School of Art Speaker Series - University of Houston
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SPRING 24 SPEAKER SERIES

  • Paul McNeil

    Paul McNeil

    February 15, 6:30-8:30 pm
    5:30–6:30 pm, Reception
    Dudley Recital Hall
    132D Fine Arts Building
    Speaker Series Archive on Youtube! 

    Paul McNeil is a graphic designer, educator, and writer. In 2009, he co-founded MuirMcNeil with Hamish Muir, a London-based practice focused on exploring systematic methods in design for visual communication. McNeil has extensive experience in design education and was Course Director of the Master’s Programme in Typographic Design at the London College of Communication from 2010 to 2015. The Visual History of Type, McNeil’s definitive survey of typefaces from 1450–2015, was published in 2017, and Letters from M/M (Paris), his monograph on the renowned French studio’s type and letterforms, in 2022.   

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  • Zora J Murff

    Zora J Murff

    March 28, 3-5:00 pm, CT
    Dudley Recital Hall
    132D Fine Arts Building
    Speaker Series Archive on Youtube! 

    Zora J Murff is an artist and educator living in Northwest Arkansas. In 2019, Murff was named an Aperture Portfolio Prize finalist, a PDN 30 honoree, and a Light Work Artist-in-Residence; he was one of eight artists chosen for the most recent iteration of the Museum of Modern Art’s New Photography series, Companion Pieces: New Photography 2020. His work was presented at the 2021 Rencontres d’Arles, France, as part of the Louis Roederer Discovery Award. His works are housed in many notable US institutions and collections including, Studio Museum, SFMOMA, LACMA, and MoMA.

    “Zora J Murff. He is Black; therefore, he is.”

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FALL 23 SPEAKER SERIES

  • Dr. Joan Kee

    Dr. Joan Kee

    October 17, 2:30-4:30 pm
    Dudley Recital Hall
    132D Fine Arts Building

    Joan Kee is a professor in the History of Art at the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on how modern and contemporary artworks challenge our understanding of words like “world,” “value,” “abstraction,” and “scale.” Published in 2023, her latest book The Geometries of Afro Asia: Art Beyond Solidarity, asks how we might tell a history of art that begins with the global majority, spanning Asia, Africa, North America, and Europe. Kee is a contributing editor at Artforum, an editor at large for the Brooklyn Rail, as well on the advisory boards of Art History, the Oxford Art Journal, Modernism/modernity, and Art Margins. She was the Robert Sterling Clark Visiting Professor of Art History at Williams College in 2021, a 2019 Kresge Artist Fellow, and a 2022–23 Ford Scholar at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

  • Na Mira

    Na Mira

    October 26, 3-5:00 pm
    Dudley Recital Hall
    132D Fine Arts Building

    Na Mira lives in Los Angeles. Recent and forthcoming exhibitions include Whitney Biennial 2022, Whitney Museum of American Art, and Company Gallery, New York; Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson; Paul Soto and Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Art Sonje Center, Seoul; and Blaffer Art Museum, Houston. Mira graduated from University of California Los Angeles, School of the Art Institute of Chicago and teaches at University of California, Riverside. Her works are in the public collections of Walker Art Center, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Whitney Museum of American Art. Wendy’s Subway published the first collection of Mira’s writing.

  • Benvenuto Chavajay Ixtetela

    Benvenuto Chavajay Ixtetela

    November 2, 3-5:00 pm
    Dudley Recital Hall
    132D Fine Arts Building
    Speaker Series Archive on Youtube! 

    Un Trabajador social usa la metáfora y la analogía para desempolvar la historia y activar la memoria a través de la conciencia y el sentido para cristalizar y materializar el modo ancestral al mundo del arte. Ex-cultor por conciencia, Des-pintor por desobediencia, subraya EL CODIGO ETICO EPICO ANCESTRAL. Estudia en la Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas Rafael Rodríguez Padilla Guatemala. Diversas exposiciones colectivas en Guatemala y en el extranjero. Propone la Iniciativa de ley 42-2016 al Congreso de la República de Guatemala el cambio del nombre del estadio nacional de futbol Matero Flores, 9 de agosto 2016 cambia el nombre del estadio a ‘’Doroteo Guamuche’’. Propone y suplica al estado de Guatemala el retorno de la ´´Silla´´ de Atanasio Tzul, por 201 años estuvo fuera de su lugar, el 12 de julio 2021 el Estado de Guatemala entrega la´´silla´´ a las autoridades de los 48 cantones de Totonicapán, y al pueblo de Totonicapán. Exposiciones personales: ‘’Sangre de mi Sangre’’ San Pedro Lago Atitlan, Guatemala 2016. ‘’Madre Nosotros También Nosotros Somos Historia’’ Casa Pensativa, Antigua Guatemala, Guatemala 2016. “Diamante Típico” galería Pilar, Sao Paulo, Brasil 2015. “Muxu’x” Ciudad de la Imaginación, Quetzaltenango. Guatemala 2015. Exposición “Chunches” en el MADC Museo de Arte de Diseño Contemporáneo. San José, Costa Rica 2014.

  • Mark Thomas Gibson

    Mark Thomas Gibson

    November 9, 3-5:00 pm
    Dudley Recital Hall
    132D Fine Arts Building

    Mark Thomas Gibson's personal lens on American culture stems from his multifaceted viewpoint as an artist—as a black male, a professor, and an American history buff. These myriad and often colliding perspectives fuel his exploration of contemporary culture through languages of drawing, painting, print, and sculpture revealing a vision of a satirical, dystopian America where every viewer is implicated as a potential character within the story.

    Mark Thomas Gibson (b. 1980, Miami, FL) received his BFA from The Cooper Union in 2002 and his MFA from Yale School of Art in 2013. He is represented by M+B in Los Angeles and Loyal in Stockholm. In 2016, he co-curated the traveling exhibition Black Pulp! with William Villalongo. Gibson has released two artist books, Some Monsters Loom Large (2016) and Early Retirement (2017).

    In 2021, Gibson was awarded residencies at Yaddo and the Elizabeth Murray Artist Residency. He was awarded a Pew Fellowship from the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage, Philadelphia, PA and a Hodder Fellowship from Lewis Center for the Arts, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ. Gibson was most recently awarded a 2022 Guggenheim Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, New York, NY and a Louis Comfort Tiffany Biennial Grant from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, New York, NY

Spring 23 Speaker Series

  • Liza Enebeis portrait

    Liza Enebeis

    February 2, 6:30-8:30 pm, CT
    Dudley Recital Hall
    132D Fine Arts Building
    also on Instagram Live and Youtube!

    Reception: 5:30–6:30 pm

    Liza is the Creative Director at Studio Dumbar/DEPT®. Studio Dumbar/DEPT® is an award winning international agency with a Dutch heritage, specialising in visual branding and motion. Liza is directly involved with all main projects such as the visual identity for NGO Alzheimer Nederland, D&AD Creativity festival, brand refresh of the van Gogh Museum and co-initiator of Demo - Design in Motion Festival. She is an MA Design graduate from the Royal College of Art, London. Before joining Studio Dumbar she worked for Pentagram London for several years.


    Liza is cofounder and host of Typeradio.org the first podcast station to focus on type and design with over 550 episodes giving a voice to the established and upcoming designers from all around the world. 

    As of 2018 she has been elected member into the prestigious design association AGI, Alliance Graphique Internationale. And since 2020 she has been appointed as co-President of the ADCN - the Advertising and Design Club of Creativity in the Netherlands.

     

  • William Camargo portrait

    William Camargo

    February 16, 3-4:30 pm, CT
    Dudley Recital Hall
    132D Fine Arts Building
    also on Instagram Live and Youtube!

     

    William Camargo is an Arts Educator, Photo-Based Artist and Arts Advocate born and raised in Anaheim, California, he is currently serving as Commissioner of Heritage and Culture in the city of Anaheim and holds an M.F.A at Claremont Graduate University. He is the founder and curator of Latinx Diaspora Archives an archive Instagram page that elevates communities of color through family photos.  He attained his BFA at the California State University, Fullerton, and an AA from Fullerton College in photography.

    William has held residencies at Project Art, the Chicago Artist Coalition, ACRE, and at LA Summer held at Otis School of Art and Design. He has also participated in the New York Times Portfolio Review,  NALAC's(National Association of Latino Arts & Culture) Leadership(2018), and Advocacy(2020) Institutes. He is a current member of Diversify Photo an initiative started to diversify the photography industry. He was awarded the Friedman Grant and J. Sonneman Photography Prize from CGU and has given lectures at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, Gallery 400(Chicago), University of San Diego,  Cal State Long Beach, the Claremont Colleges, USC Roski School of Art, Stanford(upcoming).

  • Samara Golden portrait

    Samara Golden

    February 23, 3-4:30 pm, CT
    Dudley Recital Hall
    132D Fine Arts Building
    also on Instagram Live and Youtube!

     

    Samara Golden was born in Michigan in 1973 and received her MFA from Columbia University in 2009. Her most recent project “The Meat Grinder’s Iron Clothes” was featured in the 2017 Whitney Biennial. Golden has had recent solo exhibitions at MoMA PS1, New York; YBCA, San Francisco; Night Gallery, Los Angeles; and CANADA, New York. Her work was included in the 2014 Hammer Biennial, and Room to Live at MOCA Los Angeles. In 2015 a monograph on Golden was published by MoMA PS1, and her work has been written about in ArtForum, Art in America, The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Mousse, among other publications. Golden’s work is in the permanent collection of The Whitney Museum, New York; LACMA, and MOCA Los Angeles; The Zabludowicz Collection, London; and Yuz Museum, Shanghai. She lives in Los Angeles.

Fall 22 Speaker Series

The University of Houston School of Art is proud to announce its fall 2022 visiting speaker series featuring practitioners and thinkers at the forefront of contemporary art, criticism and design. Distinguished guests offer a diverse range of perspectives on the most pertinent issues facing today's makers and scholars. The series is a key component of students' experience at the School of Art. In addition to presenting their work to a large audience of students and community members, speakers spend extended periods engaging directly with students in small gatherings for focused debate and conversation, in formats tailored to their individual practice. Past enagements have included hands-on workshops, master classes, studio visits, demonstrations, and interactive performances. Past speakers include John Yau, Julia Guernsey, Candice Lin, Derrick Adams, Charlene Villaseñor Black, Aruna D'Souza, Beverly Fishman, Coco Fusco, Nicholas Galanin, Jeffrey Gibson, Lisa E. Harris, Rob Hopkins, Miwa Matreyek, De Nichols, David Rokeby, RaMell Ross, Richard The, and Margaret Wertheim.

This fall, speakers will be live in Dudley Recital Hall on the University of Houston campus. All lectures are free and open to the public. An archive of past lectures is on our YouTube channel.
  • Rachel Weiss portrait

    Rachel Weiss

    September 15, 3-4:30 pm, CT
    Dudley Recital Hall
    132D Fine Arts Building
    also on Instagram Live!

     

    Rachel Weiss is a writer, educator, and lapsed curator, currently Professor of Arts Administration and Policy at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Weiss has published extensively on contemporary art in journals, magazines, and newspapers in the US, Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Australia. Major publications include Making Art Global: The Third Havana Biennial (Afterall Books), To and From Utopia in the New Cuban Art (University of Minnesota Press), Por América: la obra de Juan Francisco Elso Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas: co-author and editor), and On Art, Artists, Latin America, and Other Utopias by Luis Camnitzer (University of Texas Press: editor). Major curatorial projects include Global Conceptualism 1950s–1980s: Points of Origin (Queens Museum of Art, NYC: co-director with with Luis Camnitzer and Jane Farver), Ante América (Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango, Bogotá, and traveled in South, North, and Central America: co-curator, with Gerardo Mosquera and Carolina Ponce de León), and The Nearest Edge of the World: Art and Cuba Now (traveled throughout the US: co-curator with Gerardo Mosquera).

  • Gina Beavers portrait

    Gina Beavers

    September 29, 3-4:30 pm, CT
    Dudley Recital Hall
    132D Fine Arts Building
    also on Instagram Live!

     

    Gina Beavers is an artist who lives and works in Newark, NJ. She holds a BA in Studio Art and Anthropology from the University of Virginia (1996), an MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2000) and an MS in Education from Brooklyn College (2005). 

    Gina has exhibited solo projects at GNYP (Berlin), Frieze (New York 2016), Michael Benevento (Los Angeles), Clifton Benevento (New York), Retrospective (Hudson, NY), Fourteen30 (Portland, Or), James Fuentes (New York), Nudashank (Baltimore, MD), and Material Art Fair (Mexico City). She has participated in numerous group shows, among them, MoMA PS1 (Long Island City, NY), Lumber Room (Portland, Or), Kentucky Museum of Contemporary Art (Louisville, KY), Nassau County Museum of Art (Long Island, NY), Flag Art Foundation (New York), William Benton Museum of Art (Storrs, Ct), Abrons Art Center (New York), Gavin Brown's Enterprise, New York), Cheim and Read (New York), JTT (New York), Canada Gallery (New York), Valentin (Paris), Galerie Opdahl (Norway), and Night Gallery (Los Angeles). Her work has been reviewed in the New York Times, Artforum, Frieze, the New Yorker and Modern Painters, among others.

  • Mary Maggic portrait

    Mary Maggic

    November 29, 6-8 pm, CT
    Dudley Recital Hall
    132D Fine Arts Building
    also on Instagram Live!

     

    Mary Maggic (b. Los Angeles, 1991) is a non-binary Chinese-American artist currently based in Vienna, Austria. Their work spans amateur science, public workshopology, performance, installation, documentary film, and speculative fiction. Since 2015, Maggic’s research has centered on hormone biopolitics and environmental toxicity, and how the ethos and methodologies of biohacking can serve to demystify invisible lines of molecular (bio)power. Since completing a Masters from MIT Media Lab (Design Fiction research group), their work has exhibited internationally including Kunsthal Charlottenborg (DK), Centre de Cultura Contemporánia de Barcelona (ES), Philadelphia Museum of Art (US), Science Gallery London (UK), Migros Museum of Contemporary Art (CH), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (DE), Jeu de Paume (FR), Museum of Contemporary Art Tuscon (US), Haus der elektronischen Kunst (CH), Institute of Contemporary Arts London (UK),  Art Laboratory Berlin (DE), Akbank Sanat (TR), and Jogja National Museum (ID). In 2017, their project “Open Source Estrogen” was awarded Honorary Mention at Prix Ars Electronica Hybrid Arts, and in 2019 Maggic completed a 10-month Fulbright residency in Yogyakarta, Indonesia exploring the connection between Javanese mysticism and the plastic pollution crisis. Maggic is a current member of the online network Hackteria: Open Source Biological Art, the laboratory theater collective Aliens in Green, the Asian artist collective Mai Ling Vienna, as well as a contributor to the radical syllabus project Pirate Care and to the online Cyberfeminism Index.

Spring 2022 Speaker Series

  • Sama Alshaibi portrait

    Sama Alshaibi

    Sama Alshaibi, 2001, image: Zakiriya Gladney

    February 3, 6 pm, CT
    Reception, 5–6 pm

    In person: Dudley Recital Hall
    132D Fine Arts Building
    also on Instagram Live!

    Sama Alshaibi, Guggenheim Fellow and internationally renowned artist, makes art at the intersections of photography, performance and sculpture. In this lecture, she will discuss her performances that depict her body as a powerful feminized site resisting the pretext for subjection in the aftermath of war and migration. Her talk will touch on the themes that animate her work: dispossession, mobility, margins, refuge, entropy and future/historic imaginings.   

    Working between photography, video, and installation, Sama Alshaibi (b. 1973, Iraq) links themes of dispossession, mobility, margins, refuge, entropy, and future/historic imaginings. Alshaibi's performances depict her body as a powerful feminized site resisting the pretext for social subjection in the aftermath of war and migration. In 2021, Alshaibi was named a Guggenheim Fellow in Photography, and a recipient of the Phoenix Art Museum's 2021 Arlene and Morton Scult Artist Award. She was also a recipient of a 2019 Artpace San Antonio residency and the 2018 Arab Fund for Arts & Culture Visual Arts Grant. Alshaibi’s exhibitions include the 55th Venice Biennale; State of the Art 2020 (Crystal Bridges Museum of Art); 2019 Cairo International Biennale; 2017 Honolulu Biennial; American University Museum, Washington D.C.; SMoCA; MARTa Herford Museum (Germany); Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art (NY); MoMA (NY); Arab American National Museum (Michigan); Pen + Brush (NYC); Institut Du Monde Arabe (Paris); and Ayyam Gallery (UK/UAE). Her monograph, Sama AlshaibiSand Rushes In (New York: Aperture, 2015), features her Silsila series. Alshaibi is Professor of Photography, Video and Imaging at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

  • Ramón Tejada portrait

    Ramón Tejada

    February 24, 6 pm, CT
    Reception, 5–6 pm

    In person: Dudley Recital Hall
    132D Fine Arts Building
    also on Instagram Live!

    Ramón Tejada is a (New Yorkino / Afro-Caribbean / American) designer (as Estudio Ramon) and educator based in Providence, RI. He works in a hybrid design/teaching practice focusing on collaboration, inclusion, unearthing and the responsible expansion of design a practice he has named “puncturing.” Ramon is an Assistant Professor in the Graphic Design Department at RISD.

  • Ruben Ortiz-Torres

    Rubén Ortiz-Torres

    April 7, 6 pm, CT
    Reception, 5–6 pm

    In person: Dudley Recital Hall
    132D Fine Arts Building
    also on Instagram Live!

    Rubén Ortiz-Torres was born in Mexico City in 1964. Educated within the utopian models of republican Spanish anarchism soon confronted the tragedies and cultural clashes of post-colonial third world. Being the son of a couple of Latin American folklore musicians he soon identified more with the noises of urban punk music. After giving up the dream of playing baseball in the major leagues, and some architecture training (Harvard Graduate School of Design) he decided to study art. He went first to the oldest and one of the most academic art schools of the Americas (the Academy of San Carlos in Mexico City) and later to one of the newest and more experimental (CalArts in Valencia CA). After enduring Mexico City's earthquake and pollution he moved to Los Angeles with a Fulbright grant to survive riots, fires, floods, more earthquakes, and proposition 187. During all this he has been able to produce artwork in the form of paintings, photographs, objects, installations, videos, films, customized machines, curatorial projects and even an opera. He is part of the permanent Faculty of the University of California in San Diego. He has participated in several international exhibitions and film festivals. His work is in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Artpace in San Antonio, the California Museum of Photography in Riverside CA, the Centro Cultural de Arte Contemporaneo in Mexico City and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid Spain among others. After showing his work and teaching art around the world, he now realizes that his dad's music was in fact better than most rock’n roll.

Fall 2021 Speaker Series

  • Joun Yau Portrait

    John Yau

    November 4, 6 pm, CT
    Reception, 5:30–6 pm

    In person: Dudley Recital Hall
    132D Fine Arts Building
    Online: Instagram Live

    John Yau has been publishing reviews and essays on art and literature since 1978. He currently writes for the online magazine, Hyperallergic Weekend, which he co-founded in 2012. Yau has published monographs on Thomas Nozkowski, Catherine Murphy, Philip Taaffe, and Jasper Johns. Currently, he is working on a monograph on Liu Xiaodong, which will also be the subject of his lecture.

  • Julia Guernsey Portrait

    Julia Guernsey

    November 11, 5:30 pm, CT

    Join with Zoom or YouTube on November 11!

     

    Dr. Julia Guernsey is the D.J. Sibley Family Centennial Faculty Fellow in Prehistoric Art in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research and publications focus on the Middle and Late Preclassic periods (1000 BC to 250 AD) in ancient Mesoamerica. Her most recent book, Human Figuration and Fragmentation in Preclassic Mesoamerica: From Figurines to Sculpture (Cambridge University Press, 2021), examines the relationships between human figuration, fragmentation, bodily divisibility, personhood, and community in ancient Mesoamerica. Her previous books include Sculpture and Social Dynamics in Preclassic Mesoamerica (Cambridge University Press, 2012) and Ritual and Power in Stone: The Performance of Rulership in Mesoamerican Izapan Style Art (University of Texas Press, 2006), and her co-edited volumes include The Place of Stone Monuments: Context, Use, and Meaning in Mesoamerica’s Preclassic Transition (Dumbarton Oaks, 2010), Sacred Bundles: Ritual Acts of Wrapping and Binding in Mesoamerica (Boundary End, 2006) with a third, Early Mesoamerican Cities: Urbanism and Urbanization in the Formative Period (Cambridge University Press) due out at the end of 2021. Guernsey also continues to participate with ongoing analysis of materials from archaeological excavations at the site of La Blanca, Guatemala.

  • Candice Lin Portrait

    Candice Lin

    November 18, 6 pm, CT

    Join with Zoom or YouTube on November 18!

     

    Candice Lin is an artist whose practice utilizes installation, drawing, video, and living materials and processes, such as mold, mushrooms, bacteria, fermentation, and stains. Her solo exhibition, Seeping, Rotting, Resting, Weeping, is currently on view at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Other recent solo exhibitions include the Times Museum, Guangzhou, China (2021); Govett Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand (2020); ICA, NYU Shanghai (2020); Pitzer Galleries, Claremont, CA (2020); and the Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Art Center, Canada (2019). Lin has been included in recent group exhibitions including the 2021 Prospect Biennial, 2021 Gwangju Biennial, the 2019 Fiskars Village Art & Design Biennale, 2018 Taipei Biennale, the 2018 Athens Biennale, and Made in L.A, 2018, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. She is the recipient of several residencies, grants and fellowships, including the American Academy in Berlin Fellowship (2021), the Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Grant (2019), The Artists Project Award (2018), Louis Comfort Tiffany Award (2017), the Davidoff Art Residency (2018) and Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship (2009). She received her BA in Visual Arts and Art Semiotics from Brown University, in 2001, and MFA in New Genres from San Francisco Art Institute, in 2004; and she is currently Assistant Professor of Art at UCLA and lives and works in Los Angeles.

Spring 2021 Speaker Series

  • Rob Hopkins

    Rob Hopkins

    March 30, 1 p.m., CT

    Join with Zoom or YouTube on March 30!

     

    Rob Hopkins is the founder of the Transition movement, starting the first Transition initiative in his town of Totnes in 2006. He is the author of several books on the subject including The Transition Handbook and The Power of Just Doing Stuff. His most recent book, From What Is to What If: unleashing the power of imagination to create the future we want, explores the decline of imagination in our culture and what we might do about it. He hosts the podcast series “From What If to What Next” and lectures and writes widely on the subject. He has a PhD from the University of Plymouth and honorary ones from the University of the West of England and the University of Namur. He has done 1 TED Global talk, and 4 TEDx presentations, and he is a founder director of the New Lion Brewery in Totnes. His blog is robhopkins.net, and you'll find him on Twitter as @robintransition. In his spare time he draws and makes lino prints.
  • Lisa E. Harris

    Lisa E. Harris

    April 1, 6:30 p.m., CT

    Join with Zoom or YouTube on April 1!

     

    Lisa E. Harris, Li, is an independent and interdisciplinary artist, creative soprano, performer, composer, improvisor, writer, singer/songwriter and educator from Houston Texas. Recognized by Huffington Post as "one of fourteen artist transforming Opera," Li’s work resists genre classification as she focuses on the energetic relationships between body, land, spirit and place. Using voice, theremin, movement, improvisation, meditation and new media to explore spatial awareness, relationality, panoptical surveillance and sonic profiling, she maintains a focused concentration on healing in performance and living.  She is the founder and creative director of Studio Enertia, an arts collective and production company in Houston Texas. Studio Enertia is the producer of Harris’s recently completed 10-year durational work, Cry of the Third Eye, a new opera film in Three Acts that archives the effects of gentrification on her Houston neighborhood. Li recently created and curated Houston’s inaugural Free Time Flow Festival at MacGregor Park, celebrating the intersections of basketball, electro-acoustic music and improvisational performance. She is responsible for instating and curating Pauline Oliveros Day at Discovery Green Houston. Li can be heard on her much-anticipated release EarthSeed a live performance album based on the writings of Octavia Butler, composed by Lisa E Harris and Nicole Mitchell on FPE records.

    https://lisaeharris.com/

  • Miwa Matreyek

    Miwa Matreyek

    April 8, 6:30 p.m., CT

    Join with Zoom or YouTube on April 8!

     

    Miwa Matreyek is an animator, designer, and performer based in Los Angeles. Coming from a background in animation, Matreyek creates live, interdisciplinary performances where she interacts with her animations as a shadow silhouette, at the intersection of cinematic and theatrical, fantastical and physical, and the hand-made and digital. Her work exists in a dreamlike visual space that makes invisible worlds visible, often weaving surreal and poetic narratives of conflict between humanity and nature as embodied performed experiences. She has presented her work all around the world, including animation/film festivals, theater/performance festivals, art museums, science museums, tech conferences, and universities. A few past presenters include TED, MOMA, SFMOMA, New Frontier at Sundance Film Festival, REDCAT, The Walker, The Wexner, and many more. Her newest solo piece, Infinitely Yours, was awarded the grand prize for Prix Arts Electronica’s Computer Animation category.
  • Jongwoo Jeremy Kim

    Jongwoo Jeremy Kim

    April 30, 2 p.m., CT

    Join with Zoom April on 30!

     

    Jongwoo Jeremy Kim is a specialist of modern and contemporary art addressing issues concerning gender, sexuality, and race. Professor Kim is the author of Painted Men in Britain, 1868-1918 (Ashgate). In his co-edited, interdisciplinary anthology Queer Difficulty in Art and Poetry (Routledge), Kim discusses Robert Gober and anti-patriarchal temporality. Currently, he is completing his next book, Male Bodies Unmade: Picturing Queer Selfhood, which explores narratives of subjectivity formation and corporeal incoherence in the works by Aubrey Beardsley, Jean Cocteau, Francis Bacon, Robert Gober, David Hockney, and Andrew Ahn.

    http://www.art.cmu.edu/people/jongwoo-jeremy-kim/

Fall 2020 Speaker Series

  • Aruna D'Souza

    Aruna D'Souza

    Aruna D'Souza by Dana Hoey

    September 17, 7–9 p.m., CT

    Join Aruna D'Souza

    Zoom

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    YouTube

    Aruna D'Souza is a curator and arts critic who writes about modern and contemporary art; intersectional feminisms and other forms of politics. Her most recent book, Whitewalling: Art, Race, and Protest in 3 Acts, was named one of the best art books of 2018 by the New York Times. She is currently editing two forthcoming volumes, Making It Modern: A Linda Nochlin Reader, and Lorraine O’Grady: Writing in Space 1973-2018, and is co-curator of the upcoming retrospective of Lorraine O’Grady’s work, Both/And, which will open in March 2021 at the Brooklyn Museum. 

  • De Nichols

    De Nichols

    De Nichols by Lindy Drew

    September 24, 7–9 p.m., CT

    Join De Nichols

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    YouTube

    De Nichols is a design activist, social worker and global lecturer who mobilizes creative changemakers to address issues within the built environment through the production of interactive experiences, digital media and social initiatives. She serves as the Principal of Design and Social Impact at the Civic Creatives consultancy in St. Louis, MO. She is a Transnational Fellow with Monument Lab and the Goethe Institut, a Citizen Artist Fellow of the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts and a 2018 Artist Fellow with the Regional Arts Commision in St. Louis, MO. De Nichols is currently a Loeb Fellow in residence at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. 

     

     

  • Nicholas Galanin

    Nicholas Galanin

    Nicholas Galanin by Will Wilson

    October 15, 4–6 p.m., CT

    Join Nicholas Galanin

    Zoom

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    Nicholas Galanin’s (Tlingit/Unangax) work offers perspective rooted in connection to land and broad engagement with contemporary culture. For over a decade, Galanin has been embedding incisive observation into his work, investigating and expanding intersections of culture and concept in form, image and sound. His practice is expansive and includes numerous collaborations with visual and recording artists. His work is in numerous public and private collections and exhibited worldwide. Galanin apprenticed with master carvers and jewelers, earned his BFA at London Guildhall University in Jewelry Design and his MFA in Indigenous Visual Arts at Massey University in New Zealand. He lives and works with his family in Sitka, Alaska. 

  • Derrick Adams

    Derrick Adams by Christopher Garcia Valle

    October 22, 7–9 p.m., CT

    Join Derrick Adams

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    Derrick Adams was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1970. He received his MFA from Columbia University and BFA from Pratt Institute. Adams has been the subject of numerous solo shows, including ​exhibitions at the Museum of Arts and Design, NY, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, the California African American Museum, LA, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Adams’ work has been presented in public exhibitions, including ​Men of Change: Power. Triumph. Truth. (2019) by the Smithsonian Institution​; ​PERFORMA​ (2015, 2013, 2005); ​The Shadows Took Shape (2014) and ​Radical Presence (2013–14) at The Studio Museum in Harlem. His work resides in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Studio Museum in Harlem, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. 

Spring 2020 Speaker Series

  • Margaret Wertheim, Coral Forest

    Margaret Wertheim

    Coral Forest, at Lehigh University Art Galleries (2019). Photo © Institute for Figuring

    January 30, 6:30-8:30 p.m.
    Dudley Recital Hall
    Fine Arts Building, Room 132

    Reception, 5:30-6:30 p.m.
    Dudley Recital Hall

    Margaret Wertheim is an internationally noted writer, artist and curator whose work focuses on relations between science and the wider cultural landscape. Her work is animated by a two-fold proposition: that science is both a field of conceptual enchantment, and a socially embedded activity with political and communal consequences. The author of six books, including The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace and Physics on the Fringe, she has written for The New York TimesThe GuardianCabinetAeon and many others. Margaret and her twin sister Christine are founders of the Institute For Figuring, a Los Angeles-based practice devoted to the aesthetic dimensions of science and mathematics – theiff.org. The sisters have created exhibitions for the Hayward Gallery (London), Science Gallery (Dublin), Mass MOCA (MA), Museum of Jurassic Technology (Los Angeles), and elsewhere. Their Crochet Coral Reef project has been shown nationally and internationally including at the Andy Warhol Museum (Pittsburgh), Museum of Arts and Design (New York), Deutsches Museum (Munich), the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History (Washington D.C.), and the 2019 Venice Biennale. Margaret has worked professionally on all seven continents and stood on the South Pole.

  • RaMell Ross,

    RaMell Ross

    Science Class from Hale County This Morning, This Evening.
    © IDIOM Film, Courtesy RaMell Ross & Cinema Guild

    February 20, 6:30-8:30 p.m.
    Dudley Recital Hall
    Fine Arts Building, Room 132

    Reception, 5:30-6:30 p.m.
    Dudley Recital Hall

    RaMell Ross earned a BA in both English and Sociology from Georgetown University and an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. His photographs have been exhibited internationally and his writing has appeared in such outlets as The New York Times and Walker Arts Center. He was part of Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film” in 2015, and a New Frontier Artist in Residence at the MIT Media Lab. In 2016, he was a finalist for the Aperture Portfolio Prize, winner of an Aaron Siskind Individual Photographer’s Fellowship Grant and a Sundance Art of Nonfiction Fellow. In early 2017, he was selected for Rhode Island Foundation’s Robert and Margaret Maccoll Johnson Artist Fellowship. RaMell is currently on faculty at Brown University’s Visual Arts Department. Hale County This Morning, This Evening is his first feature documentary.

  • David Rokeby, Hand-held

    David Rokeby

    Hand-held, 2012. Produced at Le Fresnoy Studio National des Arts contemporains

    February 27, 6:30-8:30 p.m.
    Fine Arts Building, Room TBA

    Reception, 5:30-6:30 p.m.
    TBA

    David Rokeby's early work Very Nervous System (1982-1991) was a pioneering work of interactive art, translating physical gestures into real-time interactive sound environments. It was presented at the Venice Biennale in 1986, and was awarded a Prix Ars Electronica Award of Distinction for Interactive Art in 1991.

    Several of his works have addressed issues of digital surveillance, including Taken (2002), and Sorting Daemon (2003). Other works engage in a critical examination of the differences between human and artificial intelligence. The Giver of Names (1991-) and n-cha(n)t (2001) are artificial subjective entities, provoked by objects or spoken words in their immediate environment to formulate sentences and speak them aloud.

     He has exhibited and lectured extensively in the Americas, Europe and Asia. His awards include a Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts (2002), a Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica for Interactive Art (2002), and a British Academy of Film and Television Arts “BAFTA” award in Interactive art (2000).

    He is the Director of the BMO Lab for Creative Research in the Arts, Performance, Emerging Technologies and AI at the Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Toronto.

Fall 2019 Speaker Series

  • Charlene Villaseñor Black

    Charlene Villaseñor Black

    Alma Lopez, “La Peor,” 2013

    September 25, 6:30 p.m.
    Dudley Recital Hall
    Fine Arts building, Room 132

    Reception, 5:30 p.m.
    Blaffer Art Museum Café

    Charlene Villasenor Black is professor of art history and Chicana/o studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where her research and teaching focus on the art of the early modern Iberian world and contemporary Chicana/o/x art. In 2016, she was awarded UCLA’s 2016 Gold Shield Faculty Prize for Academic Excellence. She has held grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), ACLS, Fulbright, Mellon, Woodrow Wilson and Getty foundations. She also serves as associate director of UCLA’s Chicano Studies Research Center, where she edits Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies. She also founded and edits Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture (UC Press) with associate editor Emily Engel, the first academic journal in these fields. Currently, she is one of four PIs of the $1.03 million grant “Critical Mission Studies at California’s Crossroads,” funded by the University of California Multicampus Research Programs and Initiatives for 2019–2021. Her upbringing as a working class, Catholic Chicana from Arizona forged her identity as a border-crossing art historian and inspirational teacher. The topics of her publications range from the early modern Spanish empire to contemporary Chicanx art.

     

  • Richard The, Bodies in Motion

    Richard The

    “Bodies in Motion,” Collaboration with Todd Bracher for Humanscale, Milan 2019; 16 moving lights, depth camera, computer, custom software; 20m x 12m x 5m

    October 10, 6:30 p.m.
    Dudley Recital Hall
    Fine Arts building, Room 132

    Reception, 5 p.m.
    Dudley Recital Hall

    Richard The is a designer, artist and educator. His work, ranging from graphic design to installations to user interfaces, investigates the aesthetic and cultural implications of an increasingly technology-driven society. After having studied at University of the Arts Berlin and the MIT Media Lab he has worked at Sagmeister Inc., led a design group at the Google Creative Lab and is co-founder of the transdisciplinary design studio TheGreenEyl. He is an assistant professor of art media and technology at Parsons School of Design. His work has been recognized by international design institutions such as D&AD, Art Directors Club New York, AIGA, Communication Arts, Type Director’s Club Tokyo and Ars Electronica, Linz and he has taught at NYU ITP, School of Visual Arts and MIT School of Architecture.

     

  • Beverly Fishman, Untitled (Split Pill/Alcoholism)

    Beverly Fishman

    “Untitled (Split Pill/Alcoholism),” Serigraph print, 24 x 30 inches, Edition of 50

    October 17, 6:30 p.m.
    Dudley Recital Hall
    Fine Arts Building, Room 132

    Reception, 5:30 p.m.
    Dudley Recital Hall

    Beverly Fishman is an internationally recognized painter and sculptor who adopts the language of abstraction to explore the body, issues of identity and contemporary culture. For more than three decades, she has used imagery drawn from science, medicine and the pharmaceutical industry to promote inquiry into the effects of these institutions on both individuals and societies.


    She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Philadelphia College of Art, and a Master of Fine Arts degree from Yale University. For 25 years she was the head of the painting department at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, and she has held positions at Maryland Institute College of Art and the College of New Rochelle, Graduate Art School. Fishman has been the recipient of many awards, including a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship; a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award; an Artist Space Exhibition Grant; an NEA Fellowship Grant; and an Anonymous Was A Woman Award. Her work is included in many public and private collections around the world.