In Feeling: Empathy and Tension Through Disability
August 30 2025 – January 4 2026
In Feeling: Empathy and Tension Through Disability features works by nine contemporary artists that examine how we empathize—the practice of being sensitive to understanding or experiencing the feelings and thoughts of another. Yet the practice of empathizing can also engender tensions relating to one’s own position and expectations. Exploring the relationship between empathy and tension through lived
experiences of disability this exhibition highlights and celebrates perspectives that challenge assumptions about ways of being and living.
Liza Sylvestre’s Interference 7/26/21 (2021) for example is from her ongoing series of handwritten words on a sheet of paper that have been obscured. The redacted parts of each word correspond to parts of speech she cannot hear due to hearing loss. Sylvestre is interested in the visual pattern of this “loss” but is also interested in the idea of the “loss” hiding and protecting information that is private within the public space of an art exhibition.
In addition to Sylvestre participating artists include JJJJJerome Ellis Jerron Herman Molly Joyce Jeff Kasper Christine Sun Kim Park McArthur Finnegan Shannon and Andy Slater.
Curated by Molly Joyce Dean’s Doctoral Fellow Department of Music at UVA and Kristen Nassif Ph.D. Curator of Collections at The Fralin Museum of Art.
Admission is always free; donations are welcome.
Image:
Liza Sylvestre (b.1988). Interference 7/26/2021 2021. Ink on paper 18 x 24 in. (45.7 x 61 cm). Courtesy of the artist. © Liza Sylvestre.
A sheet of off-white paper pinned to a wall densely filled with small irregular black ink marks resembling dots dashes and fragments of handwriting. The markings are arranged in a grid-like pattern suggesting the format of written text but are largely illegible evoking a sense of obscured or lost communication.
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