Ben Volta partnered with students from the Margaret S. Sterck School for the Deaf during his eight-week DCCA Art & Community Visual Arts Residency. As an artist and educator, Volta states that he collaborates on projects by conceptualizing an art idea and exploring “how each contributing participant might incorporate his or her own unique vision into that idea.” Volta facilitated the students’ exploration of concepts of identity and representation by asking them to consider and select objects and symbols that reflected their self-perceptions and interests. Their abstracted drawings and personal emblems comprise the basis for the collaborative artworks. The exhibition title Elettrostatica incorporates Volta’s own identity, referencing his ancestral relation to Alessandro Volta, the Italian physicist whose groundbreaking work in electrochemistry led to the invention of the voltaic pile, the first electric battery. The students each selected an individual color as background for their respective works in Conductors, a series of laser disks with collaged layers of drawings and emblems superimposed on their photographs. These colors are represented in Resistor, an interactive light box table and seats that the students helped build and paint. Gigahertz is a large print that features composed elements of the collages laid over digital frequencies in the individually selected colors and stands as a powerful visualization of the exchange of creative energy, thought, and personal iconography.

The Margaret S. Sterck School / Delaware School for the Deaf is a program of the Christina School District that serves deaf and hardof- hearing students from birth through 21 years of age. Its mission is to educate students with rigorous achievement standards, develop their linguistic competence in ASL and English, and prepare them to be contributing citizens, by providing access to language and information in a safe and supportive learning environment.

DELAWARE CENTER FOR THE CONTEMPORARY ARTS
200 South Madison Street, Wilmington, DE 19801
302-656-6466 • www.thedcca.org

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