium-itself-, it may reveal a visual and conceptual universe that far from confirming reality as we know it, it may expand it, question it, and reinvent it, in unexpected ways. The familiar may be estranged, so that what is otherwise unappreciated, such as trash, domestic objects, natural debris, land, forgotten things or places, loaded material culture, may rupture the known, providing a moment of unexpected presence and reimagination. Paradoxically, the more insignificant, overlooked or recognizable the subject, the experiential disturbance is the more potent.
This exhibition is inspired by artist Sybil Brintrup (Chile 1954-2020) a Chilean conceptual artist who worked in diverse media -video, performance, photography, poetry, objects, games- who was often overlooked. Brintrup found intricate ways to celebrate “little” things such as her love for lettuce from her series Romances, or the act of ironing as a collective form of care. Her extraordinary gestures, intimate, performative, humble, unassuming, celebrated with “Zen humor” some of the most common aspects of our domestic existence, highlighting and elevating the daily in our human condition. Her photographs were often taken from stills of homemade videos and turned into games with instructions that were both humorous and philosophical. Her work was political in the most unexpected ways, because of the intimate and vulnerable nature of her gestures that may expose her to ridicule or rejection, such as offering to iron the public’s clothing in the museum, or ironing while singing at the edge of the Laguna del Inca in Valparaíso, Chile. Overlooking Brintrup reflects our collective personal unnoticing, also in the art world.
One of our greatest difficulties in daily existence in a busy and alienating world, is to celebrate the rituals of the day-to-day with presence, or to pause long enough to see aliveness, strangeness, the absurd, the unexpected around us, no matter how small or omnipresent. This exhibition is about our relationship with objects and the world that surrounds and embraces us; it is about artists paying attention to what seems irrelevant or inconsequential. An intergenerational group of artists -ASU professors, MFA students and alumni, and guest artists- offer images that reveal seeing with imagination and intent, within and beyond the known and the photographic medium.
This exhibition is inspired by artist Sybil Brintrup (Chile 1954-2020) a Chilean conceptual artist who worked in diverse media -video, performance, photography, poetry, objects, games- who was often overlooked. Brintrup found intricate ways to celebrate “little” things such as her love for lettuce from her series Romances, or the act of ironing as a collective form of care. Her extraordinary gestures, intimate, performative, humble, unassuming, celebrated with “Zen humor” some of the most common aspects of our domestic existence, highlighting and elevating the daily in our human condition. Her photographs were often taken from stills of homemade videos and turned into games with instructions that were both humorous and philosophical. Her work was political in the most unexpected ways, because of the intimate and vulnerable nature of her gestures that may expose her to ridicule or rejection, such as offering to iron the public’s clothing in the museum, or ironing while singing at the edge of the Laguna del Inca in Valparaíso, Chile. Overlooking Brintrup reflects our collective personal unnoticing, also in the art world.
One of our greatest difficulties in daily existence in a busy and alienating world, is to celebrate the rituals of the day-to-day with presence, or to pause long enough to see aliveness, strangeness, the absurd, the unexpected around us, no matter how small or omnipresent. This exhibition is about our relationship with objects and the world that surrounds and embraces us; it is about artists paying attention to what seems irrelevant or inconsequential. An intergenerational group of artists -ASU professors, MFA students and alumni, and guest artists- offer images that reveal seeing with imagination and intent, within and beyond the known and the photographic medium.