Degeneration: Process and Decay in the Work of Selin Balci, Lauren Cardenas, Autumn Shackleford, and Hanna Vogel.

Dates: August 19 – October 13, 2025

Opening Reception:  Wednesday, August 27, 5-7 p.m.

Artist Workshop with Lauren Cardenas: Tuesday, September 23, 12:00-3:00 p.m.

Join us for the Cade Gallery’s fall exhibition, “Degeneration: Process and Decay in the Work of Selin Balci, Lauren Cardenas, Autumn Shackleford, and Hanna Vogel.” This group exhibition features four contemporary artists working with printmaking, photography, video, sculpture, and installation. The work of each of these artists deals with process and decay in both a literal and metaphorical sense, leading viewers to ponder what it means to be human in an increasingly precarious world.

In Faces interdisciplinary artist Selin Balci looks to science and biological materials to physically alter her photographic work. Collecting mold spores from the air, soil, trees, and even from her subjects, Balci applies the spores to Polaroid portraits. She then allows the mold to actively degrade the photographs over time. The portraits are thus transformed into individual microbiomes that speak to, and make visible, the often invisible biological and ecological forces that govern our world.

Latinx printmaker Lauren Cardenas also makes use of nontraditional materials in #SueñoAmericano ICE In-Flight Meal. For the series, the title of which translates to “American Dream,” Cardenas printed images of Latinx individuals and their in-flight “views” on slices of Kraft American cheese. The images were taken during deportation flights. The beauty of the images, often aerial views of landscapes or blue skies and clouds, begins to degrade literally and metaphorically. The “American” cheese—the most processed of American foodstuffs—begins to turn on itself, much as the American dream had for the thousands of immigrants detained and deported by ICE.

Autumn Shackleford’s 4-channel video installation, which consists of 4 cathode-ray tube televisions and video footage of viewers watching themselves, speaks to issues around surveillance and technology’s endless loop of invention and obsolescence. While at first glance the video footage appears recorded, on closer inspection a hidden camera reveals itself and we realize we are, in fact, seeing ourselves in those grainy images on the screens. The outmoded technologies are reminders of the ubiquitous, and often nefarious role technology plays in our daily lives.

Sculptor Hanna Vogel uses discarded and commonplace materials (paper, steel, clothing and household textiles) to speak to the effects of entropy, and arguably memory, on our existence. Decay, in the form of rust, time, collapse, and skeletal remains, becomes evocative of the transitory nature of our environments and ourselves. The work is sometimes clustered together and scaled to the body, redolent with the effects of degeneration and embodied experience. It is also evocative of new life. One sculpture, entitled Memory for the Future, is eerily reminiscent of a child’s swing set, speaking perhaps to hope in the face of an uncertain future.

Image Identifications:
Selin Balci
Faces
2025
Mold spores taken from participants, Polaroid image transfer, boards, epoxy resin.
6 x 6 in. each

Lauren Cardenas
#SueñoAmericano ICE In-Flight Meal 
2025
Laser jet print on American cheese slice encased in plexiglass and rubber tubing.
9 x 12 in. each

Autumn Shackleford
SMILE YOU’RE ON CAMERA!
2025
Video installation

Hanna Vogel
Memory for the Future
2024
Steel, handmade cotton paper, handmade abaca paper, string, rust, and varnish.
84 x 115 x 58 in.

Join us on August 27 for an Opening Reception in the Cade Gallery from 5:00-7:00 p.m.

VISIT THE GALLERY: Monday-Thursday, 8:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m.

The Cade Center for Fine Arts Gallery is on Anne Arundel Community College’s Arnold campus at 101 College Parkway.  Located on the main floor of the Cade building on West Campus, the Cade Art Gallery features five exhibitions a year. The span of exhibiting artists is broad, often including up and coming national and regional artists. At the gallery, you can encounter an installation project juried by a museum curator or the latest painting by an AACC student. More information about Cade Art Gallery exhibitions and programming can be found on our Instagram account: @cadegalleryaacc.

For information, contact Karen Barber, PhD, Director, Cade Art Gallery, at cadegallery@aacc.edu.