POST(AL) PANDEMIC Mail Art Exhibition

August 23 - September 15, 2021
Reception: September 9^th 4 - 6 p.m. (masks are required-thank you)

Is there life—or an artistic vision of it—after gloomy 2020 & 2021? Is the infection demon Rona (Covid-19 & variants) now defeated, battling us...or simply lying in wait to spring again?   Artists were invited to submit their artistic reflections of disease & melancholy, recent lifestyle, decorative optimism & future brightness, plus appreciation of the world's postal systems that kept/keep us together while socially isolated. Mail art is since the 1960s, a reflection of artists from around the world relying on the postal system as an alternative means of producing, distributing, and receiving art. Mail art (aka “correspondence art” or “postal art”) has become a form of artistic practice in which an international network of participants use the mail to make art and share it with others. With letters, postcards, and packages—as well as material that tests the limits of what can be posted—mail artists circumvent traditional elite modes of display and distribution (such as museums and commercial galleries) in favor of the more accessible spaces of the modern post. What better place than a public university like SVSU to share voices from around the world regarding a universal phenomenon. This exhibition creatively sidesteps the art market and political censors to gage the pulse of society.  Forty artists from across the United States, and also Germany, Japan, Brasil, Poland, Austria and Romania submitted work. 

Entrants: Installation images are provided below for out of state and country viewers. Thank you to everyone who entered.

All gallery exhibitions, lectures and receptions are free and open to the public. Click the following link for open gallery hours or call (989) 964-2291. The University Art Gallery is located in the Arbury Fine Arts Center on the campus of Saginaw Valley State University, svsu.edu/go/visit/maps/.