On View

MoFA is thrilled to host the Tallahassee Watercolor Society’s 2026 Tri-State Annual Juried Water Media Exhibition this summer. Enjoy works by local Florida, Georgia, and Alabama artists. This year’s juror is a nationally renowned watercolor artist and past board director of the American Watercolor Society, Don Andrews. His paintings have received numerous awards, including three awards from the American Watercolor Society, and two Best of Show awards from the New England Watercolor Society. 

You can learn more about the exhibition, TaWS membership, and Don Andrews through the Tallahassee Watercolor Society. 

Curated by Elizabeth Diggon, Naomi Potter, and Shauna Thompson

Artists: Larry Achiampong & David Blandy, Diane Borsato, Stephanie Dinkins, Bridget Moser, Sondra Perry, and Miya Turnbull 

Like everything alive that we try to hold forever brings the work of seven artists together to reflect on ways that our human bodies exist in relation to non-human objects. These relationships are complex and interconnected, showing us how the systematic collection, consumption, and contextualization of objects impacts our understanding of self and others.

Through photography, sculpture, and video, the artworks in Like everything alive that we try to hold forever start to navigate the many issues that come with being human. Some artists conduct their exploration from an internal perspective, studying issues of identity, likeness, and self-authorship. Others reckon with the role of imposed knowledge systems in defining what is (and isn’t) human, addressing the biases and harms that are often entrenched within systems and collections under the guise of neutrality. By drawing parallels between the legacy of archaeology, colonialism, the potential of AI, digital technologies, and the ever-blurring line between the self and the other, Like everything alive that we try to hold forever seeks to thread the complex reality of the human experience.

Originally presented in 2023 at Esker Foundation in Calgary, Canada, and produced as a traveling exhibition by ICI, the exhibition will engage with each hosting art space through artworks that access the limits of human experience, push against it, or gesture toward a transhuman future.

About the Curators

Elizabeth Diggon is a curator at Esker Foundation, Calgary, Canada, where her recent curatorial projects have included Lucia Hierro: Corotos y Ajuares, Leonard Suryajaya: Parting Gift for Quarantine Blues, and Farah Al Qasimi: Letters for Occasions. Recent publications include essays in Veronika Pausova: Fast Moving Sun and Rebellious: Alberta Women Artists in the 1980s. Additionally, her writing has been published in the Journal of Curatorial Studies, the Journal of Canadian Studies, as well as in exhibition texts for galleries across Canada. Diggon holds a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies and an M.A. in Art History from Queen’s University, Kingston

Since 2012, Naomi Potter has been the Director/Curator of Esker Foundation in Calgary. From 2009 to 2011, she was curator of Walter Phillips Gallery at The Banff Centre where she produced solo projects, exhibitions, and public art commissions. In 2003, Potter was awarded a yearlong Deutsche Akademische Austauschdienst (DAAD) artist residency in Istanbul, and from 2003 to 2007 was co-director of the international artist residency program at CESTA in the Czech Republic. In 2015, she was a guest of both the Australian Arts Council and British Council International Curatorial Visit programs, and has been a jury member for numerous Canadian art awards and juries including: The Hnatyshyn Foundation (2022); Curatorial Selection Committee for Venice 2019; Gershon Iskowitz Prize (2019); BMO 1st Art! Selection Committee (2017/18); SSNAP (2017); Sobey Art Award (2016); and the RBC Canadian Painting Competition (2014). She currently sits on the Board of the Calgary Institute of the Humanities, University of Calgary, the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Outstanding Artist Program Committee for the Banff Centre, and Odem’s World Foundation. Potter holds a BFA from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, and an MFA in sculpture from Concordia University, Montreal.

Shauna Thompson is a Curator at Esker Foundation. Recent curatorial projects include Rhonda Weppler and Trevor Mahovsky, Edelweiss; Ragnar Kjartansson, The Visitors; and Mel O’Callaghan, Pulse of the Planet (with Peta Rake). She was co-curator, alongside Shary Boyle, of the major touring exhibition Earthlings (2017-18), which featured the solo and collaborative works of Roger Aksadjuak, Shuvinai Ashoona, Pierre Aupilardjuk, Shary Boyle, Jessie Kenalogak, John Kurok, and Leo Napayok. Previously, Thompson worked with the Walter Phillips Gallery, The Banff Centre; the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery (now the Art Museum at the University of Toronto); YYZ Artists’ Outlet, Toronto; and the Art Gallery of Mississauga. She holds a master’s degree in Curatorial Studies from the University of Toronto and a master’s degree in English from the University of Guelph. Thompson is a current and founding member of Calgary’s Public Art Alliance, a coalition of artists, curators, critics, arts professionals, and students who advocate for the value of public art in Calgary.

Like everything alive that we try to hold forever is curated by Elizabeth Diggon, Naomi Potter, and Shauna Thompson. The exhibition is organized by Esker Foundation and produced as a traveling exhibition by Independent Curators International (ICI). Funding for the exhibition tour has been provided by the generous support from ICI’s International Forum and the ICI Board of Trustees.

The presentation at the Florida State University Museum of Fine Arts has been organized in collaboration with ICI.