The Article below was published in Vol. 135, Issue 6 of the Lake Forest College Stentor on March 6, 2020.
By Christian Metzger
Staff Writer
Lake Forest College student Diayan Rajamohan ’21 opened an exhibition, entitled D. Atelier, featuring his artwork in the Deerpath Student Gallery on February 20, 2020. Featuring a total of eight acrylic paint-based abstract works, Rajamohan’s reception on the gallery’s opening night saw the attendance of over 60 people, both from on- and off-campus.
Though all the pieces featured in the gallery are abstractions, they all carry a distinct look from one to the next, from the honeycomb-patterned Dripping to the midnight forest landscape in Marble Moon—the latter of which is the third in a series of pieces featured in Rajamohan’s first exhibition.
This particular exhibition is the second of its kind that Rajamohan has hosted on campus with the help of Gallery Director Rebecca Goldberg and the first of which has displayed his work exclusively. As a sociology and anthropology major, with a double minor in philosophy and legal studies, the gallery is part of Rajamohan’s ongoing push to show students that there are opportunities to display their art on campus.
“I want to be able to create spaces for students, who may not even be art students, to show off their art. That’s one of the cool things about this space, that it doesn’t belong to art majors,” Rajamohan said, expressing the merits of the Deerpath Gallery space. Any student on campus has the opportunity to host their work within the Deerpath Gallery, it’s only a matter of contacting Goldberg and arranging a time to use the space.
“This is a collection of my depression, my anxiety, my fear, all of that splattered on the walls of this gallery,” Rajamohan said during his address at the gallery’s opening. Having been diagnosed with cancer as a junior in high school in 2010—which has since been in remission—and subsequently losing his mother in 2016, he wished to use the gallery as a way to show how art could be a healthy outlet to cope with depression and other mental health issues.
“Art is crazy because you can really escape. It’s like when you start running and you go for a jog and you forget everything. You just start painting and you just keep going. I strongly encourage you to give it a try. Drawing, sketching, whatever it is, give it a try because it will clear your mind really quickly,” he said.
Rajamohan has remained active in the arts around campus since joining the College, having opened Gallery 208 in the Donnelly and Lee Library in coordination with Associate Librarian Cory Stevens last semester. Noticing a lack of spaces for student artworks on campus, Rajamohan created Gallery 208 to give students of all majors an opportunity to submit their artwork for display—whether that be drawings, paintings, or photographic media.
“When it comes to the arts, I don’t think there’s as much advertising, I don’t think there’s much involvement, I don’t think there’s much interest on this campus. I think that’s one of the biggest things we have to change,” said Rajamohan, “I think there’s an aspect of being calm and being at peace that comes with a plain canvas and just a whole bunch of color. I want to help people realize that art can do that for them as well.”
The D. Atelier show will remain in place until the end of March. Rajamohan also expressed the possibility for the hosting of a third gallery show of his own, along with future artist submissions being hosted in Gallery 208 in the months to come.
