Spring Show 2022: The Land of Ahh's

The best teachers never stop being students, and it's time to acknowledge the limitless power that erupts when creative minds collide to pursue a common goal. Spring Show '22 for our students by former students.

SCI-Arc’s culture has the ability to shape minds, change lives, and open doors to unimaginable futures. Our imagination enables us to envision new possibilities, and in difficult times, vision is essential to keep our dreams alive.

Spring Show 2022, entitled The Land of Ahh's, will present an investigation into the architectural and symbolic parallels that can be drawn between the studio desk at SCI-Arc as a laboratory for experimentation and free expression, and the juke joints popularized in the Jim Crow south by Black Americans, as a safe spaces to convene, create, and celebrate. Curated by SCI-Arc faculty Kordae Jatafa Henry, Jeremy Kamal Hartley, and Making+Meaning coordinator William Virgil, this year's Spring Show exhibition will provoke—in conjunction with SCI-Arc's 50th anniversary—both an acknowledgment that the world as we knew it is over, and that the told and untold stories of yesterday can propel us into an unknown, but ultimately liberated future ahead.

The world we knew is gone. Both the world we knew and the one we projected. We knew it would come to an end. What we didn't realize was that it would restart. Then, 50 years ago, a revolution began. Our forecasts for architecture only went as far as our attempt to speculate outside of what we knew then. We could only reach out as far as our existence. Yet, our hubris proclaims that we know what came before us and what will come after as we gaze upon a new world.

This new world reimagines our future, remixing the essence of what we've been while adapting to the changes to come. To speculate what the next 50 years will be, we must understand and reimagine the symbols that hold who we are.

SCI-Arc's 50 years of history are full of untold stories—one of the most underrated SCI-arc symbols is the student desks. These desks are ingrained in our culture; they hold our livelihood while we are students. They are the item that has connected faculty and students for 50 years. Yet, during the pandemic, these totems were empty, cornered, and the life they brought to the school was swept by the brightness of our mute screens and a mirage of backgrounds powered by Zoom.

These desks are a part of the identity of SCI-Arc students. They give structure to our goals. They are a rendition of the sweat, tears, and joy and hold an undervalued stance in the rooms where many success stories have been born. They have been places where students socialize, express their frustrations, and celebrate their accomplishments. There have been a few other places where we have praised this free expression throughout history, such as the juke joint.

Spring Show '22 will be a place for celebration and gathering, inspiring the same liberation of juke joints, techno raves, and underground spaces that Black culture has cultivated for centuries.

Sponsored by: Casa Silencio