PHOTO FINISHED: South African Photographer Cedric Nunn Releases Monograph of Works

Cedric Nunn | Book Launch & Artist Talk    

Thursday, October 1, 2015 | 6 - 8PM

DAVID KRUT PROJECTS, NEW YORK   

526 West 26th Street

New York, NY

Cedric Nunn will be in New York for the publication launch of Unsettled: The One Hundred Years War of Resistance by Xhosa Against Boer and British, a collection of photographs that documents the Eastern Cape, the site of the longest and most complex anti-colonial confrontation in Africa's history. The event is part of a three week tour in the US, undertaking speaking engagements at universities including The University of Virginia, Georgetown University, Rhode Island School of Design, Wheaton College, Indianapolis University, State University of New York-Oswego, Yale University, and Rutgers University.

CLICK HERE TO PREORDER A SIGNED COPY OF THE BOOK

Published by Pirogue Collective / Island Position (Archipelago Books)

(Option to pre-order signed copies is only available now through Thursday, October 1.)

Cedric Nunn’s exhibit Unsettled: The One Hundred Years War of Resistance by Xhosa Against Boer and British is on view September 10 - October 24, 2015 at David Krut Projects, New York.

Click here for exhibit info and images.

PERFORMANCE: Gordon Skinner / Bridgeport, CT

SOCIETY FUCT

Saturday, March 7, 2015, 6:30-8:30pm

CITY LIGHTS GALLERY

37 Markle Court

Bridgeport, CT

Gordon Skinner's first Performance Art piece SOCIETY FUCT is a unique work inspired by a zine he created of the same title and made in collaboration with award winning poets Tenisi Davis and Attallah Sheppard. The result is a powerful unapologetic interpretation of visual art that combines the elements of poetry, theater and social commentary as one body of work.  

Bob Albert, a representative for Skinner states,  “This is not something you want to miss and is something that truly has to be experienced to gain a grasp of the concept. Gordon is in a very interesting space creatively.  He's been exploring processes outside of what he's done previously while still maintaining the integrity of his artistic hand. I would say many of his newer pieces are more conceptual in nature, experimenting with unconventional materials and even working in three dimensional space. You don't want to miss this part of his evolution as an artist, a work that has been cultivated over several months and an extension of his practice in a different form in collaboration with other artists.”

SOCIETY FUCT will be performed ONE TIME ONLY.

Zines and audio art pieces with original collages inspired by the performance will be available for purchase.  

CHICAGO: Sight and Semblance / Friday, December 12, 2014

A POP-UP ART EXHIBIT CURATED BY LAMONT HAMILTON

Friday, December 12, 2014, 7:00 – 10:00PM

1410 North Milwaukee Avenue

Chicago, IL

Sight and Semblance is a photo based exhibition that calls attention to the disparate yet interlocking medium of photography.

The images range from montage and appropriation to vérité and features works by Rashayla Marie Brown, RJ El, Lamont Hamilton, Esau McGhee, Yaw and avery r young.

BOOK SIGNING: Zanele Muholi / New York / November 19, 2014

Images from Zanele Muholi's Faces and Places, 2006-2014.

Images from Zanele Muholi's Faces and Places, 2006-2014. 

Join The Walther Collection for a special launch celebrating Zanele Muholi's new book, Faces and Phases: 2006-14, published by The Walther Collection and Steidl.

Wednesday, November 19, 2014 from 6:30-8pm

Free and open to the public. 

RSVP essential: invitation@walthercollection.com

THE WALTHER COLLECTION PROJECT SPACE

526 West 26th Street, Suite 718

New York City

From The Walther Collection e-blast:

Zanele Muholi will be present to speak about her art and activism. Signed copies of Faces and Phases: 2006-14 will be available for sale.

In Faces and Phases: 2006-14, Zanele Muholi embarks on a journey of visual activism to ensure black queer and transgender visibility. Despite South Africa's progressive constitution and twenty years of democracy, black lesbians and transgender men remain the targets of brutal hate crimes and so-called corrective rapes. Taken over the past eight years, the more than 250 portraits in this book present a compelling statement about the lives and struggles of these individuals. They also comprise an unprecedented and invaluable archive: marking, mapping, and preserving an often-invisible community for posterity.

Accompanying her vivid portraits, Faces and Phases presents a series of moving testimonies by queer women and transmen who intimately engage with this long-term project. In poems and memoirs, Muholi's subjects describe the struggle to live a life of freedom in a social climate where being oneself can incite violence and abuse. With an essay by Gabeba Baderoon, as well as an extensive historical timeline tracking the oppression of gays and lesbians in Africa from the 1700s to today, Faces and Phases makes an extraordinary statement about resilience and solidarity.

Zanele Muholi was born in 1972 in Umlazi township in Durban, South Africa. She lives in Johannesburg. Muholi studied at the Market Photo Workshop in Newtown, Johannesburg, and received an MFA in Documentary Media from Ryerson University in Toronto. In 2009, she founded Inkanyiso, an organization that deals with visual arts, activism, media, and advocacy. The winner of numerous awards, Muholi's work has been featured in exhibitions including the 55th Venice Biennale, Documenta 13, the 29th São Paulo Biennal, and at institutions such as The V&A Museum; The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; The Wits Art Museum, Johannesburg; The Menil Collection; and The Walther Collection in New York and Neu-Ulm, Germany. Her award-winning documentary, Difficult Love, has been screened at festivals around the world. Zanele Muholi: Isibonelo/Evidence will be presented beginning May 1, 2015 at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum. 

EVENT: Conversations Among Friends / New York / November 17, 2014

Zanele Muholi, Vredehoek, 2011; Nomonde Mbusi (detail) by Zanele Muholi.

Featuring artist Zanele Muholi and actress Nomonde Mbusi

Monday, November 17, 2014

 7:00 pm program | 8:15 pm reception

Doors open at 6:45 pm

Tickets ($35 General Admission, $20 Members, $12 Students) may be purchased at the Museum information and film desks, online at MoMA.org, or through The Friends of Education Office.

THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART

The Celeste Bartos Theater (Theater 3)

The Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Education and Research Building

4 West 54^th Street

New York, NY

From moma.org:

Presented by The Friends of Education of The Museum of Modern Art as part of the series Conversations: Among Friends, this evening's program features a conversation between artist Zanele Muholi and actress, director, and playwright Nomonde Mbusi, moderated by Judith B. Hecker, MoMA's assistant curator for drawings and prints. The program will focus on Muholi’s work as a "visual activist" dedicated to issues of race, gender, and sexuality, and will reflect on this year’s 20th anniversary of democracy in South Africa—still a work in progress. Muholi is best known for her photographic series Faces and Phases, five of which are in MoMA’s collection. Begun in 2006, this series portrays black members of the LGBTI community in South Africa and around the world, giving voice to their stories and displacing conventional perceptions. Nomonde Mbusi, one of Muholi’s participants in Faces and Phases and an artist and activist in her own right, joins the discussion. Following the program, guests are invited to continue the conversation at an intimate reception catered by Fantasy Fare in The Cullman Mezzanine. Muholi’s newest book, Zanele Muholi: Faces and Phases 2006–2014 (The Walther Collection/Steidl 2014) will be available for purchase and signing by the artist.

Zanele Muholi was born in 1972 in Umlazi township in Durban, South Africa, and currently lives in Johannesburg. Prior to her photographic journeys, she worked as a human rights activist, raising issues facing black lesbian women in South Africa. In 2009 she founded Inkanyiso, an organization centered on visual arts, activism, media, and advocacy. Muholi studied at the Market Photo Workshop in Johannesburg, and graduated from Ryerson University in Toronto in 2009 with an MFA in documentary media. She is the winner of awards from the 2009 Rencontres de Bamako African Photography Biennial; the 2013 Carnegie International; and recipient of a 2013 Prince Claus Award. Muholi’s work has been featured in the 55th Venice Biennale; Documenta 13; the 29th São Paulo Biennial; and has been shown at prestigious museums worldwide. Her work can be found in numerous museum collections including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; South African National Gallery, Cape Town; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Tate Modern, London; The Menil Collection, Houston; and The Walther Collection, Neu-Ulm, Germany; among others. Her award-winning documentary Difficult Love (2010) has been shown at film festivals around the world.

Nomonde Mbusi was trained in dramatic arts at the University of Zululand. Since 1997, she has performed in numerous theater productions and is best known for her role as Fikile in Flipping the Script, a four women show on gender-based violence (2004-07). In 2004 she cofounded Insika Productions with Muholi, where she worked as artistic director and facilitator. Through Insika, she organized creative arts healing workshops for women survivors of violence in organizations such as POWA-People Opposing Women Abuse and FEW-Forum for the Empowerment of Women. Her recent acting accomplishments include the lead role of Brenda on SABC 1’s drama Usindiso (Redemption), and Thando in Dr. John Kani’s play Nothing but The Truth at the Soweto Theatre, along with several other television and radio performances.

Judith B. Hecker, Assistant Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints at MoMA, organized Impressions from South Africa, 1965 to Now: Prints from The Museum of Modern Art (2011), which featured some 80 prints, artist’s books, posters, and wall stencils by artists living in South Africa that were acquired by the Museum. She co-curated MoMA’s presentation of the touring exhibition William Kentridge: Five Themes (2010), and authored the accompanying publication Trace: William Kentridge, Prints from The Museum of Modern Art.

Event Link

SYRACUSE: Sanford Biggers

Sanford Biggers: Shuffle & Shake

November 6 – December 27, 2014

Projected onto North Façade of Everson Museum of Art Building, Dusk – 11:00pm, Thursday – Sunday

Artist talk: Tuesday, November 11, 2014 at 6:30pm

EVERSON MUSEUM OF ART

401 Harrison Street

Syracuse, NY

From urbanvideoproject.com:

Urban Video Project (UVP) and parent organization Light Work are pleased to present the exhibition of “Shuffle”(2009) and “Shake” (2011) by celebrated multimedia artist, Sanford Biggers.  This exhibition marks the second major exhibition of “Celestial Navigation: a year into the afro future”, a year-long program of exhibitions and events at Urban Video Project and partner organizations that takes afrofuturism as its point of departure.

About the Work

“Shuffle” and “Shake” form the first two parts of Sanford Bigger’s Odyssean trilogy about the formation and dissolution of identity.

“Shuffle” is about the struggle between our own perception of self vs. others’ projections onto us. “Shuffle” also examines how we matriculate through society, often masking our insecurities, pain, longing and the internal schizophrenia of our id. Original soundtrack composed from the artist’s field recordings made in Indonesia.

“Shake”, the second video of the trilogy, features Ricardo Camillo — a Brazilian-born, Germany-based choreographer, stuntman, clown and DJ — as he walks from the favelas (or shantytowns) of Brazil, to the ocean before finally transforming into an androgynous silver-skinned figure. Though the final imagery is straight out of Afrofuturism, recalling the specific costuming and aesthetics of P-Funk, it is remains extraordinarily human at the same time, referencing the soul searching of Greek mythology.

About the Artist

An LA native working in NYC, Sanford Biggers creates artworks that integrate film, video, installation, sculpture, drawing, original music and performance. He intentionally complicates issues such as hip hop, Buddhism, politics, identity and art history in order to offer new perspectives and associations for established symbols. Through a multi-disciplinary formal process and a syncretic creative approach he makes works that are as aesthetically pleasing as they are conceptual.

The significance of Biggers’ work within contemporary society has been celebrated through solo exhibitions both nationally and internationally, most recently at the Brooklyn Museum, Sculpture Center and Mass MoCA. He has participated in prestigious residencies and fellowships including: Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, Germany; Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland; Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, California; ARCUS Project Foundation, Ibaraki, Japan; and the Art in General/ Trafo Gallery Eastern European Exchange in Budapest, Hungary. He has been a fellow of the Creative Time Global Residency, the Socrates Sculpture Park Residency, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council World Views AIR Program, the Eyebeam Atelier Teaching Residency, the Studio Museum AIR Program, the P.S. 1 International Studio Program, and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture residency.

Sanford Biggers’ installations, videos, and performances have appeared in venues worldwide including Tate Britain and Tate Modern in London, the Whitney Museum and Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, and the Yerba Bue a Center for the Arts in San Francisco, as well as institutions in China, Germany, Hungary, Japan, Poland and Russia. The artist’s works have been included in notable exhibitions such as: Prospect 1 New Orleans Biennial, Illuminations at the Tate Modern, Performa 07 in NY, the Whitney Biennial, and Freestyle at the Studio Museum in Harlem. His works are included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Walker Art Center, Whitney Museum, Brooklyn Museum and Bronx Museum.

Biggers has won awards including: the American Academy in Berlin Prize, Greenfield Prize, New York City Art Teachers Association Artist-of-the-Year, Creative Time Travel Grant, Creative Capital Project Grant, New York Percent for the Arts Commission, Art Matters Grant, New York Foundation for the Arts Award, the Lambent Fellowship in the Arts, the Pennies From Heaven/ New York Community Trust Award, Tanne Foundation Award, and Rema Hort Mann Foundation Award Grant.

Biggers is Assistant Professor at Columbia University’s Visual Arts program and a board member of Sculpture Center, Soho House and the CUE Foundation. He has also taught at Virginia Commonwealth University’s Sculpture and Expanded Media program and was a visiting scholar at Harvard University’s VES Department in 2009.

For more information, go to sanfordbiggers.com.

About ‘Celestial Navigation: a year into the afro future’

“Celestial Navigation”, a year-long program at UVP, will explore the work of major established and emerging artists through an afrofuturist lens, including works by Julien, Sanford Biggers, Xaviera Simmons, Jeanette Ehlers (as part of “The Black Radical Imagination 2014,” curated by Erin Christovale and Amir George), Cristina de Middel and Cauleen Smith. Artist talks, screenings and a panel discussion in spring 2014 will be included in the programming. Partner venues featuring cross-programmed exhibitions include Community Folk Art Center (CFAC) and Light Work (both in Syracuse).

BROOKLYN: Imani Shanklin Roberts

Imani Shanklin Roberts, Black & Gold, Acrylic and gold leaf on canvas, 16 x 16 inches. 

An Ode to Her

Saturday, November 8, 2014, 6-10pm

THE FREEMAN SPACE

155 Freeman Street

Brooklyn, NY

From press release:

Imani Shanklin Roberts is pleased to present a one-night pop-up exhibit, An Ode to Her, a body of work that underpins the beauty, vibrancy, and infinite layers of the African-American woman.

Roberts unearths an Afrofuturism theme through portraiture which functions as a space for viewers to engage in conversation on the usage of the black female body in popular culture.

An Ode to Her creates a visual space where viewers can relish in the power, sensuality, grace, and cultural splendor of day-to-day African American women.

Imani Shanklin Roberts has a BFA/MS in Art Education from Pratt Institute. She has exhibited in various spaces in the Washington, DC area and in 2012 was named one of the “Best Up-and-Coming Artists in DC” by CBS DC. As an artist and educator, Roberts seeks to create and facilitate relevant work that encourages ideas of self-realized liberation. Her distinct aesthetic empowers her viewers to deconstruct limitations and think beyond while embracing their cultural identities.

EVENT: Conversation Among Friends / New York / July 21, 2014

Images: Adrienne Edwards, 2013. Photo by Whitney Browne; Adam Pendleton, 2012. Photo by Paul Mpagi Sepuya. Courtesy Pace Gallery.

Featuring artist Adam Pendleton and Adrienne Edwards, Associate Curator, Performa

Monday, July 21, 2014

7:00 p.m. program | 8:15 p.m. reception

Doors open at 6:45 p.m.

THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART

The Celeste Bartos Theater (Theater 3)

The Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Education and Research Building

4 West 54^th Street

New York, NY

GENERAL ADMISSION TICKETS ($35), MEMBER TICKETS ($20) MAY BE PURCHASED AT THE MUSEUM INFORMATION AND FILM DESKS, ONLINE AT MOMA.ORG, OR THROUGH THE FRIENDS OF EDUCATION OFFICE.

ALL TICKETS WILL BE HELD AT DOOR.

Presented by The Friends of Education of The Museum of Modern Art as part of the series Conversations: Among Friends, this event features a conversation between artist Adam Pendleton and curator, scholar, and writer Adrienne Edwards. Following the program, guests are invited to continue the conversation and meet the participants at an intimate reception catered by Fantasy Fare in the Cullman Mezzanine.

Adam Pendleton (b. 1984, Richmond, Virginia) is a Conceptual artist known for his multidisciplinary practice, which moves fluidly between painting, publishing, photographic collage, video, and performance. His work centers on an engagement with language, in both the figurative and literal senses, and the re-contextualization of history through appropriated imagery in order to establish alternative interpretations of the present and, as the artist has explained, “a future dynamic where new historical narratives and meanings can exist.” Pendleton has been included in significant exhibitions in America and Europe, includingLove Story – The Anne & Wolfgang Titze Collection, Winter Palace and 21er Haus, Belvedere, Vienna (2014); La Triennale, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2012); Ecstatic Alphabets/Heaps of Language, MoMA, New York (2012); Greater New York 2010, MoMA PS1, New York (2010); The Generational: Younger than Jesus, New Museum, New York (2010); Afro-Modernism: Journeys through the Black Atlantic, Tate Liverpool (2010); Manifesta 7, Trentino-South Tyrol, Italy (2008); After 1968: Contemporary Artists and the Civil Rights Legacy, High Museum of Art, Atlanta (2008); Object, The Undeniable Success of Operations, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2008); Manifesto Marathon, The Serpentine Gallery, London (2008); Sympathy for the Devil: Art and Rock and Roll Since 1967, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2007); Performa 07, New York (2007);Talk Show, ICA, London (2007); Resistance Is, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2007); Frequency, The Studio Museum of Harlem (2005–06); and Double Consciousness: Black Conceptual Art Since the 1970s, Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston (2005).

Adrienne Edwards is a curator, scholar, and writer of performance with a focus on artists of the African diaspora and the Global South. She is an associate curator at Performa and a PhD candidate in performance studies at New York University, where she is a Corrigan Doctoral Fellow. Edwards’s research interpolates visual and time-based art, experimental dance, critical race theory, feminist theory, and post-structuralist philosophy. She has curated and co-organized numerous performance art projects, including Rashid Johnson's first live work, Dutchman; Dave McKenzie's All the King's horses...none of his men; Clifford Owens's Five Days Worth; Fluxus founding member Benjamin Patterson's first retrospective concert Action as Composition; and Pope.L's Cage Unrequited; among others. Edwards is a contributor to numerous exhibition catalogues and art publications—including Clifford Owens: Anthology, for MoMA/PS1, Performa, 11 for Performa, Fore, for the Studio Museum in Harlem, and Wangechi Mutu, for the Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney—and is performance reviews editor for the journal of feminist theory Women & Performance.

Event Link

PERFORMANCE: Lawrence Graham-Brown

Omnia Vanitas

“Lamentation” – Friday, June 27, 2014, 8pm

“Joy” – Saturday, June 28, 2014, 8pm

This is a nude performance

General admission: $20

THE PERFORMING GARAGE

33 Wooster Street

New York, NY

Lawrence Graham-Brown’s Omina Vanitas is a live art performance diptych spanning two nights. Aural and scent-laden, Omina Vanitas explores the conduct of vanity and the effects and repercussions of it on gay culture.

Lawrence Graham Brown – OMNIA VANITAS - The Performing Garage from The Wooster Group on Vimeo.

Event Link

Ticket Link

ARTIST TALK: Nnenna Okore / Brooklyn, NY / May 25, 2014

Nnenna Okore. Photo by Ellie Hawkins. Image via bam.org.

Moderated by Holly Shen Chaves

Sunday, May 25, 2014, 3:30pm

Part of DanceAfrica 2014

BAM | BROOKLYN ACADEMY OF MUSIC

BAM Fisher Hillman Studio

321 Ashland Place

Brooklyn, NY

From bam.org:

Acclaimed visual artist Nnenna Okore—commissioned as part of the 2014 DanceAfrica Festival—discusses and demonstrates her sculptural process in this unique talk. The discussion between Okore and BAM Visual Art curator Holly Shen Cheaves in the BAM Fisher Hillman Studio will be followed by a complimentary rooftop reception in the Stutz Garden.

Admission is free and on a first-come, first-served basis. Wristbands will be distributed in the BAM Fisher lobby starting at 2pm.

Event Link

ARTIST TALK: William Villalongo / Brooklyn, NY / April 8, 2014

William Villalongo, Sista Ancesta (Ad Reinhardt-Congo). Image via trestlegallery.org.

Tuesday, April 8th, 2014 at 6:30pm

RSVP: trestle@brooklynartspace.org

TRESTLE PROJECTS

400 Third Avenue

Brooklyn, NY

From trestlegallery.org:

William Villalongo was born 1975 in Hollywood, FL and raised in the town of Bridgeton, NJ. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science & Art and his Masters of Fine Arts from Tyler School of Art at Temple University. Villalongo’s work was first introduced to the public through the Studio Museum in Harlem in 2004 and PS1 MoMA’s Greater NY 2005 exhibition. He is the recipient of both the Louis Comfort Tiffany Award and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptor’s Grant. His work is included in several notable public collections including the Studio Museum in Harlem, El Museo Del Barrio, Princeton University Art Museum and The Whitney Museum of American Art. His work has been reviewed in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, The New Yorker and the New York Times and Art In America. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY and is a Lecturer at the Yale University School of Art.

IN CONVERSATION: Julie Mehretu / Atlanta, GA / April 21, 2014

Julie Mehretu by Emmett Malmstrom. Image via artmarketmoniter.com.

Conversations with Contemporary Artists: Julie Mehretu

Monday, April 21, 2014, 7:00pm

Tickets: $15 public, $10 members, $5 students.

HIGH MUSEUM OF ART

Alliance Theater

1280 Peachtree St NE

Atlanta, GA

From high.org:

Join MacArthur Foundation Award–winning artist Julie Mehretu as she discusses her career and work, including the High Museum of Art’s recent acquisition, Mogamma (A Painting in Four Parts): Part II (2012). Mehretu, whose work is known for its dynamic formal complexity and multi-layered imagery, is interested in how the architecture of the public square, a site of social and political change, connects to the community. 

Alluding to the events of the Arab Spring, her Mogamma series – titled in reference to the government building just south of Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt – features detailed renderings of structures in Tripoli, Libya; Cairo; and other Middle Eastern cities where uprisings have occurred recently. Produced for the 2012 exhibition Documenta XIII in Germany, this series – including the High’s recent acquisition – exhibits Mehretu’s deft use of gestural marks, sweeping lines, and silkscreened patterns, suggesting the often urgent and always complex patterns of migrant peoples. 

The High is honored to bring Mehretu to Atlanta for this special event. Don’t miss this opportunity to hear from the artist and learn about her works. 

Event Link   

EVENT: Conversations Among Friends / New York / April 4, 2014

Featuring Lyle Ashton Harris, Deana Lawson, and Salamishah Tillet

Moderated by Lucy Gallun, Assistant Curator, Department of Photography, MoMA

Friday, April 4, 2014

7:00 pm program | 8:15 pm reception

Doors open at 6:45 pm

The Museum of modern art

The Celeste Bartos Theater (Theater 3)

The Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Education and Research Building

4 West 54^th Street

New York, NY

General Admission tickets ($35), Member Tickets ($20) may be purchased at The Museum information and film desks, online at MoMA.org, or through the Friends of Education Office.

All tickets will be held at the door.

Presented by The Friends of Education of The Museum of Modern Art as part of the series Conversations: Among Friends, this evening's program features a conversation between artists Deana Lawson and Lyle Ashton Harris, and scholar and author Salamishah Tillet, moderated by Lucy Gallun, Assistant Curator, Department of Photography, MoMA. Following the program, guests are invited to continue the conversation and meet the participants at an intimate reception catered by Fantasy Fare in The Cullman Mezzanine.

For more than two decades Lyle Ashton Harris has cultivated a diverse artistic practice including photographic media, collage, installation, and performance. His work explores intersections between the personal and the political, examining the impact of ethnicity, gender, and desire on contemporary social and cultural dynamics. Known for his self-portraits and use of pop culture icons (such as Billie Holiday and Michael Jackson), Harris teases the viewers’ perceptions and expectations, signifying cultural cursors, and recalibrating the familiar with the extraordinary. His work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the 52nd Venice Biennale. His work has been acquired by major international museums, most recently by The Museum of Modern Art in New York. His commissioned work has been featured in a wide range of publications, including The New York Times Magazine and the New Yorker. In 2014 Harris joined the board of trustees of the American Academy in Rome. Born in New York City, Harris spent his formative years in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. He received his bachelor of arts with honors from Wesleyan University in 1988, and his masters in fine arts from the California Institute of the Arts in 1990. He currently lives and works in New York City and is an associate professor at New York University.

Deana Lawson is a photography-based artist born in Rochester, NY. She received her MFA in photography from Rhode Island School of Design in 2004, and currently teaches photography at Princeton University. Her work examines the body’s ability to channel personal and social histories, addressing themes of familial legacy, community, romance, and religious/spiritual aesthetics. Her practice borrows from simultaneous visual traditions, including photographic and figurative portraiture, social documentary aesthetics, and vernacular family-album photographs. Lawson is visually inspired by the materiality of black culture and its expression as seen through the body and in domestic environments. Lace curtains, artificial nails, blemished skin, colored weave, and plastic couch covers are examples of visual material that Lawson identifies and heightens in her pictures. Careful attention is given to lighting and pose, both formal constructs used to transform, inform, and intensify representations of power and liberation through personal and intimate space. Lawson meets her subjects in everyday walks of life: grocery stores; subway trains; busy avenues in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn; road trips taken to the deep south; and travel abroad to the West Indies and beyond. Exhibitions include Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago; Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; MoMA, New York; MoMA PS1, Long Island City, New York; Helene Bailly Gallery, Paris; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Kunst im Tunnel in Düsseldorf, Germany; Light Work, Syracuse, New York; Cohan & Leslie, New York; Collette Blanchard Gallery, New York; Artists Space, New York; The Print Center, Philadelphia; and Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta. Lawson is the recipient of the Art Matters Grant, John Gutmann Photography Fellowship, Rema Hort Mann Foundation Grant, Aaron Siskind Fellowship Grant, and a NYFA Grant. Her work has been published in the New Yorker, The Collector's Guide to New Art Photography Vol. 2, Time Out New York, Contact Sheet #154, and PQ Journal for Contemporary Photography Volume 24. Lawson has participated in residencies including Workspace Residency at Lower Manhattan Cultural Council in New York; Light Work in Syracuse, New York; and Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, NY

As a rape survivor, scholar, and writer, Dr. Salamishah Tillet has spent her career championing the rights and voices of our most vulnerable citizens. Nominated by Glamour magazine as a “Women of the Year,” named as one of the “Top 50 Global Leaders Ending Violence Against Children” by the Together for Girls’ Safe magazine, and America’s “Top Leaders Under 30” by Ebony, she has appeared on the BBC, CNN, MSNBC, and NPR, written for The Chicago Tribune, The Guardian, and The Root, and guest blogs for The Nation. Currently, she is an associate professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania and has faculty appointments in the departments of Africana studies, and gender, sexuality, and women’s studies. In 2003, Tillet and her sister, Scheherazade Tillet, co-founded A Long Walk Home, Inc., a non-profit that uses art therapy and the visual and performing arts to end violence against all girls and women. Tillet was also an associate producer of Aishah Shahidah Simmons’s groundbreaking NO! The Rape Documentary, and was featured in the award-winning Rape Is... by Cambridge Documentary Films. She is the author of Sites of Slavery: Citizenship and Racial Democracy in the Post-Civil Rights Imagination (Duke University Press, 2012). In 2011, she wrote the liner notes for the three-time Grammy-award winning album Wake Up! by John Legend and The Roots. In 2013, she published Gloria Steinem: The Kindle Singles Interview with Amazon, and she is currently working on a book on the Civil Rights icon, Nina Simone. She earned her PhD in the history of American civilization and AM in English and American literature from Harvard University, and her MA in teaching from Brown University. She also holds a BA in English and African American studies from the University of Pennsylvania. In 2010, she was awarded the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Award for Distinguished Teaching by an Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2010–11, she was the recipient of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Fellow for Career Enhancement and served as a visiting fellow at the Center of African American Studies at Princeton University. In 2013–14, she was invited to be an inaugural member of the Project of the Advancement of Our Common Humanity, a think tank at New York University. She is also a Scholar-in-Residence at the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.  

Lucy Gallun is assistant curator in the Department of Photography at The Museum of Modern Art, where her upcoming projects include an exhibition of photographs from the Shunk-Kender Photography Collection, as well as the next iteration of MoMA’s New Photography exhibition series (both 2015). At MoMA, Gallun has worked on numerous exhibitions including Staging Action: Performance in Photography since 1960 (2011); Boris Mikhailov: Case History (2011); Cindy Sherman (2012); The Shaping of New Visions: Photography, Film, Photobook (2012–13); A World of Its Own: Photographic Practices in the Studio (2014); and Christopher Williams: The Production Line of Happiness (upcoming 2014). Prior to coming to MoMA, she was the Whitney Lauder Curatorial Fellow at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, where she curated the exhibitions Everyday Imaginary (2010) and Erin Shirreff: Still, Flat, and Far (2010); and she was a Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program (ISP), where she co-curated the exhibition Time Out of Joint: Recall and Evocation in Recent Art, at The Kitchen, New York (2009). Gallun has also served as associate publisher at Gregory R. Miller & Co. She holds a BA in art history and urban studies from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.Phil in art history from the Graduate Center, City University of New York.

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