WILL KARR
Life & Arts Editor
Fredonia art student Quinn Nova grew up reading the Christian scriptures in Sunday school. However, as she approached middle school, she began questioning her faith for the first time.
“I started questioning why would God make us perfect, but also in the same sense hate gay people. I remember asking my mom if gay people were really going to go to hell and she just danced around the subject,” Nova said. “It just really filled me with fear and that’s when I started straying away from religion. When I went to college for the first time, I finally had the freedom to experiment and explore my sexuality.”
Nova is a sophomore fine arts major with a minor in film studies from Bolivar, NY. She graduated from high school in 2014 and briefly attended Jamestown Community College.
After taking a few years off from college, she came to Fredonia in the spring of 2020 before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a 26-year-old sophomore, Nova recognizes that her academic journey is somewhat untraditional.
“[After leaving JCC in 2014], I felt like a failure,” she said. “… It took me five years to figure out what I wanted to do and to regain my confidence. Going back to college five years after everyone is something that I still get down on myself about. But, my girlfriend reminds me all the time that everyone’s journey is different.”
Nova originally started out as a video production major before eventually transitioning over to fine arts. Her artwork is currently on display in a solo-exhibition titled “Ego Death” in the Emmitt Christian Gallery on the second-floor of the Rockefeller Arts Center, through Oct. 13. The exhibit opened with a reception on Monday, Oct. 3.
The exhibit features a wide range of work from across artistic disciplines, including acrylic paintings, monotype prints and collages. The colorful pieces explore themes of sexuality, mental health and the beauty in death. Recurring symbols and motifs in the exhibit include eyeballs, mushrooms, skulls, cleavage and other body parts.
From coming to terms with her sexuality to battling with mental health, the exhibit offers the viewer a unique glimpse and insight into Nova’s state of mind at some of the most formative and poignant periods of her 26 years of life.
Her pieces “Discovery” and “Budding Interest” specifically symbolize the process of her recognizing that she was lesbian and not straight for the first time after watching lesbian porn. In “Discovery,” a woman can be seen holding a television screen with an image of a nude female body. The woman’s face flutters into a butterfly after viewing the screen, which represents Nova’s recognition of her queerness.
“The pieces deal with my sexual journey — finding my best [female] friend attractive,” she said. “I find the female form so much more attractive than the male form. The two pieces are like a really big gay explosion.”
In “Budding Interest,” Nova depicts a woman wholeheartedly expressing sexual desire and agency for another woman’s body.
“I just find women’s bodies so beautiful; their bodies are art,” said Nova. “… [‘Discovery’ reflects when] I was coming out of the discovery stage … like going from the caterpillar, to the cocoon and to the butterfly. In a way, the piece symbolizes the full metamorphosis of discovering my sexuality and who I am.”
Nova parallels ‘coming out’ as queer with the eclosion and emergence of a butterfly from it’s chrysalis.
The nude images of women in “Budding Interest” are cutouts from vintage playboy magazines. In her collage pieces, Nova said that she often uses clippings from vintage magazines, dating all the way back from the 1940s to the 1980s. From antiques, to vintage fashion and magazines, Nova loves collecting and using older items.
“When you think of Playboy, you probably think of misogyny or [women] being sexualized in a negative way,” Nova said. “I like to twist it and make it more of a feminist statement to take the power back and change the perspective.”
Through collage, Nova transforms the male gaze into an queer women’s perspective. In her work, she often takes existing images and offers the viewer an alternative vision.
In her monotype drawing “My Future Self,” she depicts death and aging as a natural, imminent and inevitable part of life, rather than something to fear, dread or shy away from. She openly acknowledges and embraces that one day, all that will likely be left of her earthly self, after her flesh fades away, is a skeleton.
— Nova on “My Future Self”
“Death doesn’t necessarily scare me,” Nova said. “… I used to be afraid of the world and everything. Our generation has grown up in very scary times with the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the news and everything; it all just really filled me with fear. But at this point … I now know that death is part of the cycle of life.”
Instead of viewing death as the end, she views it as the beginning of a new journey and extraterrestrial course for the soul after finishing life on earth.
“I believe that after we die, that’s not it — whether it’s reincarnation or our souls going somewhere else,” she said.
Nova has had three very close run-ins with death. Through her work, she has become candid, transparent and open about her ongoing struggles and battle with mental health.
Throughout her life, she said that she has been diagnosed with a multitude of conflicting mental health disorders, including Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). The disorders have significantly impacted many facets of her life such as by causing sudden shifts in her mood and by putting significant strains on her interpersonal relationships. She explains that she sometimes feels afraid of herself.
“I see myself as a monster at times. When I see myself spiraling and going through the motions, I tell myself to snap out of it, but I can’t,” Nova said. “I am constantly battling with myself … there are all these contrasting feelings … [However], maybe it’s all just because I am a Gemini.”
Nova references these personality shifts in her exhibition piece “Mood Disorder.” The piece reflects the highs and lows of life that come along with having a mental health disorder.
“‘Mood Disorder’ reflects how I feel on any given day … one day I’ll be feeling normal, then something will happen and I’ll be feeling so low,” Nova said. “Then, the smallest thing will fix my mood, and I will be happy again.”
– Nova on “Mood Disorder” and how having one impacts her everyday life
Nova said that surrounding herself with friends, family and a vibrant art community has overall helped her cope with her mental health struggles. Although she doesn’t want to be defined by mental health labels, she recognizes that they have ultimately shaped the person she has become today, leading her to live more fully in the present moments of life on Earth.
“If I didn’t have my mental health disorders, I’d be a completely different person. Even the experiences with being so close to death have humbled me and have helped me find the beauty in the world, art and human existence,” Nova said. “Whether we are here for 20 years or 60 years, we are never going to get a chance to re-experience the journey that we are having right now.”
“‘Pretty Little Things’ was one of the last collage pieces that I made. … I think the piece shows that everyone has a unique beauty, whether they think it or not about themselves. I think it’s interesting how there are so many people in the world, yet everyone is so different.”
– Nova on “Pretty Little Things”
“[With ‘Ginger and Toby’], I put the rainbow background on them and to me they kind of scream community. They remind me of 1980’s neo-expressionism and urban street art in a way. I think they represent people, just queer communities. They each have their own little personalities. I am obsessed with taking the core features of a human being and boiling them down to shapes and lines.”
– Nova on “Ginger and Toby”
Quinn Nova, the solo-exhibit artist of “Ego Death,” also serves as The Leader’s Art Director.