Past Exhibitions

Sentient
an installation by Renee Prisble Una
September 7 through 24, 2007
Reception: Friday, September 7, 6-9pm

Press Release (PDF) | CV (PDF) | Images

NAB Gallery is pleased to present Sentient, an installation by Chicago artist Renee Prisble Una. Inspired by an exhibition of Buddha sculptures from various regions at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in 2005, Una has produced new variations on these devotional images by casting sixteen volunteers and decorating the resulting visages in intricate detail. In addition to the disembodied heads, the artist has made a full-body cast of a figure, sans head, in traditional buddhist robes. While mimicking the aesthetic of their inspiration, the sculptures are neither devotional or iconoclastic. Rather, they seem to reiterate the (not necessarily religious) buddhist challenge of enlightenment in contemporary terms and ask us to see ourselves in another light. In the artist's words "The use of iconography in this installation asks who is the Buddha?"