Fantasy II in Exile – ACA Side Gallery Exhibition

LAFAYETTE, LA––Acadiana Center for the Arts is proud to announce a brand new, group exhibition titled Fantasy II in Exile. Jacob Todd Broussard, an Acadiana-native now based in Buffalo, NY, has collaborated with Emile Mausner, an artist living and working in Orlando, FL. The pair have created a immersive exhibition filled with playful objects, paintings, and posters as an ode to a long departed- Lafayette gay night club called “Fantasy II In Exile.” This exhibition will be on display in the AcA Side Gallery beginning Saturday, July 10, for Second Saturday ArtWalk and running through November 13, 2021.

The exhibition explores what it means to find community in retreat, after a year where social gatherings have been put on hold. The duo built this fantastical realm from afar through phone calls, texts and ‘snail’ mail. The resulting exhibition is a poetic and mysterious exploration of that contemplative solitude in relation to fantasy and social performativity. Broussard and Mausner met and began their artistic collaboration at the Yale School of Art, where they both graduated in 2019.

As the artists explain, “Fantasy II in Exile prospects for hope and heritage where immediacy knows no domain. In myth, in the dreamworld, on high to the perpetual dancefloor—the archetypes of exile are fools and hermits both. Idle gossip of history wonders why all the interesting liberated people seem to be exiles, too.”

Jacob Todd Broussard currently lives and works in Buffalo, New York. He received his MFA from Yale School of Art in 2019 and his BFA from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in 2014. He has presented solo exhibitions with Steven Zevitas Gallery, Basin Arts, Kelli Kaufman Gallery, and River Oaks Square Arts Center. He has been featured in group exhibitions with Treasure Town Gallery, Louisiana State Capitol Park Museum, and Cornell University.

Emile Mausner holds two bachelor’s degrees from New College of Florida and the University of Central Florida, where she studied Visual and Critical Studies (2012) and Studio Art (2017) respectively. In 2019, Mausner received her MFA with honors from the Yale School of Art. She now lives and works in Orlando, Florida.