“Threshold,” is my Gold selection for Best Of. I appreciated the physicality of Ariella’s tapestry painting installation, and how it activates a more traditionally viewed subject of landscape through its armature, which denotes a conceptual sophistication. If I were to walk around and through each of Ariella’s panels, I can picture a wider landscape expanding past each “doorway” a viewer faces. And to weave between the tapestries like trees activates it physically, creating motions one could make exploring in nature. The hybrid of subject and armature created a mental fork in my mind with roads that could lead to Dona Nelson or to 15th century Flemish Tapestry from Met Cloisters. It felt very fresh! Her strong blend of subject and quiet physicality led me to choose “Threshold” for first place.

‘I want things to be beautiful,’ crawls through a familiar digital noise we’re largely challenged by now. The hauntingly familiar aesthetic of datamoshing, from a bygone tumblr lifestyle I once occupied myself, had me lurching back in time watching this video. In ‘i want things to be beautiful,' images and noises emerge from a dull red haze at the viewer; I was brought back to playing first-player video games in my teens, the fear of my health bar being low… my vision is fading, get back to base! Jaden’s aesthetic is both playful and haunting, and conjures avenues that a player, or individual, faces in the onslaught of attention-seeking forces in our lives. I feel that she successfully approaches this subject and will push it further in future work. This is my reasoning for this piece taking Silver place.

The stark chart of Romina’s guilt is palpable in her installation, “(-) Days Found Guilty by Whom and Why: A Guilt Graph.” I was taken with the wrappers and text pressed into the fibrous paper as subtly beautiful material choices. I also thought of the lengths of the paper not only as a vertical measure of a bar graph, but as a contemporary and heartfelt ‘receipt’ of each month’s worth of interactions.This is my reasoning for this piece taking Bronze.