On March 15, 2020, CCA announced that it would suspend in-person instruction, little suspecting that online-only learning would last for an entire year. Now, in March of 2021, in-person studio access and hybrid learning have only just become possible again.

This exhibition shares work by CCA students made in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown. In Spring 2020, students from across the college submitted work to the Libraries’ exhibitions program via an Open Call. Now, a year later, these artworks resonate with renewed, prescient somberness, reflecting circumstances that were new or heightened then but have since become part of our daily reality.

Working in mediums of digital animation, film, graphic design, painting, performance, photography, printmaking, and writing, these artists grapple with loneliness, self-reflection, and the challenges of creating connections at a distance, as well as the impact of governmental decisions and discriminatory barriers on our day-to-day lives.

We are excited to have the opportunity to place work by students from across disciplines and from both the BFA and MFA programs in dialogue with one another; works that contemplate the profoundly isolating but shared experience of living through a pandemic.