My thesis explores the relationship between the human psyche and the perception of reality through the use of computer generated media. In a society in which we are bombarded with multimedia technology, we must look inside our selves for a true understanding of our past and memories. Rather than it acting as an escape from reality, my art becomes an opening for truth in reality.

My purpose in entering the UCF MFA program was to further explore and develop my passion for photography. During my time in the program, I developed my methodology--from having the traditional photography paradigm ingrained in my mind (and wanting to fit into it) to accepting and valuing my own unique process. I construct installations using diverse imagery and non-traditional presentation. In my installations, one may witness a reflection of the contemporary pace of image perception--fragmented, complex, abundant, and disordered. Together, images and their arrangements are used to create a unified piece that satisfies a new system within apparent disorder. The resulting installations summon the sensation of thinking and processing information in a new way, allowing for re-contextualization of fragmented imagery. Technology has pushed photography to evolve. Previously held traditional notions of photography as art (e.g., "single telling moment" photographs and similar subject matter) are now being confronted by a vernacular of "many telling moments". The current state of the art world is in flux, and is greatly influenced by the faster pace set by technology; I coin our new vernacular Image Culture.

This dissertation examines the development of alternative spaces in Los Angeles from 1970 to 1990. In the absence of museum support during the 1970s, artists in Los Angeles—many of whom were women, queer, racially diverse, young, politically active, and pushing the boundaries of new media—began to create organizations to provide the resources they lacked. I argue that this flourishing network of alternative spaces became one of Los Angeles’s most significant art-historical developments in the latter half of the twentieth century. This emergent contemporary art scene was defined largely in opposition to the city’s principal cultural repository, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), and formed the primary support structure for contemporary artists and exhibitions between the 1974 closure of the Pasadena Art Museum and the launch of the Museum of Contemporary Art’s (MOCA) exhibition program in 1983. The resulting complex of artist-run organizations laid the groundwork for the rebranding of Los Angeles as a capital of contemporary art and culture in the twenty-first century. My study is divided into three chapters, each of which focuses on the history and legacy of a different alternative institution. Chapter one examines the Woman’s Building (1973-1991) through this feminist institution’s exhibition and pedagogical programs, with a focus on the Feminist Studio Workshop (1973-1981). Members of the Woman’s Building sought to transform their Los Angeles community by educating both the women who came there to study and the audiences that encountered their work. The second chapter traces the history of LAICA (Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, 1974-1987), which became the city’s first non-profit exhibition space dedicated to contemporary art. Through its exhibitions and publication, Journal, LAICA validated and disseminated Southern California’s artistic production to national and international audiences. The third chapter introduces LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, 1978-present), which emerged out of a community mural program to become the preeminent laboratory for experimental art in Los Angeles. The diverse group of artists who founded LACE established a democratically operated organization that prioritized artistic freedom. These three institutions anchored a network of alternative spaces that transformed the cultural landscape in Los Angeles. / 2022-07-08T00:00:00Z

This dissertation offers the first in-depth, socio-political history of the National Institute of Fine Arts in Tetouan. Organized into four chronological chapters, this study illustrates how generations of artists laid the groundwork for the development of modern and contemporary art in Morocco. My first chapter examines how the pedagogy of the Preparatory School of Fine Arts, founded in 1946 by Spanish painter Mariano Bertuchi Nieto, informed the Pictorial School of Tetouan, articulating myths of Andalusian nationalism, Hispano-Arab culture, and Hispano-Moroccan brotherhood. The role of arts and culture in Spain’s imperialist project is a lens for understanding how the colonial encounter and its afterlife affected Moroccan artists of the mid-twentieth century. My second chapter examines the post-independence period, between 1957, when the Preparatory School was re-inaugurated as the National School of Fine Arts by King Mohammed V, and the 1970s. Decades of Spanish colonialism resulted in the region’s socio-political, cultural, and economic marginalization and a disregard by scholars for seminal figures such as Ahmed Amrani, Saâd Ben Cheffaj, Meriam Maziane, Mekki Megara, and Mohamed Sarghini. I assert that rather than replicate colonial artistic styles, they were engaged in identity exploration and formal experimentations. The 1970s and 1980s in Morocco were recognized as the Years of Lead, a period of state-sponsored violence and oppression under King Hassan II, thus, in my third chapter, I delve into the work of artists responding to these tumultuous decades, such as Aziz Abou Ali, Mohamed Drissi, and Ahmed Amrani. Other artists openly reacted against the school’s marginalization and conservative pedagogy via the Spring Exhibitions, a series of five ephemeral outdoor exhibitions in al-Faddān square. Rebranded once more in 1994 as the National Institute of Fine Arts, the school has produced a generation of contemporary artists such as Mohamed Larbi Rahhali, Younès Rahmoun, and Safaa Erruas, who work primarily with Installation art and are socially and politically engaged. To that end, my fourth chapter highlights the decolonial artistic practices and pedagogical shifts introduced by innovators such as Abdelkrim Ouazzani, Mohammed Chabâa, and Faouzi Laatiris, who cultivated a more liberal artistic environment at the school. / 2029-03-31T00:00:00Z

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