CURRENTS Art & Technology Festival, in its 16th edition, has selected to show the works of ITP Alums Priyanka Makin (’24) and Zoe Cohen (’23). Taking place at El Museo Cultural in Santa Fe, New Mexico, this ten-day event will feature 72 works by 90 artists from around the world, exploring the evolving intersections of art, technology, and digital culture. The event runs from June 13 – June 22, 2025.
From the artist, Priyanka Makin:
"Body of Work is a series of sculptures that come together to make a self-portrait. Over the course of a year, I explored one aspect of how I experience my body in each ITP course I took and created a body part sculpture or manifestation based on my reflection. In that time I created A Nervous System (Brain), Thoughts for Food (Stomach), Bun in The Washing Machine (Womb), and interFACE. These sculptures cover a variety of themes including my anxiety, femininity, and my love of play and are expressions of trying to reconnect with my body. I thought a lot about my body as an interface, as inputs and outputs. Between these individual items are recurring visual symbols of spirals, mirror and reflection, color, illustration, and light. These elements have been deployed as a sometimes humorous deflection from serious topics."
From the artist, Zoe Cohen:
"Featuring hand-drawn animations, these ceramic video sculptures peer into the realm where the body and mind tango. Clay is categorically lumpy, unpredictable, and stubborn. Rather than fighting those qualities, they are central to the meaning of the work. The physical irregularities of the sculptures mirror how the artist experiences her own body and mind: not as something smooth or uniform, but as something fluid, shifting, and nonsensical. Multimedia art is often housed inside digitally fabricated structures, a practical choice when working with delicate electronic components. But multimedia art doesn’t have to rely solely on contemporary technology. Ceramics, a technology debuting over 30,000 years ago, offers its own possibilities for transformation and storytelling. Screens embedded in the ceramics distort and reshape the hand-drawn animations they display. They are bodies, imperfect, ever-shifting, and alive."