Feeling like an outsider as an international student from Shanghai four years ago, Rinka Ko found her place at UT through singing. She found a welcoming community with the Polymathic Scholars and will now sing at their annual art gallery auction for her second time.
Polymathic Scholars, a College of Natural Science honors organization, arranged this year’s art gallery and silent auction to raise funds for the local nonprofit Red Salmon Arts. Organized alongside their offshoot organization, Polymathic Creative Collective, the group centered this year’s event around the theme “War and Will.” On Friday from 6-8 p.m. in the William C. Powers North Ballroom, the event will offer about 40 gallery pieces ranging from painted discs to cyanotype prints and multiple performances.
Aditi Bhat, chairperson for the Polymath Special Programs Committee and logistics chair for Polymath Creative Collective, said recent events like the presidential elections and wars worldwide inspired the theme. The biology junior said the event aims to explore how societal and governmental forces impact people’s individual agency.
“It’s (about) understanding our power in being able to make choices,” Bhat said. “And our power to come together as a group of people and understand our common identity.”
Ko, a neuroscience senior and Polymath Scholars panelist, said she will perform “Treacherous” by Taylor Swift this year. Although she knows the song does not carry a political context, she said she feels some of the lyrics align with the theme.
“There’s this lyric, ‘And all we are is skin and bone,’” Ko said. “The idea of how we are all skin and bone, we’re all supposed to be equal, but then we have war and will over things that are unequal.”
Fiona Wyrtzen, an environmental science senior and Polymathic Scholars design chair, said she chose this year’s nonprofit to fit the theme. She selected Red Salmon Arts, a grassroots organization that assists local working-class Indigenous and Chicano communities retrieve and preserve their cultural heritage.
“It resonated a lot, especially with the history of the U.S., with pushing out Indigenous people and the current gigantic shifts in immigration,” Wyrtzen said. “Those communities have been experiencing a lot of loss of will.”
Wyrtzen said art proves a powerful form of resistance to bring people together and raise money to support causes.
“I hope people take away that you can participate in activism through art,” Wyrtzen said. “Whether it’s through money we’re literally raising or through the impact of someone, (art) can be a really important tool of resistance.”
Bhat said she hopes the event encourages people to maintain their creativity and spotlights local nonprofits like Red Salmon Arts.
“The world is not necessarily built to encourage creativity all the time, but I think it’s such an important part of being human,” Bhat said. “Especially being in STEM, it’s an important part of expression for people. It does have importance because look at the kind of causes we’re raising money for just through you expressing your creativity and your interests.”
