MFA student Haley Indorato opens solo exhibition at Cayuga Museum of History & Art

People Seen, Places Been, a solo exhibition of oil paintings by MFA student Haley Indorato, opens at the Cayuga Museum of History & Art and the Schweinfurth Art Center in New York on May 30 and will remain on view through July 11.

Exhibition statement

My work continues oil painting’s tradition of depicting people, places, and things observed from everyday life. I try to capture our authentic, often flawed reality; something I don’t think we see enough of in our filtered, image based world. Much of my practice is based in figurative art and Western Art History, often concerning myself with questions of representation and narrative. I often direct the gaze of my figures back at the viewer as a way to give acknowledgement and power to the figures. I also explore the relationships between objects, our environments, and each other. How there can be deep personal connections to the inanimate or the subtle social, political, and cultural undertones signified by these relationships. This is where places from everyday life combine with images from pop culture and art history. My work often exists on a life size or larger scale. This both continues the historical dialogue of elevating scenes from everyday life, and emphasizes the subject’s importance.

About the Artist

Haley Indorato is an artist from Rochester, NY currently pursuing her MFA at the University of Georgia in Athens, GA. In 2022 she received her BFA from Rochester Institute of Technology, afterwards participating in a residency at the New York Academy of Art. Indorato’s work has been selected for competitive juried shows including the 68th and 69th Juried Finger Lakes Exhibition at the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, Made in NY at the Schweinfurth Art Center in 2025, and at the Genesee Valley Council of the Arts in Mt. Morris. She has also frequently participated in many group shows at places like The Yards in Rochester, Hallwalls in Buffalo, and has started exhibiting in Georgia in juried shows at ATHICA and the Lyndon House, as well as the Gertrude Herbert Institute of Art in Augusta.

Indorato’s work combines subjects and themes traditional to oil painting with images from the internet and popular culture. Fantasies and desires to escape are coupled with imitations of people, places, and things from real life. Physical, virtual, spanning time and geography. Indorato is interested in oil painting’s complicated past as a means to reflect on and escape the absurdity of everyday American life. In her research towards her MFA, she often appropriates old stories and twists them into a feminist lens; gender bending characters, and replacing expectations of a passive woman with strong, domineering female figures. Her work is simultaneously humorous and sincere in an effort to reflect contemporary life and offer a place for human connection.