Visiting Artists Program
The Object Of Labor: Art, Cloth, and Cultural
Production
Fall Semester
Accompanying the release of the book The Object of Labor: Art, Cloth, and Cultural Production, edited by SAIC Professors Joan Livingston and John Ploof, this lecture series explores the personal, political, social, and economic meaning of work through the lens of art and textile production. The ubiquity of cloth in everyday life, the historically resonant relationship of textile and cloth to labor, and the tumultuous drive of globalization make the issues raised by this series of special interest today.
Barbara Layne
September 28 Wednesday 6 pm SAIC Auditorium, 280 Columbus Drive
Barbara Layne is an artist and professor at Concordia University and the Director of Studio subTela in Montreal. As a member of the Interactive Textiles group at the Hexagram Institute, she works at the intersection of textiles and technology, creating hand-woven fabrics with embedded electronic components.
Kevin Murray
October 3 Wednesday 6pm
SAIC Auditorium, 280 S. Columbus Drive
Kevin Murray is Director of Craft Victoria, a Melbourne-based organization that champions contemporary craft. Murray has curated a number of exhibitions, including Symmetry: Crafts Meet Kindred Trades and Professions; Turn the Soil: What If Australia Had Been Colonized by Someone Else?; Water Medicine: Precious Works for an Arid Continent; Seven Sisters: Fibre Works from the West, and Common Goods: Cultures Meet through Craft. His recent publication Craft Unbound: Make the Common Precious profiles Australian makers working in the field of ‘poor craft’. An archive of exhibitions, articles and blogs can be found at www.kitezh.com .
Janis Jefferies
October 10 Wednesday 6pm
SAIC Auditorium, 280 S. Columbus Drive
Janis Jefferies is an artist, writer, curator, and professor of visual arts at Goldsmiths College, University of London. She is Director of the Constance Howard Resource and Research Center in Textiles, London, and Artistic Director of Goldsmiths’ digital studios. Over the past twenty-five years, she has published widely and exhibited internationally, including Selvedges, a touring solo show with an accompanying catalogue.
Art and Politics
This series features artists and scholars addressing the ebb and flow of contemporary political art. The speakers, including visual artist Dan Perjovschi, will also explore the pitfalls and possibilities of making art that engages politics and society. Additional speakers and dates will be announced.
Gallery 2 and Project Space, 847 W. Jackson
This is Not a Self-Portrait
September 21 – October 20, 2007
Opening reception: Friday, September 21, 5:00 – 8:00 pm
Curated by students Sean Fader and Jill Frank, This is Not A Self Portrait showcases the work of over 20 artists who explore non-traditional approach to self-portraiture. The artists use their own image to convey their ideas to amazingly different ends. Are artists today tapping into a deeply rooted collective unconscious or are they simply using the self as a convenient stand in for the “other”? Are the mass media and the fifteen-minutes-of-fame culture driving today’s artists to need attention? Is there a new trajectory toward interiority in art?
Dan Perjovschi
October 8 Wednesday 6pm
SAIC Auditorium, 280 S. Columbus Drive
Dan Perjovschi lives and works in Bucharest, where he is a visual artist mixing drawing, cartoon and graffiti in artistic pieces drawn directly on the walls of museums and contemporary art spaces. He has played an active role in the development of the civil society in Romania, through his editorial activity with Revista 22 cultural magazine in Bucharest, and has stimulated exchange between the Romanian and international contemporary artistic scenes.
Do Not Disconnect
September 21 – October 20, 2007
Opening reception: Friday, September 21, 5:00 – 8:00 pm
Do Not Disconnect, curated by Kim Jackson, investigates the tenuous connections that exist at a time when distance is paradoxically diminished and increased. How do we individually and collectively maintain our relationships to our histories, environments, materials, and to each other?
Artists Include: Margarita Benitez, Kim Jackson, Eun Hyung Kim, Chris Lin, Rachel Moore, Alee Peoples, Armita Raafat, Michael Ruglio-Misurell, Shannon Schmidt, Rana Siegel
Chicago Humanities Festival: Climate of Concern
October 27 – November 11, 2007
The yearly Humanities Festival offers free tickets to students. This year’s theme, “Climate of Concern” will offer a wide range of lectures and exhibitions on art, design, and urban planning around the city. Check out www.chfestival.org for information on ordering tickets early (many sell out).
Diagrams in Art Activism
November 2 – 21, 2007
Opening reception: Friday, November 2, 5:00 – 8:00 pm
Curated by MAAH student Hillary Led and professor and artist Adelheid Mers. Students in Mers’s
seminar “Diagrams in Art and Activism” will organize an exhibition
that features selections of mapping-related works culled from the entire SAIC community, including artwork created in the studios and course work created in other seminars. This exhibition is scheduled to coincide with a mapping festival that will take place throughout the city of Chicago.
Fall Undergraduate Exhibition
November 17 – December 7, 2007
Opening reception: Friday, November 16, 7:00 – 10:00 pm
The usual catch-all of student work is a sort of “how I spent my summer” exhibition, including work from all media produced by SAIC’s undergraduate set.
Targeting Johns
November 2 – 21, 2007
Opening reception: Friday, November 2, 5:00 – 8:00 pm
As one of the most important artists of the past fifty years, Jasper Johns has had a tremendous impact in the realms of visual and popular culture. Johns paved the way for contextual experimentation and blurred the line between art and life. His artistic practice retains currency today.
SAIC places high emphasis on innovation and individual reflection. As artists continue to break new ground, evaluation of relevant concepts in Johns’s work remains important. Juxtaposing the work of contemporary artists with the upcoming selection, “Jasper Johns: Grey” showing November 2007 through January 2008 at The Art Institute of Chicago, will allow an open dialogue between the Museum and SAIC.
Targeting Johns will present a range of interpretations concerning the artist’s influence while providing an opportunity for students from disparate fields to engage with one another. Manifestations will be presented in a variety of media under the overarching concept of Jasper Johns’s oeuvre. Topics will include text as art, medium as object, use of literary devices in art, coded sexuality and issues of originality. A catalogue including critical essays will be available.
Participating artists currently include Rachel Eckstein, Brian McNearney, Molly Hartung and Servando Garcia.
