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Zoom conversation on ecofeminism I: Lynn Hershman Leeson, Mary Mattingly, Hanae Utamura, and Julie Reiss, Ph.D.

ecofeminism(s) 

PUBLIC PROGRAM ONLINE: ZOOM CONVERSATIONS WITH THE ARTISTS
moderated by ecofeminism(s) curator, Monika Fabijanska

July 8, 6:30 PM EST
Lynn Hershman Leeson
Mary Mattingly 
Hanae Utamura
Julie Reiss, Ph.D., Christie’s Education

Lynn Hershman Leeson (American, b. 1941) is artist and filmmaker acclaimed for the pioneering use of new technologies through which she addresses issues such as trauma, identity loss, and the relationship between the real and the virtual. Her work in media-based technology pioneered digital art forms. She also made some of the earliest works that used artificial intelligence, biological computing, and DNA manipulation. As a film director she wrote, directed and produced Strange Culture, Conceiving Ada, and Teknolust, all starring Tilda Swinton, which screened at the Sundance, Toronto and Berlin festivals; and a 2011 groundbreaking documentary !Women Art Revolution. Leeson’s 2014 retrospective organized at the ZKM Karlsruhe traveled to Yerba Buena Center, 2017. Her works are in the collections of MoMA, Whitney Museum, ZKM, LACMA, SFMoMA, Walker Art Center, Berkeley Museum of Art, and National Gallery of Art of Canada. She received Siggraph Lifetime Achievement Award, Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica, Guggenheim Fellowship, USA Artist Fellowship, NEA, and College Art Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

Mary Mattingly (American, b. 1978) is a photographer and sculptor. She founded Swale, an edible landscape on a barge in New York City to circumvent public land laws. Currently, Mattingly is artist in residence at the Brooklyn Public Library and preparing to launch "Public Water" – a public sculpture about NYC's drinking watershed with More Art. In 2018 she worked with BRIC Arts to build "What Happens After" which involved dismantling a military vehicle and deconstructing its mineral supply chain. Her work has been exhibited in museums such as the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de la Habana, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Brooklyn Museum, Storm King, the International Center of Photography, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Palais de Tokyo. Her work has been featured in Aperture, Art in America, Artforum, Sculpture Magazine, The New York Times, Le Monde Magazine, New Yorker, and on BBC News, NPR, on Art21.

Hanae Utamura (Japanese, b. 1980) is multimedia artist, working in video, performance, installation, and sculpture. She received her MA from Chelsea College of Art and Design, and her BA from Goldsmiths, University of London and exhibits extensively in Asia, Europe and the U.S. Numerous international residencies and fellowships include Akademie Schloss Solitude (Stuttgart), Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Berlin), PACT Zollverein (Essen), Art Omi (Hudson, NY), Santa Fe Art Institute Residency, Aomori Contemporary Art Center (Aomori), National Museum of Contemporary Art, Changdong Art Studio (Seoul), Seoul Art Space_GEUMCHEON (Seoul), Florence Trust (London). She has been awarded NYFA Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program, Shiseido Art Egg Award, Japanese Ministry of Culture Grant, Pola Art Foundation, UNESCO-Aschberg Bursary Award, and Axis/Florence Trust Award. In 2019 she was a visiting scholar at New York University as a part of Japan – U.S. Exchange Friendship Program in the Art. Utamura is based in New York and Buffalo, NY.

Julie Reiss is a pioneering scholar in the field of Installation art. She is the author of From Margin to Center: The Spaces of Installation Art (MIT Press, 1999), in addition to numerous articles and reviews. Julie has spoken on panels related to art and the climate crisis including “Shifting Domains: Artists Respond to the Threatened Ecological Commons (Marfa Ballroom Dialogues, 2013), and “Landscape and Anthropocene” (College Art Association, 2016). She chaired a panel on art in the Anthropocene at the 2017 Conference for the Council for European Studies. She is the editor of Art, Theory and Practice in the Anthropocene (Vernon Press, 2018). In 2019 she organized the symposium “The Role of Art in the Environmental Crisis” at Christie’s Education, and was the guest critic on the same theme at The Brooklyn Rail. She directs Modern and Contemporary Art and the Market, an accredited MA program at Christie’s Education. 

MORE ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Image: Mary Mattingly (American, b. 1978), Life of Objects, 2013, Archival Pigment Print, 30 x 30 in. Edition 5/5 ©Mary Mattingly. Courtesy of Robert Mann Gallery