Student-run “Sleepy Cyborg” brings abstract art to life

By Kristal Hanson     2/4/25 11:23pm

Tucked away in the basement of Sewall Hall is a small 10-by-12-foot gallery, with an extension in the sculpture courtyard nicknamed “the pit.” “Sleepy Cyborg,” a gallery initially started in 2009 under the name “Matchbox,” is run entirely by students, allowing student artists to experiment, curate and showcase their work outside of more formal programs.

This exhibition, “Stretchy, Soapy, Scintillating, Sharp”, marks a revival for Sleepy Cyborg. Thanks to a team of five curators – all of whom are senior Visual and Dramatic Arts majors – the gallery is back in motion, after largely spending last year inactive. 

Alice Bian, a Brown College senior, led the curation effort with Jenny Liu, a Sid Richardson College senior. According to Bian, while the art department provides funding, everything else – the vision, the execution and the artistic direction – is purely student-driven. 

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“It’s special because it’s all student-run, and it’s very much a student initiative,” Bian said.

Beyond reviving the space, “Stretchy, Soapy, Scintillating, Sharp” takes on an artistic challenge: repositioning abstract art to make it more immediate, intimate and accessible.

“The show is trying to gather people at Rice that are doing abstract art and then put them in conversation with one another,” Bian said.

Curating within the constraints of such a small space forces a certain kind of precision, according to Bian. 

“It does challenge us to pick and choose pieces because there is not as much of a space,” Bian said. 

Bian said that every piece had to be deliberately selected, and its placement had to be carefully considered. The team leaned into the idea of a hotel lobby and played with the tension between something designed to be seen and something meant to be ignored.

Walking into the “Sleepy Cyborg” space for “Stretchy, Soapy, Scintillating, Sharp” feels more like stepping into a movie set than a traditional gallery. 

Large double doors lead in from the pit. Immediately, a sculpture that almost looks like it has legs hangs on the left side of the entrance. On the right, a small box TV sits on a table in front of a bench, its screen buzzing with fluid graphics. 

Above the bench, a sculpture incorporating wood and rope sits against the wall, draping onto the bench, playing into the show’s emphasis on materiality. Brown paper wallpaper with blue fish wraps around the space, further reinforcing the sensory focus.

One of the largest pieces in the show belongs to Ellie Jung, a junior from Sid Richardson who is studying cognitive science and VADA. Jung said she found Sleepy Cyborg through an Instagram post and, realizing her piece fit the show’s theme, decided to submit her piece: a massive five-foot collage. 

“I try to do bodily abstractions of different things,” Jung said. “So I used painted paper towels, I used a print that I photocopied, and I used duct tape [to create] these abstract textures.” 

Jung’s piece resists a neat, contained reading, which she said is precisely why she embraces abstraction. 

“I started off painting very realistically, and I actually got very frustrated because I think I get bored really easily,” Jung said. “Once I realized that art could be a place for me to explore and not be so contained, I was like, wait, I do like art.”

“Stretchy, Soapy, Scintillating, Sharp” leans into that idea of exploration through abstraction, resisting a singular interpretation. Inside the gallery, stockings filled with pebbles hang from one wall, while architectural sculptures sit on the floor. Each piece is there to “activate different sensory experiences,”  Bian said. 

The next “Sleepy Cyborg” show, set for late February, will be a collaboration with the Black Art Collective. While details are still being developed, the partnership continues Sleepy Cyborg’s role as a gallery and a platform for students’ artistic voices.

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