Exuviae by Corn Wagon Thunder
Exuviae
Corn Wagon Thunder
March 3-24, 2023
Opening Reception: March 3, 2023 from 5-8 pm
Sanitary Tortilla Factory is pleased to present Exuviae by UNM College of Fine Art’s MFA Candidate and Exceptional Visual Art Scholar (EVAS) Awardee Corn Wagon Thunder. EVAS is a series that offers professional space for Master of Fine Art graduate students as their final thesis show. The culminating exhibition launches them into their profession as an artist. With the series, we underscore exceptional artists attending regional institutions while highlighting Albuquerque’s innovative contemporary art scene. Our connective tissue gives our bodies form and cohesion. This project found me looking for the connective tissue that binds my work together, supports it, and gives it recognizable form. As I contemplated my work, I wrote down words that came to mind: kin, shed, molt, fell, identity, mask, growth, change, loss, abandonment, mortality, memorialization, memory, time, nostalgia, absurdity, humor. That brought me to the title of this exhibition: Exuviae.
Exuviae are cast skins, shells, or other coverings of animals. The connections in my work are found in that which is shed and consequently remembered or memorialized. The foundation of growth and change is that which is lost or abandoned. The ensuing nostalgia provides room for the humor and absurdity of identity to transform over time and finally to die.
Artist Bio:
Corn Wagon Thunder is a photographer residing in the Southwestern United States, where she is currently pursuing a Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of New Mexico. Originally hailing from North Carolina, at age eighteen Corn high-tailed it to Boston, Massachusetts. Here she picked up a little bit of Yankee sass and received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in conjunction with Tufts University. Corn has also studied at Penland School of Craft in North Carolina—also known as Shangri-la. Now that she has migrated to the Southwest, Corn is happily ensconced in off-grid life high on a mesa top with her partner.