Theresa Devine
United Arts Council
410 Glenwood Ave, Raleigh, NC 27603
Monday - Friday 10 - 4
August 3 - September 29
As a part of THE EVERYDAY project, Theresa Devine will be showcasing her game works for the months of August and September.
BIO
Theresa Devine, MFA, is an Assistant Professor in the New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at Arizona State University. She is an artist and a scholar whose interdisciplinary research draws on the subjects of games, play, psychology, aesthetics, ethics and social transformation. Theresa received her BFA in Painting and Printmaking at Texas A & M University-Corpus Christi in 1991 and her MFA in Painting at the University of Houston in 1994. In her studio artwork, she explores games, toys, and play.
Her work as lead of the Studio 4 Gaming Innovation research lab focuses on researching games to redefine and explore what they can be and how they can be used in concert with art to initiate transformation in our society.
In both her artwork and scholarship, She is interested in discovering how art and play can be understood in order to be activated for social change. She believes that through a greater understanding of art and play, a road to creating a more just, tolerant, and inclusive world can
be exposed and that this path can be opened up for others to make discoveries
of their own.
STATEMENT
Ce n'est pas un jouet: This is not a toy.
Why do we forget to play when we grow up? Why do we hurt each other? Everywhere I look I see distrust, miscommunication, and misunderstanding. This is followed with greed, selfishness, and pain. How can play help us to understand each other?
Can play transform us and our world? Play is how we learn and gain trust from each other, so can it liberate us from the cycle of hurting each other?
Through toys and games, I explore the intersection between adversity and play. Play is a serious venture and as the title says, it is not a toy. I invoke Magritte with this title because his work showed us that possibilities are only limited by our imagination. I believe that through play we release ourselves from adversity and open the door to new possibilities.