The Brookline Arts Center (BAC) is pleased to present Cuz She Said So by Liana Farmer, on view July 9 – August 21, 2022, in the BAC’s Annex Gallery as well as The Infinite Mirage of Rapture by Jaina Cipriano, on view from July 16 – October 9, 2022, in the BAC’s Beacon Street Gallery.

Liana Farmer is this year’s Echo Trobridge Artist in Residency at the BAC. The residency provides six weeks of artistic development each year and culminates with a six-week public exhibition in our Annex Gallery. Farmer was selected from a talented list of applicants; she received her BFA from MassArt and currently works in Boston as an artist, art teacher, and freelance writer for Condé Nast. Farmer states that her current work is, “An exploration into the dichotomous relationship of invisibility and conspicuousness, that is black womxnhood…Blackness, often either hated or glorified, leaves little space for reality, for softness. The work presents an intimate, per-chance moment between the art and audience in celebration of the ordinary.” Farmer’s work is tightly bound to literature, and her current series blk grl call home, is titled after Jasmine Mans’ poetry collection. Her series pays homage to classic fictional characters that “black girls call home to” including Sethe from Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Janie from Zola Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Celie from Alice Walker’s The Color Purple. Cuz She Said So will be on view at the BAC’s Annex Gallery from July 9 – August 21, 2022.

Also on view this summer is The Infinite Mirage of Rapture by Jaina Cipriano in the Beacon Street Gallery. Cipriano is a Boston-based artist working with photography, film, and installation. Her work explores the emotional toll of religious and romantic entrapment through immersive sets and emotional performances that mirror the subconscious. The exhibition will feature her Empty Spaces self-portrait project, which connects her isolation experienced during the pandemic to her childhood spent growing up in an evangelical cult. After losing connection with herself during the lockdown, she began to transform herself again and again through portraiture.

“I went out into many suddenly silent spaces and performed for myself. These moments alone, covered in paint or grime, baking in the start of the summer sun, I began to connect again.” The Infinite Mirage of Rapture will be on view in the BAC’s Beacon Street Gallery from July
16 – October 9, 2022.

Annex Gallery
● 86 Monmouth St, Brookline MA
● Viewable twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week from the window in Monmouth
Park or by appointment on weekdays between 9 AM – 5 PM.
Beacon Street Gallery
● 1351 Beacon Street, Brookline MA
● Available for viewing Monday – Saturday between 10 AM – 7:45 PM and Sunday from 12 PM –
5:45 PM.

For more information about exhibition programming, follow the BAC on Instagram @brooklineartcenter and visit www.brooklineartscenter.com.