Circulation Issues, MFA Alumni Photography Duo Exhibition

Closing Reception: Tuesday October 29, 2024, 5-7:30PM, during “Art in the Open”

Exhibition open: October 1 – November 9, 2024

Circulation Issues is a duo photography exhibition of Department of Art MFA Alumni Hope Mora (2020) and Jeremiah Ariaz (2005). Mora’s work features highlights from her documentary photography series “Pecos”, including various faces and places in Pecos, Texas, her hometown. Likewise, Ariaz captures smalltown America, with an understated appreciation for the seemingly banal but vital. But in Ariaz’s case, there is a specifically pointed investigation going on. Where Mora’s series in Circulation Issues is a documentary photography pursuit, with subjects deeply personal, Ariaz’s series is a meta journey in the realm of what documentary photography and journalism mean to folks in Kansas, and maybe to us all, within the context of current societal conditions. Ariaz’s exploration of small-town news begs questions of authorial voice, labor, economics of scale, and the complexities of power that rule “the fourth estate”. In many ways Mora’s work does the same, but while hers creates an archive to behold and perhaps discern, Ariaz’s slates a platform to absorb and build upon. Both look to decipher communities and human conditions, and guests are invited to participate in these inquiries.

Mora’s “Pecos” subjects are intimately connected with her, through their social and familiar associations, and the gaze she casts upon them is one of honor, respect, and admiration, for the resiliency and beauty of lives in this small town. Mora beautifully captures Pecos’ “slice of life”, and the subjects being viewed exude a quiet confidence and trust, product of the noble treatment that Mora attends to them with. From the rodeo to park pavilion, tire shop or food truck workplace to trailer park, these subjects pierce through time and distance, to tell the viewer stories of a place bursting with life, in a way to be proud of. 

In his “Kansas Mirror” series, Ariaz has mined the state of Kansas for the sites of small-town newspapers, probing for the values and qualities of these small business. In the pursuit of honest and equitable news, these newspapers (that is to say, the people that operate them) do what they can, to keep the lights on, and new news rolling. From the entrance point of the gallery, visitors will see contrasting parallel walls of grids of newspaper office facades from this series. The differences in the two demonstrate ghostly absences from each grid, as one is offices that are still operational, and the other is ones that have had to “shutter” their doors, paired with writing on the wall: “Sorry, we’re closed”. Ariaz’s “Kansas Mirror”, newspaper-style artist publication, is incorporated in two ways to the installation. The more evident, is how it is hung sheet by sheet upon the central wall, to emphasize the notability of its messages, and sanctify the subjects, just as the photo enlargements around the rest of the gallery do for Ariaz and Mora’s faces/places subjects that are featured. 

Visitors can take a seat and read printed materials collaged on an interior wall, and set upon a table between two chairs, which further contextualizes Mora and Ariaz’s series. Ariaz’s “Kansas Mirror” in its newspaper, natural folded style, is among the works on the table, and this reading area is modelled after Ariaz’s capture of a table at the The Morning Sun newspaper office in Pittsburg, KS, 2022, which is depicted with an enlargement along the same wall. Among the printed materials of the reading area are also the paper of Mora’s MFA thesis, and her “Pecos” photographs book. It is from this series that her displayed works have been selected, four and a half years passed, since they were hindered from meeting gallery walls, due to pandemic shutdowns. Mora’s subjects are now elevated to the large-scale portraiture, meanwhile beside these works and the reading area, an enlarged page 6, from the Pecos Enterprise, April 30, 2020, shows the “Love Letter to Pecos” spread. That spread is a “guest writer” feature by Mora, which her hometown newspaper was able to bring to its primary audience, the community members of that place, in the year of origin.

Many of the works in this exhibition have proudly captured subjects, that stare back at the lens, which freezes a frame of their livelihood and/or lifestyle. Other photographs are stark interior or exterior scene-scapes, where the absence of the assumed people whose lives are contained in these spaces, challenge the viewer to insert personal stories into the settings. In both cases, Mora and Ariaz’s works illicit a conundrum of visibility and erasure, a present moment, that quickly slides into the past. Problematizing the mainstream, by giving us deeply intriguing and intricate smaller streams, these artists demonstrate the value and beauty to be captured in local networks of communication and life, that are so tender, in their tightness. 

Both artists have personal websites, where expanded collections of these and other photography series of their work, can be viewed. Please visit for more info:

https://hopemora.com, http://www.jeremiahariaz.com/

Admission is free and open to the public. Open Monday-Saturday, 10AM-7PM.

Parking is free in most lots in campus after 3PM. Check signs. If a parking permit is needed, request in advance to whitneyk@buffalo.edu, or visit the Art Office, 202 Center for the Arts. Gallery hours are subject to change. Contact in advance if a confirmed appointment is desired.

Light refreshments will be provided at the closing reception on 10/29, 5-7:30PM.

This exhibition has been organized by Art Resource Manager Whitney Kehl, with assistance from the exhibiting artists, Hope Mora and Jeremiah Ariaz, UB Art Faculty John Opera, and MFA Candidates Meagan Killian, Eilis Regan, and Teju Abiola.

The Department of Art instituted an alumni art series in the Fall of 2023. Beginning that year with large sculptural and painted works by 2010 MFA Alumnus Fredrick Wright Jones, the series continues, with the Circulation Issues.

This exhibition series is organized by the Department of Art Gallery Committee, co-chaired by Professor Joan Linder, and Art Resource Manager Whitney Kehl. Suggestions for future iterations of the alumni exhibition series may be submitted to the Department’s Gallery Committee, by writing to the Art Resource Manager.