The great room of the Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground is a popular destination for students to open their tablets, take out their laptops or plug in their headphones. However, just around the corner, a space of quiet contemplation and thoughtful composition invites students to stop and examine their digital consumption instead.
On Sept. 2, Boston University’s 808 Gallery unveiled its latest exhibition — Information, Overload: School of Visual Arts 2025 Alumni Exhibition. The show focuses on digital consumption and the rapid pace at which the everyday person absorbs new media.
“It felt of the moment and could be engaged with and responded to in a variety of ways,” said Nerissa Cooney, programming media manager for the BU SVA. “It both left the door open for people to respond directly to it or, as in the statements, in refusal of the theme.”
While the majority of the featured works are paintings or drawings, the show also includes videos, sculptures and textile works. Artist Arjun Kumar, a 2022 CFA alum, examines how modern media consumption leaves people starved of real connection in his two designs featured in the exhibition: “Hold me while i scroll” and “Private Acts, Public Feeds.”
His works comment on the superficiality of social media and even satirize it in the exhibition. Kumar said both projects examine and poke fun at the ways modern individuals connect with other people in the wake of media-shortened attention spans.
“I just want people to be able to laugh, but at the same time address the things that we are addicted on and understand what the problems are,” Kumar said. “I would love people to be able to notice these moments more, where you are with friends but, at the same time, glued to your screen.”
While social media and phone addiction are more of a recent phenomenon, alumni spanning several generations are featured inside the gallery.
Works by graduating classes as early as 1967 were displayed alongside works from artists who graduated in May.
“I popped in before and saw that my works are specifically hung with people who graduated 20, 30 years ago,” said 2024 CFA alum Julia McGehean, who has a painting and a sculpture featured in the show. “That was a really exciting combination to see how I’m in dialogue with someone who was here quite a bit ago.”
The gallery will hold a welcome reception on Sept. 25. In past years, artists have flown in for the opening ceremony to see their works and reminisce on their time at BU.
Despite graduating years ago, some artists have remained close with their master’s cohort and continue to hold close relationships with their CFA professors.
“Being in the studio in person creates really tight bonds,” said BU professor and CFA alum Claire Bula. “Because you’re just working together all the time, and you’re all in the same classes all the time.”
Information, Overload will be on display until Oct. 18. While the show celebrates the work of past graduates, it also demonstrates BU’s current emphasis on the arts in university culture, said BU SVA Director Mark Schepens.
“Although it’s an alumni show, it also speaks to the present in the sense that it draws attention to the fact that we maintain a very active and vibrant artistic community here on campus,” Schepens said. “It points to the past, it points to the present and it points to the future.”
