Monthly Archives: February 2017

****Special timing: Lecture Starts at 7:40 pm****

Exploring the seduction, magic, and desperation of our hyper-capitalist, globally-connected reality, Mika Rottenberg’s elaborate visual narratives draw on cinematic and sculptural traditions to forge a new language––one that uses cause and effect structures to explore labor and globalization, economy and production of value, and how our own affective relationships are increasingly monetized. Through film, architectural installation, and sculpture, her work illuminates an interconnectedness between seemingly unrelated economies; collapsing geographies and narratives, Rottenberg weaves documentary elements with fiction into complex allegories for human conditions and global systems.

Rottenberg has exhibited her work internationally, including at the 2015 Venice Biennale, the 2008 Whitney Biennial; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Tate Modern, London; the ICA Boston; Yokohama Museum of Art, Japan; and the Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain. Honors include fellowships at Sommerakademie im Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern (2011) and The Flaherty International Film Seminar (2010); awards from The Rema Hort Mann Foundation (2004) and The Cartier Award in conjunction with the Frieze Art Fair (2006). Her videos have been included in juried selections by Planete Doc Film Festival, Warsaw (2011) and CPH:DOX FIlm Festival, Copenhagen (2010).

Huma Bhabha has gained widespread recognition for her raw, sculptural forms, which evoke primeval, ritualistic personages or the post-apocalyptic inhabitants of a world gone awry. Constructed from such humble materials as air-dried clay, wire, mud, Styrofoam, studs and scavenged wood, her work explores the fertile ground where the amorphous and the material collide. In Bhabha’s hands, for example, a dilapidated, rusted and discarded chair is recycled into a throne upon which a cyborg king sits. Architectural materials, junk and baubles are thus re-assembled into hybrid beings.

Bhabha received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1985 and her MFA from Columbia University, New York in 1989. Bhabha’s first solo museum exhibition took place in 2012-13 at MoMA PS1 and she has had recent solo exhibitions at VeneKlasen Werner Gallery, Berlin (2014), Collezione Marmotti, Reggio Emilia, Italy (2012), and the Aspen Art Museum in Aspen (2011). Her work is included in the public collections of The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others. Huma Bhabha lives and works in Poughkeepsie, New York.

Morgan Bassichis makes live comedic solo performances that have been described as “out there” (by Morgan’s mother) and “super intense” (by Morgan). Morgan’s work has been featured at MoMA PS1 as part of the 2015 Greater New York exhibition, as well as at the Poetry Project, Artists Space, and the Whitney Museum. Morgan lives in Brooklyn.

Wu Tsang‘s films, installations, performances, and sculptures move fluidly between documentary, activism, and fiction. Her work often addresses experiences of transness, focusing on the roles that language and “voice” play in the construction of personhood. Her 2016 film, “Duilian” explores the history of the Chinese poet Qiu Jin and her intimate relationship with the calligrapher Wu Zhiying, engaging translation, the distortion of history, and martial arts. Her 2012 project “Wildness” circles around a weekly experimental performance night that Tsang and her collaborators host at the historic LA bar Silver Platter, long home to a cross-generational Latin LGBTQ community. The bar itself becomes a character in the film, teasing out notions “safespace” through a magical realist lens.

Tsang‘s projects have been presented at museums and film festivals internationally, including MoMA (New York), Tate Modern (London), Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), MCA (Chicago), MOCA (Los Angeles), Berlinale Film Festival (Berlin), SANFIC (Santiago), Hot Docs Festival (Toronto), and South by Southwest Film Festival (Austin). Her first feature film WILDNESS (2012) premiered at MoMA’s Documentary Fortnight, and her work was also featured in the 2012 Whitney Biennial and in “The Ungovernables” New Museum Triennial in New York. She has received grants from Creative Capital, the Warhol Foundation, and the Rockefeller and Guggenheim Foundations.

Luis Camnitzer (b.1937) is a German-born Uruguayan artist and writer who moved to New York in 1964. He was at the vanguard of 1960s Conceptualism, working primarily in printmaking, sculpture, and installations. Camnitzer’s artwork explores subjects such as social injustice, repression, and institutional critique. His humorous, biting, and often politically charged use of language as art medium has distinguished his practice for over four decades. Camnitzer’s work has been shown at important institutions since the 1960s, including one-person exhibitions at El Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos, Santiago, Chile (2013); Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis, MO (2011); El Museo del Barrio, New York (1995); Museo Carrillo Gil, Mexico City (1993); and List Visual Arts Center at M.I.T., Cambridge, MA (1991). Retrospectives of his work have been presented at Lehman College Art Gallery in the Bronx, New York (1991); Kunsthalle Kiel, Germany (2003); Daros Museum in Zurich, Switzerland, El Museo del Barrio, New York; and Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellin, Bogota, Colombia (2010–13).  His work has appeared in numerous group exhibitions, including Under the Same Sun: Art from Latin America Today at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY (2014); the seminal Information show at Museum of Modern Art, New York (1970); among others. He has been featured in several international biennials, including the Bienal de la Habana, Cuba (1984, 1986, 1991, 2009); Pavilion of Uruguay, 43 Biennale di Venezia, Italy (1988); Whitney Biennial (2000); and Documenta 11 (2002).