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It Is What It Is
Vanessa Iafolla

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Gallery 2

MFA Thesis Exhibition

Vanessa Iafolla’s MFA thesis exhibition, It Is What It Is, is what it is. But what is it? A tribute to her brother, Tristan. Two years of entering artistic practice. A means of therapy. A mess. A reorientation of self through grief and acceptance. A public offering to the universal experience of loss. Beyond this, what it is, is an exhibition spiraling through the love, the grief, her family, her bargaining, the site, her anger, her love, her grief, shock, searching, yearning, her sampling, his memory, the sacrifices, their grief, their love, their generosity, the support, her confusion, her denial, his friendship, her loss, her love, her grief, their grief, his love, all of it. Through photography, installation, and sculpture, Iafolla commemorates autoethnographically the untimely passing of her only brother and addresses the experience of the surviving sibling forensically in a material analysis of loss.
 

“Everyone says I’m doing so well, like I’m doing grief right, which is weird. Even mom said I seem to be doing okay recently. Here’s the secret. I know you know: I’m not doing well. I’m not making progress. I’m making art.”