Helen Cui '27 Receives 2025 Project Green Light Award

The Department of Studio Art has selected Helen Cui '27 as the recipient of the second annual Project Green Light Award, a grant created by the Class of 1968 to support new works by undergraduate artists.

Cui will receive $5,000 to help bring to life Physicality and Hedonism, a four-piece, multi-phase interactive installation that will explore how dark spaces encourage hedonistic behaviors.

"Over these last two years at Dartmouth, I've been really interested in this idea of spaces—how we create and reproduce concepts that are in our spaces, and how we change our spaces to make them more comfortable to us," says Cui, a double major in studio art and computer science modified with digital arts. "How does space affect who we are, and how do we affect the spaces around us to encourage certain types of behavior?"

The installation will consider how certain physical spaces encourage hedonism, a theme Cui previously explored in a series of paintings in her Painting III course. In developing the installation plans, she worked with Enrico Riley, George Frederick Jewett Professor of Studio Art, discussing how the physical spaces of nightclubs and Greek basements share cave-like, subterranean elements, which she will incorporate into her project.

"Helen is interested in the intersection of installation art and theater," says professor Tricia Treacy, chair of the Department of Studio Art. "While the project may be challenging to produce and install as proposed, we found it to be an intriguing interdisciplinary concept that might enable cross-departmental collaborations."

The ability for others to interact with her installation is also critical to Cui's vision. She found inspiration in cave wall drawings, postered walls of concert halls and bars, and paintings and messages on the walls of Greek basements. "Part of my design challenge is: How do I make a sculpture that people will touch and feel incentivized to make their own?" Cui notes.

During the summer, the four pieces will be individually displayed throughout Greek life locations and recreational spaces on campus, where visitors will be encouraged to engage with the physical structure and transform the space. In the fall, the four pieces will be reunited to form a larger installation.

Cui, who primarily considers herself a painter, welcomes the continued learning the project will require of her.

"This project gives me an opportunity to experiment in a medium I don't usually touch," she says. "My Painting III professor, Jennifer Caine, said I need to make art that I don't know how to make, and this will be part of that learning process. It's very rewarding to know that I'm going to be learning on hand how to make this concept into reality."

This term she is in Architecture I with Zenovia Toloudi, associate professor of architecture, so that she can think intentionally about space and how others interact with it, construct models and ideas in 3D, and work in new mediums. She is also working with Chris Sollars, associate professor of studio art, to build small armature models as they consider how to build the installation sculptures.

The Project Green Light Award has a limited run and rotates between arts departments for each edition. Last year, Sascha Agenor '25 received the inaugural award from the Department of Film and Media Studies to support the production of Munchiez, a 15-minute film. 

"Winning this award is a big sign that people are still interested in seeing very experimental concepts," Cui says. "It's very affirming as an artist to see that these types of projects are still being encouraged and greenlit."