Trinity College’s Widener Gallery is presenting Fellows, an exhibition celebrating work by three alumni of Trinity’s Studio Arts Program Postbaccalaureate Fellowship.
Running from September 24 through October 30, 2026, in the Austin Arts Center, the exhibition features recent collage, prints, sculpture, and video by Ciara Rubí, Sydney Smith, and Weixi Zhang ’18.
An opening reception will be held on Thursday, October 1, from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. The event and gallery admission are free and open to the public. Widener Gallery hours are Monday–Friday, 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. and by appointment. The gallery is closed on October 12 and 13.
Rubí’s work plays a game of hide and seek, where she impersonates the hider and the seeker, and the camera is the antagonist. Many works begin with Polaroid autoportraits, which Rubí undoes through scratching, layering, cutting, and peeling until they are no longer recognizable. Her undone bodies come back in collages with fabric, pencil, oil pastel, and charcoal. In other work, autofiction drawings seek to catch her self just before it performs itself.
Smith creates large-scale wooden sculptures to question her place within the world. Embracing ecological processes as part of her practice, she acknowledges found wood or stone as fellow bodies, with their own stories and histories. Smith manipulates these natural materials to challenge conventional form, testing physical and metaphorical extremes. Often, these forms suggest the body and aid in understanding nature and oneself.
Zhang works in installation, performance, and image-making, intervening in spaces where she never fully belongs. Her research turns to diasporic dislocation, hydrological memory, inherited fatalism, and techno-industrial indifference. She constructs situations and sets them against these forces, then studies the remains after contingency: data, traces, sound, and residue.
Ciara Rubí (she/her) holds a BA in art and history of art from Yale College. Her work has been exhibited at the Yale School of Art, Maya’s Room, The Study Hotel, and in DOWN Magazine, and she earned The Anderson Ranch Workshop Scholarship, The Gary Stein Fellowship, and The Lewis Curtis Fellowship. At present, she serves as the guest-artist-in-residence at Southwestern Oregon Community College through The Coos Bay Art Museum, where she will have a solo exhibition in the fall of 2027.
Sydney Smith (she/her) holds a BA from Wesleyan University and is based in Hartford, Connecticut. Her work was recently featured in a solo exhibition at Ball & Socket Arts and has also been exhibited at Ely Center of Contemporary Art, New Hampshire Art Association, National Art League in Queens, New York, and Zilkha Gallery at Wesleyan University. Smith recently completed an artist residency at Vermont Studio Center, and she teaches classes at Makerspace CT; her three-session “Women in the Woodshop” course invites women to learn woodshop skills and basics.
Weixi Zhang (she/her) was born in Dalian, China. She holds a BA in studio arts and a BS in computer science from Trinity College. She also received an MS in human computer interaction and design from the University of Washington. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York, and is pursuing an MFA at Hunter College.
The Studio Arts Program Postbaccalaureate Fellowships at Trinity College provide workspace, time, and a supportive arts community so talented individuals who have completed their undergraduate degree in studio arts may have the extra resources they need to prepare the strongest body of artwork in support of future professional or academic opportunities. The fellowships allow recent college graduates to spend an academic year at Trinity working as assistants for the Studio Arts Program while advancing their independent research and studio practice.
The Studio Arts Program gratefully acknowledges the support of The Deborah Buck Foundation and Hilla Von Rebay Foundation for the fellowship since 2019 and 2001, consecutively.
Learn more about the Widener Gallery here.
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