PAFA’s Alumni Gallery is currently playing host to four graduates of its Master of Fine Arts program. Brian James Spies (’12) curated This Woman’s Work, which also features pieces by Sofya Mirvis (’12), Daria Souvorova (’13), and Ana Vizcarra Rankin (’12). All four artists were at school together and have stayed in touch in the years since graduating, visiting each other’s exhibitions and running into each other at events. Says Spies, “Everyone seems close when you’re going through school and then, as time goes by, that big group starts to whittle down a bit as people move and go off into other things. So it’s nice that we have very much stayed in touch.”

The relationships Spies formed at PAFA grew from those things that drew them to the school’s MFA program in the first place. “PAFA did a really good job of preparing us through the structure of the curriculum,” they say. “Most of the time you’re making work, and in that way it mirrors what it’s like to be a professional artist after graduation. You developed a routine and a professionalism with each other that both brought you closer, and also prepared you for what it’s like when no one is knocking on your door asking to see your work.” Spies grew the skills and connections that allowed them to reach out to other artists for feedback when it was needed and for collaboration—such as the current exhibit—when inspiration struck. 

Among other post-graduation endeavors, Spies ran a gallery from 2015 to 2019 and has curated shows for a number of independent venues. After This Woman’s Work was selected from an open call, they particularly enjoyed the unique experience of having access to PAFA’s resources as a larger venue while the exhibit came together.

Spies met with coordinators in October 2021 to discuss the Alumni Gallery itself and how the exhibit would be informed by its container. “It’s not your typical white cube space that one tends to associate with a contemporary art show,” they say. The gallery combines white walls, containing plenty of space for display, with wood paneling and other traditional details prevalent in the Historic Landmark Building from 1876. “I like the fact that this is a show about the world we’re living in, but that in many ways it has materially and conceptually a connection to art history,” says Spies. “It has the mixture of traditional American identity and culture and aesthetics combined with a very 21st-century perspective on those themes, all while staged in a space that has a very 19th-century patina to it.” They recommend visitors to the exhibition note a work by Sofya Mirvis that pairs old-world Europe and modern-day media within a collage, and their own photographs which take on an older aesthetic of rural settings through ochre hues and costuming. “I literally am wearing a bonnet in one of the photographs,” they laugh. 

This interplay of exhibition and gallery may be one of the things that most excites Spies about This Woman’s Work. In truth, this kind of concept-building has played a major role in their approach for many years. “For me, the connective tissue between the content within the work and how the work is presented is really important: presentation, lighting, perspective, how you couch the work within a broader context,” they say. 

Spies’s more concrete contributions to the exhibit are part of an ongoing body of work exploring gender that they first developed following the 2016 presidential election and coming out as non-binary. Mirvis, Souvorova, and Vizcarra Rankin were working on their own such projects, and in 2018 Spies curated a show with Rankin that kickstarted what would become This Woman’s Work. “I remember what an important part gender played in her body of work,” they say. “I didn’t realize it until I started curating the exhibition. All four of us are individually engaging with gender as part of our practice regularly. And then when the open call for this happened, we were all in dialogue with each other not just as artists, but as friends.”     

This Woman’s Work is on display through April 10, 2022. Learn more.