The ceiling is an appropriate — and menacing — place to display Rachael Hunter’s oil painting.

In the piece, six weary, otherworldly figures with bright, zombie-like eyes stare directly at the viewer. As folks walk into Eli’s Art Supplies, these figures look down on them, their eyes following people almost like the enigmatic Mona Lisa.

“I wanted it to seem like they were like trapped up there,” said Hunter.

Hunter and Ava Albelo (known as Mary Chains), both students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and an artist who goes by R-Lo explore themes of “discontentment” and “unease” in their new show, “As Long As It’s Safe To Do So.”

The show opens on Feb. 21 at Eli’s Art Supplies, 2346 E. Washington Ave., with a reception and live demo from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. The art will be displayed at Eli’s through late April.

The exhibition took its name from a talk Albelo went to given by a fellow artist, who said they would continue to create “as long as it’s safe to do so.” The comment made the group consider art’s place in precarious times, as well as its power to challenge ideas and create community outside of formal institutions.

“As Long As It’s Safe To Do So,” Albelo said, is a declaration that “we’ll always be here making work, and we always have been.”

Authentically present

The three artists connected over their need “to make something,” said Hunter. “We have a drive to keep creating.”

Albelo and Hunter are set to graduate from UW-Madison in the spring — Hunter is a marketing major, Albelo a painting and drawing major — and the two share a studio space. R-Lo is a working artist who recently moved to Madison from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Albelo and R-Lo met at the LOUD (Latinos Organizing for Understanding and Development) Gallery at the Omega School, where he held his first Madison show.

R-Lo said the show’s goal is to “present (the) authenticity of who we are at that moment.” He said the works reflect  “things affecting me when I see everything that’s happening socially, politically.”