Bay College announces the exhibition, Echoes of Silence: A Portrait of Unspoken Terrors, which features past student work from the art collection, on display in the Besse Gallery on the Escanaba Bay College Campus. The Curator’s Talk will take place in the Besse Gallery on Thursday, February 20 at 2pm ET, with a reception to follow. This event is free and open to the public.
This exhibition will be on display until March 1, 2025.
For questions, contact events@baycollege.edu or (906) 217-4040.
Curator Statement
“In this exhibition, as the curator, I invite you into a visceral confrontation with the act of screaming—not as a moment of release, but as an intense, embodied reflection of internalized fears, anxieties, and the overwhelming pressures that often remain silent within us. This is a collection (from the art collection, 2014 – 2024) of self portraits by Bay College Art and Design students, executed through large-scale mural drawings in charcoal and conte, created out of the experience of observing themselves in the mirror and grappling with the complexity of human emotion, vulnerability, and the act of self-expression. Artists included in this exhibition: Hannah Mleko, Lila Clemens, Laura Tirapelli, Ariella Murray, Melissa Darling, Rebecca Neubauer, Vanessa Fields, Alexandra Williams, Alisha Hirn, Mariah Sullivan, and Jordan Tyner.
The mirror, as a central tool of this process, becomes both a conduit for self-reflection as well as framing the, not as a static figure, but as a subject in constant flux. The mirrors are where they witness themselves in moments of raw confrontation, where their facial expressions—the contour of a scream, the tension in clenched jaws, the twist of a face caught between pain and protest—become an allegory of the inner chaos that often goes unseen. These self-portraits are not just representations of a singular “self,” but a dialogue with the broader, shared experience of emotional distress that transcends the personal.
You complete the circle; you are invited to write down your own unvoiced emotions. It is a space for vulnerability, a space for unburdening. Through this interactive component, I hope we can witness the power of collective catharsis—a reminder that our screams, whether spoken or silent, are not only personal, but part of a larger, collective struggle. The exhibition encourages us to embrace the complexity of our emotions, to not only acknowledge the scream, but to recognize its resonance within each of us.
This is a space where we can scream together, where the silence of suffering finds its voice, and they reverberate in shared understanding. A recording will be made from the submissions and shared at the Curator’s Talk and Reception in the Besse Gallery on Thursday, February 20 at 2pm ET.”