SCAFFOLD: Equity of Treatment

This exhibition will feature the artist’s ongoing “Scaffold Project” which is a very large body of paintings featuring the many individuals that make up the artist’s extended community.

View the exhibition photo gallery.

The artist explains the project in her statement below:

Scaffold: Equity of Treatment is about the encouragement of self-reflection and preservation and how these very important practices need to be supported by equitable treatment in our homes, communities and world. The use of the scaffolding is to symbolize the individual care and support we all need.

The abstracted scaffolding is derived from the educational term used to refer to a variety of instructional techniques used to move students progressively toward stronger understanding and greater independence in the learning process.

The seed to Scaffold: Equity of Treatment was Utopia. What would a Utopia possibly look like and can it exist in NYC? The world? My general understanding of world history made this quite difficult to envision so I became frustrated very quickly in response to the word. I felt I was not equipped to design an imagined place or state of things in which everything is perfect but I was wrong. I can visualize what is best for me.

Soon after I began thinking about Utopias, life as we knew it changed. A pandemic had isolated us in space and time. As an Art educator for 20 years, I was hit with the reality that my career life must shift. How would I pay bills and take care of my children? And I knew other Art educators like me who were struggling even before the Coronavirus so this was not ideal to say the least.

I could have panicked or worried myself into poor health but instead, I began doing what I love to do. I created an art project that I can work on during quarantine. I wanted a project that would highlight our need to be honored with respect, equality and tolerance. I began contacting fellow artists, friends, acquaintances, colleagues, and mentors and created a currency of connection and community that highlighted people of all kinds doing their best but all in need of some sort of support.

For more information on the artist, and their works, visit their website here.

The Affluent Society interviewed Elan Cadiz about their project.

For more information regarding this event, please contact:

Jon Duff
Exhibitions and Art Collection Curator
Archives and Special Collections
e – jduff@adelphi.edu