American University Museum presents a two-person exhibition of the work of Professor Devan Shimoyama and MFA candidate Georgia Saxelby titled “Make-Believe.” The exhibition, on view September 10 through December 11, explores artistic world-building and the crafting of alternate realities.
The exhibition presents sculptures by Saxelby and paintings by Shimoyama in the context of a post-pandemic world where fantasies and the imagination have played increasingly vital roles. Make-Believe considers the artists’ shared use of decoration, craft and visual pleasure, both using highly saturated, lustrous and reflective surfaces to blur the real and the imaginary.
The artists draw on cultural and aesthetic histories outside the fine art canon, such as, fashion, drag, cinema, animation, furniture, costume jewelry and interior design. These new bodies of work allow the artists to better understand the contributions of queer, black and women practitioners, as well as, the ways fantasy intersects with ideas of camp, queerness and femininity.