The Veil Backpack Exchange

2022 - 2023

Houston Cultural Practitioner & Artist Nathaniel Donnett conducted a backpack exchange with students in selected locations in Berkshire County. The participating schools were Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, Berkshire Arts and Tech Center, and Pine Cobble School. During a spring residency sponsored by MCLA’s Arts & Culture program and a summer residency at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, the artist transformed the student’s old backpacks into 2-D, mixed-media abstract wall works and a sound sculpture. Donnett also interviewed and recorded the students and then inserted clips of their voices in the sound work. In addition, Donnett published an experimented yearbook gifted to MCLA’s archive, Pine Cobble School, and BART’s libraries as a template of what a yearbook could look like through imagination and community engagement. Donnett presented final works created from the backpacks at Gallery 51 in North Adams, Massachusetts, in an exhibition titled “To Know A Veil.”