IA Social Event
September 28th, 2019, The Wexner Center for the Arts, 8:15-11:15pm
After walking in to the exhibit area, my attention was immediately drawn to multicolored strips lining the walls, all containing a different explicit statement taken from various religious and political manifestos. To bridge the medium into the 21st century, the artist, Jenny Holzer, included an LED word scrawl with explicit expressions more similar to those found on the internet. 
Each aspect of the exhibit serves as a testament to the various, biased manners in which we receive our news, and in turn, how we construct our world views. Although there could be a completely separate exhibit highlighting the positive examples of education and the institutions that promote those methods, this exhibit forced me to come to terms with the fact that in international affairs, as well as domestic affairs and almost any human interaction, our outlook towards the unknown and/or different is at least in part guided by inflammatory media that our society has normalized. After that exhibit had informed and challenged my beliefs more than I was expecting, given that I was a college student out on a Friday night, my friend and I completed a full sweep through the gallery, admiring the fused steel pins and glass of Maya Lin’s exhibit, as well as Ann Hamilton’s stacked newspaper gallery. When we finished, we caught word that there was a showing of Thelma and Louise in the Wexner center’s movie theater, so we rushed over and became witnesses to a classic of a movie.
Looking back on this whirlwind of events, I’m so glad that I was able to experience what the Wexner has to offer. Even though the forms of artistic expression I was able to view aren’t avenues I intend on focusing on in my academic career, I was given another example of the diversity of human expression, a reality that does connect to my academic career. In whatever career I pursue, I want to understand, advocate for, and participate in human expression, whatever form it takes.