Reconstructing The Self: Ava Kaloz’s “Shattered”

Ava Kaloz’s “Shattered” exhibit used personal experience with scoliosis to create powerful, advocacy-driven art. 

Ava Kaloz '25 standing with two of her paintings. Photo by William Haydon '25

Steel Plant’s cafe space hosted an innovative multimedia art exhibit on Nov. 13, featuring paintings and photography from senior studio art major Ava Kaloz ‘25. Drawing from her childhood experience with scoliosis, Kaloz displayed a series of monochromatic self-portraits and paintings inspired by the X-rays and back braces that had formed bitterly familiar symbols of her various treatments. 

A series of easels dotted the main floor of the converted gallery space, showcasing impressionistic pattern studies across canvases large and small. The strap of a corrective brace was magnified in stark black and white. A cluster of white torso-like shapes abstracted somewhere between bone and medical apparatus. Kaloz’s large-printed self-portrait photographs adorned a nearby wall, posing with her arms up, back twisted, adopting the uncomfortable and compromising posture of an X-ray procedure. 

“This is the first time I was looking at that imagery again, painting everything in the show and taking the photographs,” said Kaloz. “It was so reminiscent of the X-rays and the positions, and wearing the brace, that it felt nostalgic in a way, but it also felt scary.” 

Beginning active treatment of her condition at the age of 12, Kaloz found her life fundamentally changed by intrusive procedures and therapies. Wearing a corrective back brace for up to 18 hours every day and subject to regular X-ray scans, she held a delicate and anxious balance between these harsh new medical commitments and her everyday life. 

Art became a major outlet during this difficult time, helping her process emotional and physical pain while bringing newfound joy as she learned to create. Kaloz carried this intimate connection with her art into college, and now in her senior year, she created “Shattered,” her honors thesis project, as a way to process these complicated memories. 

“I really wanted to face the experience head-on and be able to share the story,” she explained. “There definitely was a lot of catharsis; it felt like closing a chapter but opening one at the same time.” 

Kaloz spent several months over the summer of 2024 creating the paintings for her exhibit and developed her photography projects after returning to campus at the beginning of the year. Finding both Steel Plant galleries unavailable for the semester, Kaloz collaborated with Marist College’s art department faculty to secure the whole of Steel Plant as a gallery space. 

Though she began her artistic process by revisiting her past, Kaloz expanded her efforts, looking to the future and positioning “Shattered” as a beacon of support and affirmation to other artists who may have experienced similar difficulties.

“I think it would be really cool if artists embraced the different challenges that go into making their art, but also just with themselves too. There's so many little things that everybody goes through that we don’t know about,” she said. “I want to be a ‘big sister’ to talk about ‘Hey, I had it, too,’ and maybe we should open this conversation and talk about things more.” 

Though the “Shattered” one-night run has concluded, the exhibit is just the first step in Kaloz’s efforts in advocacy-based art. She intends to continue exploring themes of resilience and shared experience, using her work as a platform to connect with others and foster meaningful conversations. With plans to create more art centered on healing and visibility, Kaloz is determined to turn her personal struggles into a source of strength and solidarity in Marist’s artistic community.