True/False Film Fest continued its yearly Art Walk tradition this year. Held on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, the Art Walk features new and inventive displays from nine unique artists from around the world. The walk is hosted by art installation curator Sarah Nguyen. This is Nguyen’s fourth year with the Art Walk and her passion for bringing art to festivalgoers is evident. She pushes all attendees  not only to see the art but to think critically about it.

“All the art installations are accessible to the public, so anyone can go and experience that and that is our gift to Columbia,” Nguyen said. “The Art Walk is great because it engages the community.”

Beginning in front of the Sager Reeves Gallery, attendees socialized and shopped before embarking on a journey to the installations scattered throughout downtown Columbia. This year’s theme, “All The Time,” inspired the creation of the pieces displayed in the Art Walk. 

“All The Time” speaks to these forces beyond ourselves and this is something shown in pretty much each one of these pieces,” Nguyen said.

Upon departing Sager Reeves Gallery at 10:30 a.m., the attendees followed Nguyen to the first destination of the day, Orr Street Studios, to view the first art installation. When attendees were gathered in the first building, Nguyen asked, “What do artists do?” then prompted everyone to pay attention to their thoughts, feelings and emotions in response to the installations.

Orr Street Studios housed “Xiàng,” created by Yiran Guo. The installation involved large silk banners, with designs seemingly influenced by Guo’s career in experimental animation. These banners also portrayed images from Chinese medical books, using image motifs to convey the intertwinement of memory and the present. The silk banners swayed back and forth, introducing the audience to something that would recur throughout the walk – physical interaction with the artwork.

The next installation took attendees to The Globe, where “The BFG” by multimedia artist Coco Liao stood. Named after Roald Dahl’s children’s book “The Big Friendly Giant,” the sculpture is a ceramic piece made of over 600 pounds of clay, 50% of which was harvested from Liao’s backyard. “The BFG” portrays the head of a giant and contains two viewing areas, one on top of and one under the head, where attendees can observe the giant’s dream. On the top of his head, viewers could see what appeared to be a natural scene, with darkness being visible if peering from the bottom. The interactivity of “The BFG” makes it a truly special experience.

After departing from The Globe, the Art Walk continued to Alley A for “With What We Could Carry” by Megan Young. This installation contained three banners, each representing three generations of the artist’s family. According to Young’s statement on the True/False Film Fest website, these banners represented the weight of matriarchy through the images of her loved ones. “With What We Could Carry” was made possible by 3D scanning technology and suspended animation. As the wind blew against the projection of past generations, Nguyen asked the audience questions about what the future may hold and encouraged them to think about how we will interpret the past with modern technologies.

For the next stretch of the Art Walk, Nguyen led attendees to Ninth Street for three art installations aligned across the street. The first of these three installations was “A Healing Archive” by Kaiti McGinn, a quilted installation that formed a tent shape. Attendees could interact with the piece by tying strands of cloth to the quilts, reinforcing the idea that we can face the future and contribute to a community of healing by coming together. As participants tied the cloth, they became connected to each other and the installation.

A few feet further down Ninth Street, the attendees were introduced to “ Arctic Cinema,” an icy installation that artist Louie Palu described as a “hybrid of journalism, science and documentary.” Palu was present during the Art Walk and spoke in depth about his installation. He interpreted the history of the Arctic and the future threat of global warming. The audience became a part of the installation when Palu distributed ice blocks to four audience members. He instructed them to place the ice blocks on the preexisting ice blocks that make up the installation. The large ice blocks also contained various photographs of the Arctic, contributing to the documentary-style installation.

The final installation on Ninth Street was “Circatidal Rhythm” by Bethanie Irons. This colorful installation was created to reflect the changes organisms experience due to the gravitational and rotational forces of the sun and moon. The swirly colors reinforce how astronomical processes affect organisms in abstract ways. Nguyen said all three pieces on Ninth Street were placed intentionally next to one another because they all speak on issues that affect many lives.

The Art Walk proceeded to Columbia Art League for “We Are The Ones We’ve Been Waiting For” by Angela Tucker, who spoke on the installation. “We Are The Ones We’ve Been Waiting For” is a multimedia sanctuary for all and serves as an homage to Tucker’s late father. The installation features a peacock chair, a large chair with a tear-shaped back, that Tucker said was in her childhood home. Above the chair, banned books from Tucker’s childhood home hung from the ceiling. Other painted canvases, including two paintings of her parents in a 1970s style, served as homages to her home and culture. In “We Are The Ones We’ve Been Waiting For,” Tucker said she hoped to create a place where everyone could belong, particularly people of color who typically interact with largely-white spaces.

The walk continued from Columbia Art League to the Missouri Theatre, where Locust Street Expressive Arts Elementary, an arts-focused elementary school, presented “The Future is Yours.” In this installation, attendees were able to write postcards to their future selves, as the postcards were designed by students of the elementary school. “The Future is Yours” also featured a wall of postcards with existing writings. This installation beautifully captured the theme, “All The Time,” as the postcards written by this year’s attendees will be used in a future installation.

The final installation of the Art Walk took place at Stop-Gap Projects. “Autolyse” is a two-person exhibit with acrylic canvases from Sean Nash and sculptures from Nalani Stolz. Nash’s paintings are visually enticing and very interpretive, featuring the intersection of different shapes and colors. Nash drew these shapes from different scientific drawings and diagrams.

“I would sum this body of work as being about human relationships within nature — ideas about change and transformation,” Nash said. “Changing climate, but also bodily transformation and evolutionary transformation. 

Stolz showcases two sculptures — “A Wild Wetland in Our Guts” and “Bread Body.” Stolz’s sculptures also showcase the visualization of change, as the physical process of bread rising reflects other bodily processes. The installation also offered kombucha and bread to attendees as they observed.

One installation, “Temporality” by Nadya Sayapina at the Rhynsburger Theatre, was not included in the Art Walk due to time restrictions and excessive distance from the other installations. “Temporality” contains two banners and discusses forced migration through word art. 

This year’s Art Walk continues a tradition of embracing art from local and international artists. The largely untraditional interactivity of the installations allowed attendees to be fully immersed in the art.

You can keep up with The Maneater’s 2025 True/False Film Fest coverage here.

Edited by Faith Jacoby | fjacoby@themaneater.com 

Copy edited by Natalie Kientzy | nkientzy@themaneater.com 

Annie Goodykoontz | agoodykoontz@themaneater.com