BOSTON, MA.- The Boston Center for the Arts Mills Gallery presents This Is Not Happening; an MFA Thesis Exhibition of five artists in the joint graduate degree program of The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Tufts University.

Family Day, Saturday, April 14th 12:00 to 1:00 pm.

This is not happening features the work of five graduate students at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Tuffs University: Melissa Boyajian, Krista Caballero, Melinda Go, Jesse Jagtiani, and Alexia Mellor.

Participating Artists:

Melissa Boyajians
Melissa Boyajain’s Sooner, Oklahoma is a multimedia installation focused on the tourism industry. The project includes promotional commercials, a website, and travel brochures that further explore the diverse attractions Sooner has to offer.

Jesse Jagtiani
Jesse Jagtiani’s work “investigates the personal and communal efforts made to establish identity in an era of globalization, rapid technology growth, and information ‘glut’” in the artist’s own words. In I’m telling the Truth, Babe, Jagtiani synthesizes her face with those of others, who then speak through her body. An American Tale is created from interviews collected in Boston, MA on the day of the U. S. Presidential Election, 2008. In the video How Dare You Call Me Un-American! the artist prepares Thanksgiving Dinner with a Mexican-American and a Russian-American friend.

Melinda Go
Melinda Go’s project Handmaid hinges on the laborious ritual of embroidering one handkerchief per day, for a period of one year. Design motifs, specific to particular days, are mined every morning from the vast database of the Internet and filtered through the artist's lens.

Alexia Mellor
Alexia Mellor’s Extending the Friendly Skies uses the vocabulary of aeronautical safety with sarcastic humor to make subtle comments on gender, security, and globalization. Mellor documented a series of actions where she dressed in a 1960’s style stewardess uniform. The performances use familiar safety routines presented in new, unexpected contexts.

Krista Caballero
Krista Caballero’s Ground Truth investigates the intersections of technology, land use and the environment in the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes of California. Utilizing land surveying as a strategy and point of departure, it seeks to examine the ways in which humans project particular values and ideals onto the land that inhibit or embrace sustainability.