Capacities of Care | Curated by Aaron Knochel
Capacities of Care | Curated by Aaron Knochel
February 14, 2025 – June 1, 2025 | Art Alley
University Park, PA – HUB-Robeson Galleries is excited to present Capacities of Care, a group exhibition curated by Aaron Knochel, Associate Professor of Art Education in Penn State’s School of Visual Arts, showcasing artworks thematically engaged with care ethics as a multidimensional space of relation that needs tending and sustenance. Capacities of Care is on view in Art Alley from February 14th, 2025 – June 1st, 2025. All are welcome to join us for a celebratory reception on February 14th from 4 - 6pm in Art Alley, HUB-Robeson Center.
There is a blossoming understanding of the impact of the arts on the health and wellbeing of our communities and institutions. Whether it be in the medical humanities or advances in neuroscience and the impact of the arts (or neuroarts), there is a growing need to understand how creativity, aesthetic experience, and critical practice may impact our capacities of care.
The capacities of care is a concept framework to understand and explore how care relationships manifest in our lives in distinct and interconnected ways. The capacity of care framework includes five interlinking domains:
- self-care: acts in consideration of one’s own wellbeing
- caregiving: acts invested in the wellbeing of another
- care receiving: awareness of another’s contribution to one’s own wellbeing
- community care: collective acts whereby individual and group considerations for wellbeing are exchanged
- artificial care: awareness of nonhuman, sometimes technological, contributions to wellbeing
Works in the exhibit, which include painting, photography, sculpture, textile, and new media, weave these capacities together in nuanced ways from the deeply personal to the collective, asking questions of what it means to care for ourselves and for others in times of uncertainty.
Aaron D. Knochel is a mixed methods researcher, curriculum theorist, and artist with interests in transdisciplinary learning, critical social theory, and media arts. He has worked in various visual arts learning spaces, including schools, museums, and community arts programs, both domestically and internationally. Most recently, he was a 2022-23 Fulbright Scholar in the Digital Culture program at the University of Bergen, Norway. Capacities of Care is a part of a larger effort in research-creation in arts in health focused on care ethics, creative practice, and narrative inquiry. Knochel’s research project led by an interdisciplinary team of Penn State faculty titled “Expanding Capacities of Care: Methodological and Pedagogical Opportunities in Narrative Ethics and Creative Inquiry for Nursing Education and Professional Development.” The project has many different activity streams from developing art exhibitions to workshops engaging creative practice and resilience for healthcare and educational professionals. The research is jointly funded by Penn State’s College of Arts & Architecture and Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences.
Featured Artists: Eric Anthony Berdis, Rachel Epp Buller, Anne Cutri, Rachel Fitzpatrick, Brandi Lewis, Zsuzsanna Nagy, Jessica Roseman, Steven Rubin, Sue Uhlig, Helen G. Velásquez Martínez, and Emily Van Walleghen.
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Reunion | Cannupa Hanska Luger
August 24th, 2024 - March 4th, 2025 | HUB Gallery
Reception Date: Friday, October 18th, 4 – 6 p.m.
The HUB-Robeson Galleries are excited to present Reunion, an immersive, multi-level exhibition featuring sculpture, regalia, and digital media by New Mexico-based, contemporary Indigenous artist Cannupa Hanska Luger. The artworks presented in Reunion make up a spectrum of possibilities and shed light on historical truths to tell a narrative of complexity in the act of survival. They act as reliquary to acknowledge the accumulation of loss, the entropy of societal waste, and the cascading effects of a decimated species on our precious and interconnected environment. These artworks presented together for Reunion access visions beyond survival and cultural adaptation to present opportunities to dream of a sustainable future for humans and the earth to thrive together.
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Homing | Kiran Joan
September 6th, 2024 - Jan 27th, 2025 | Exhibition Cases
Kiran Joan uses ceramics as an extension of her illustration practice, through which she explores themes of identity, culture, and community through magical and surreal worlds. Drawing from her South Indian heritage and current experiences in the US, Kiran explores the convergence of these cultures in her work. Her practice fosters a dynamic conversation between illustration and three-dimensional works to create spaces of comfort while drawing inspiration from evolving relationships between people. Kiran’s figures, characterized by enormous eyes, restricted bodies, humor, and bright colors, represent her journey of navigating new cultures and exploring “otherness”.
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Memento | Zachary Layhew
September 6th, 2024 - Jan 27th, 2025 | Exhibition Cases
Zachary Layhew is a Pittsburgh-based artist working primarily in glass. His work revolves around a combination of glass blowing, cold working, and then a further reheating, manipulating, and assembling of these pieces. The works in Memento represent objects that are kept as a reminder or souvenir of a person or event. He asks, “Are these objects here to remind us of the time that has passed? Why do these specific items hold such meaning? Will the need to make them ever stop?” The care and consideration he has put into the craft of these works sufficiently carry those memories safely as time progresses on.
