Semester of Graduation

Summer 2025

Degree

Master of Fine Arts (MFA)

Department

Art

Document Type

Thesis

Abstract

Enduring Words: Resistance Through Sculptural Libraries is a thesis exhibition that challenges book censorship by transforming reading into a public and defiant act. Through direct sculptural interventions, the exhibition confronts cultural erasure, questions who controls the literature we consume, and highlights the role of art in safeguarding contested knowledge. This thesis focuses on a current body of exhibited sculptural works that embody the tension between access and erasure. These installations engage with the viewer by using a lighthouse built of books and a speech-bubble-shaped library embedded with censored texts. They do not quietly mourn the suppression of knowledge; they confront it with their presence and unique appearance.

Framed by a historical overview of book banning, from the destruction of Magnus Hirschfeld’s library to banning French texts and restrictions on women’s literacy, this thesis contextualizes current U.S. censorship within long-standing authoritarian strategies to control public consciousness. The exhibition is positioned in dialogue with socially engaged artists such as Ai Weiwei and Theaster Gates and contrasted with more neutral community efforts like Little Free Libraries. Through this comparison, the sculptural libraries are shown as sources of banned and challenged literature and as confrontational monuments.

Drawing on literacy research that connects books in the home with reading development, this thesis further argues that book bans are not abstract ideological conflicts, but material threats that deepen social inequities. The artworks in this show respond directly to that threat. They physically resist suppression and invite public participation. Instead, they function as open provocations: to take a book, ask a question, and refuse silence.

Date

5-27-2025

Committee Chair

Schwerd, Loren

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