handsewn bag in the form of a clock on a mannequin
artwork by Ingrid Henderson ’19

Borrowed Worlds

the Fall ’25 Alice C. Cole ’42 Studio Project Grant Exhibition

October 23 — December 12, 2025

Time 8:00 AM - 10:00 PM
Where Jewett Art Center 200 Art Gallery

Borrowed Worlds is an exhibition of new work by Ingrid Henderson ’19, Korina Hernandez ’20, and X.S. Hou ’21. Henderson, Hernandez, and Hou are three of the recipients of the 2023-24 Alice C. Cole ’42 Studio Project Grant. The other two recipients of the 2023-24 grant, Olivia Gorman ’22 and Ry Watkins ’23, will be exhibiting work together in Spring ’26.

Materials are critically important for all these artists: hand-dyed and sewn fabrics for Henderson; ceramics and 3D printing for Hernandez; metals, silk, bioplastics, and slime mold for Hou. All three artists think carefully about the histories carried within and implied by their materials. Henderson's painstakingly constructed fabric collages and garments ask a viewer to consider historically domestic and feminized labor in relation to the urban landscape. Hernandez combines the ancient art of ceramics with contemporary fabrication technologies that speak to changes in the form and meaning of heritage objects when removed from their originating communities and brought into the museum space. Hou's use of salvaged industrial material, cybernetic components, natural fabrics and live organisms create myths and rituals that bridge tradition to our techno-architected present.

Each of these artists imagines an alternative to conventional understandings of place. Henderson's pieces turn the improvisational and quick sign or mark into a slowly and deliberately constructed element of the urban fabric, while offering opportunities to literally embody the metropolitan. Hernandez envisions a new context for objects that have long been inaccessible to the communities that created them, and offers the possibility of a new way forward for institutions currently holding such objects. Hou's constructs merge human effort with the unpredictable traces of nonhuman action, proposing sculpture as a new site for care, co-agency, and alternative knowledge production. Each artist, in their own way, creates and offers a way to inhabit a kind of borrowed world.

The Alice C. Cole ’42 Studio Project Grant provides project-based support to recent Wellesley College graduates for the development, production, and exhibition of new work in painting and sculpture, whatever those disciplines may mean to the artist. The fund enables promising recent graduates to set aside time for artistic development as well as to purchase materials, rent studio space, or access facilities for the creation of new projects.

This exhibition will be on view in the Jewett Art Gallery from Oct. 20–Dec. 12, 2025. The Gallery, located on the main floor of the Jewett Arts Center at Wellesley College, is open to the public 10:00 am – 5:00 pm, 7 days a week for the duration of the show. The Gallery is free to visit. Visitors driving to campus should park in the Davis Parking Facility near the Central St. entrance to campus and walk to Jewett from there; see the campus map here.

To arrange a guided tour of the exhibition, or for more information, contact Gallery Director Samara Pearlstein at 781-283-2043 or spearls2@wellesley.edu.

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