Gender Institute Art Collection

Dedicated to advancing women’s and LGBTQ leadership, vision, and influence, the Gender Institute Art Collection promotes student and emerging artists by providing an exhibition space and internet presence for publicity and recognition. The UB Gender Institute Art Collection enhances the educational, cultural and everyday experience of students, staff and visitors to the University at Buffalo. The Art Collection is particularly dedicated to promoting work by and about people of diverse genders, sexualities and sexual orientations, classes, religions, races and ethnic backgrounds, abilities, health status, and age.

If you are a current UB student or recent graduate interested in loaning or donating your art to our collection, please send your information to the curator, Surahbi Pant.

Painting of a ghostly girl.

Errant (2017), Charcoal on Paper.

Image of a painting of a ghostly girl, Tenuous, by Tricia Butski.

Tenuous (2017), Charcoal on Paper.

2017
Charcoal on paper
18x24
$1000
On loan from the artist

Through drawings rendered in charcoal, my recent work examines issues related to memory by exploring its limitations and aestheticizing the instability inherent in portraiture. The work allows the viewer to enter the subconscious space between remembering and forgetting. The figures and faces, which have been distorted through a repetitive layering process, manipulate our sense of familiarity. The original image becomes fragmented through this process, a conceptual procedure that corresponds to the experience of forgetting the semblance of the face, the body, and the subject.

Through distortion and fragmentation, the figures take on a monstrous form. The familiarity of the face evokes comfort while simultaneously rousing a sense of distress. This process creates an intermediary form that inhabits a space both real and imagined. The resulting image is neither entirely original nor fully invented, taking form as a realistic rendering of a fleeting moment. By challenging the boundaries between representation and abstraction, and questioning the relationship between fluctuation and constancy, the works become entangled and disordered, mirroring the viewer’s innate desire for clarity and their proclivity for drawing meaning out of partiality.

-Tricia Butski

Sepideh Pourhang, MFA '18

These feminist works capture multidimensional layers of an Iranian woman’s identity. Despite bodily presence, identity blends to anonymity through the painted elements that overlap the print. This suffocation redresses the construction of the “model minority.”

Tentative Taste of Freedom

2016
Gouache on printed photo
17in x 11in
Permanent Collection

Hide and Seek

2016
Gouache on printed photo
11in x 17in
Permanent Collection

Affording an Appearance

2016
Gouache on printed photo
17in x 11in
Permanent Collection

Xiao Yang, MFA '19

Self-Portrait No. 3

2015
Plaster
8in x 8in x 3in
Permanent Collection

In this three-dimensional piece, the artist sought to create a metaphorical form with which to express internal struggle. Part of a series of abstract works, Self-Portrait No. 3 explores alienation as a product of the existential crisis of suffering that penetrates every moment of life. 

Anitya Series No. 2

2017
Ink on Yupo paper
40in x 26in
On loan from the artist

This abstract work, connected to the Buddhist idea of “Anitya” or impermanence, harmonizes life and death. The translucent abstract shapes, like biomaterial on a laboratory slide, point up the ephemerality of matter and of living things.

Previously Loaned Pieces

Andie Jairam, MFA '18

Amir Dex

2015
Charcoal and conte on paper
20in x 16in
On loan from the artist Fall 2017 - Fall 2019

This drawing imagines the artist through Afrofuturism, a cultural aesthetic that combines science, history, African history, and science fiction to image worlds where Black people have degrees of autonomy that are not yet possible in our own world. The figure’s masculine presentation and pose point towards futures where Black masculinity might have much different connotations than in our contemporary society.

Child's Love

2017
Relief print on paper
36in x 26in
On loan from the artist Fall 2017 - Fall 2019

This print depicts community in an Afrofuture where Black families remain intact, rebuking histories of the transatlantic slave trade and prison industrial complex.

Sara Chase, BFA '19

Mandala Trio

2015
Acrylic on canvas
17in x 18in
On loan from the artist Fall 2017 - Spring 2019

For the artist, mandalas represent order in the universe and the sacred geometry of life. This work evokes the sun and the sea, bringing calming presence to artist and viewer alike.