Fish Go To Heaven
2025 Lillian B. Feinstein Scholarship Exhibition
ICA Chattanooga
752 Vine Street Chattanooga, TN, 37403 United States (map)
Fish Go To Heaven
2025 Lillian B. Feinstein Scholarship Exhibition
May 2 - May 6, 2025
The exhibition will open on May 2, 2025 and the reception will be Saturday, May 3, 2025 (immediately following graduation in Fine Arts Center lobby)
Featuring
Kailey Agoo, Graphic Design, Class of 2025
Oliver Ito, Painting and Drawing, Class of 2026
Agoo and Ito are the current recipients of the Lillian B. Feinstein Scholarship in the UTC Department of Art. Each academic year the Lillian B. Feinstein Scholarship is awarded to two outstanding Art majors, one studying at the upper division and one at the lower division. Named after the late Mrs. Feinstein, who was a noted sculptor in this region, this award is voted on by the faculty of the Art Department and, as such, is indicative of the highest level of performance in studio production in the department.
Exhibition Statements
The loom of a finite end and the potential for infinity remains constant without answer.
Nothing can transcend death, its permanence is felt by all of creation.
Material fluidity lets me explore the I and this mystical connection to salvation.
I and a mystical connection to the other.
The man, the canine, the fish, the insect -
all enveloped in the biological strata.
While we spend our limited time on this celestial body superimposing fictitious systems of value in the wake of finality, one truth stands,
Fish go to heaven.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
KAILEY AGOO
Agoo is a designer, artist, thinker, do-er, photo-finder, consumer, and friend. Through multidisciplinary practices, her work unites physical and digital elements to examine our choices, actions, and perceptions of ourselves and others. She believes identity can not exist in seclusion, it is a reflection of the spaces that we inhabit.
Agoo's work has been featured in the curated exhibition Nature’s Dialogue at the Institute for Contemporary Art Chattanooga (2025) and published in UTC’s creative writing and art journal Sequoya Review (2025).
OLIVER ITO
Ito is an emerging queer Japanese American visual artist from the Tennessee Valley. Ito utilizes the material fluidity within the languages of collage, painting and drawing to explore and subvert hierarchical codes, with references to sexuality, cuisine, and the natural world. After earning an associates degree from Cleveland State Community College, Ito moved to Chattanooga in 2023 to continue his education at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in the BFA painting and drawing program.