For Immediate Release – March 12, 2025
The Arts + Literature Laboratory and UW–Madison Art Department are pleased to announce the 2025 Arts + Literature Laboratory Prize winner University of Wisconsin-Madison Graduate Student Paulina King!
The annual ALL Prize exhibition is awarded to one or two graduating MFA candidates from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, selected by curators on the ALL Visual Arts Team. The prizewinner’s MFA thesis exhibition is shown at ALL, and receive a $1,000 stipend to assist with exhibition expenses and installation provided by the Art Department.
A local Madison community-driven contemporary non-profit arts organization, the ALL provides the visual, literary, music and performing arts that presents over 200 events per year, mostly free or low-cost, and year-round arts education for all ages, working to make the arts more accessible and sustainable in our community.
In her exhibition All the while, the earth was humming, Paulina King collaborates with natural phenomena in a series of site-specific installations at the Arts + Literature Laboratory and the UW-Madison Arboretum. These works contribute to a growing body of work cataloguing poignant, ephemeral experiences the artist has had with nature. Inside ALL, a grouping of acrylic forms flutter in response to a wind sensor placed in the arboretum, mimicking the mesmerizing dance of leaves high above. Outside at the arboretum, terracotta vessels capture rainwater to create reflection pools, visually reconstructing the surrounding environment into a mosaic of sky and trees. In both locations, prose highlights the sites of experienced phenomena, inviting the viewer into King’s process.
Together, these works ask the viewer to be swayed by the impact of natural phenomena, and be present in experiencing the nuance and beauty around us. Through this reconnection to the physical world, King encourages contemplation of our relationship with our environment and suggests a more symbiotic existence on earth.
Paulina King (b. 1996, Utah) is an installation artist based in the Midwest, interested in the relationship between our society and the world we inhabit. Her pieces work in tandem with natural forces, establishing aesthetic, symbiotic relationships that highlight overlooked phenomena. These interactions ground the viewer in the physical world, encouraging a reconsideration of our engagement with our surroundings, and more broadly, the environment. She is currently an MFA candidate at the University of Madison, Wisconsin and received her BA in Practice of Art from Princeton University.
King’s 2025 Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition will be shown at ALL from March 18 to April 12, 2024, with the reception on Friday, April 4th from 6 to 8pm. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Friday, 10am to 5pm and Saturday 12 to 5pm.