Curator-Led Tour of Women at War

Saturday, October 19, 2024, 1:00 PM
Michigan Avenue Galleries, 1st Floor East

Chicago Cultural Center
78 E Washington St, Chicago, IL 60602
Admission is free

Join us on Saturday, October 19, 2024, for an insightful journey through the "Women at War" exhibition with curator Monika Fabijanska. These exclusive tours offer a deeper understanding of the powerful stories and artistic expressions that highlight the often-overlooked experiences of women in wartime.

Each tour will provide an intimate look at the artworks, offering unique insights into the creative process and the historical contexts that shaped these powerful pieces. Monika Fabijanska will guide you through the exhibition, sharing her curatorial vision and the narratives that connect the works on display.

Whether you're an art enthusiast or simply curious to learn more about the intersection of art and history, these tours promise to enrich your understanding of the pivotal roles women have played in shaping the world through their resilience and strength.

More information

Image: Anna Scherbyna, Semenivka 2016. Psychiatric Hospital, 2017 (Some Landscapes of the Left-bank Ukraine series), watercolor on paper, 2.4 x 3.9 in ©Anna Scherbyna. Courtesy of the artist and The Naked Room

Curator-Led Tour of Women at War

Saturday, October 19, 2024, 1:00 PM
Michigan Avenue Galleries, 1st Floor East

Chicago Cultural Center
78 E Washington St, Chicago, IL 60602
Admission is free

Join us on Saturday, October 19, 2024, for an insightful journey through the "Women at War" exhibition with curator Monika Fabijanska. These exclusive tours offer a deeper understanding of the powerful stories and artistic expressions that highlight the often-overlooked experiences of women in wartime.

Each tour will provide an intimate look at the artworks, offering unique insights into the creative process and the historical contexts that shaped these powerful pieces. Monika Fabijanska will guide you through the exhibition, sharing her curatorial vision and the narratives that connect the works on display.

Whether you're an art enthusiast or simply curious to learn more about the intersection of art and history, these tours promise to enrich your understanding of the pivotal roles women have played in shaping the world through their resilience and strength.

More information

Image: Zhanna Kadyrova, Palianytsia, 2022, mixed media installation ©Zhanna Kadyrova. Courtesy of the artist and Galeria Continua

Exclusive Interview: Monika Fabijanska with Critic Susan Snodgrass

Friday, October 18, 2024, 6:30 PM
Millennium Park Room, 5th Floor South
following

5:30 PM Guided Tour with Curator Monika Fabijanska
Michigan Avenue Galleries, 1st Floor East

accompanying exhibition Women at War

Chicago Cultural Center
78 E Washington St, Chicago, IL 60602
Admission is free

Engage in a thought-provoking conversation between the exhibition curator Monika Fabijanska and renowned Chicago-based art critic Susan Snodgrass. Delve deeper into the themes of the exhibition, discuss the impact of art in documenting history, the realities of life under war in Ukraine, the potential of feminist historiography, the feminisms in Eastern Europe, and gain unique insights into the creative process behind “Women at War.”

Don’t miss this unique opportunity to connect with fellow art enthusiasts, gain a deeper understanding of the pivotal roles women have played in shaping history, and celebrate the power of art to convey profound stories.

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Monika Fabijanska, Olia Fedorova, and Alevtina Kakhidze in Conversation

Wednesday, March 20, 2024, 12 PM CST, Live-streamed

accompanying the exhibition

WOMEN AT WAR

Yevgenia Belorusets, Oksana Chepelyk, Olia Fedorova, Alena Grom, Zhanna Kadyrova, Alevtina Kakhidze, Dana Kavelina, Lesia Khomenko, Vlada Ralko, Anna Scherbyna, Kateryna Yermolaeva, and Alla Horska (1929-1970)

February 29 - April 27, 2024

School of Art Gallery, University of Manitoba
255 ARTlab
180 Dafoe Road
Winnipeg, MB R3T 2N2
Canada

More about the exhibition

Image: Olia Fedorova (L), Alevtina Kakhidze (R)

WOMEN AT WAR: Art in Ukraine and the question of feminist historioghraphy
Lecture by curator Monika Fabijanska

Thursday, February 29, 12 PM CST, 364 ARTlab

accompanying the exhibition

WOMEN AT WAR

Yevgenia Belorusets, Oksana Chepelyk, Olia Fedorova, Alena Grom, Zhanna Kadyrova, Alevtina Kakhidze, Dana Kavelina, Lesia Khomenko, Vlada Ralko, Anna Scherbyna, Kateryna Yermolaeva, and Alla Horska (1929-1970)

February 29 - April 27, 2024

School of Art Gallery, University of Manitoba
180 Dafoe Road
Winnipeg, MB R3T 2N2
Canada

More about the exhibition

Image: Vlada Ralko, Lviv Diary No.020, 2022, ink and watercolor on paper, 11.5 x 8.5 in ©Vlada Ralko. Courtesy of Voloshyn Gallery and Fridman Gallery

Conversation with artists
Zhanna Kadyrova and Alevtina Kakhidze
moderated by curator Monika Fabijanska
accompanying the exhibition

WOMEN AT WAR

at Fridman Gallery
169 Bowery, New York City

Wednesday, August 10, 1 PM WATCH HERE

Zhanna Kadyrova (b. 1981 in Brovary, Kyiv oblast) works in sculpture, installation, and public art, and is a member of R.E.P. collective. Her practice focuses on the context, site and space, and often references Soviet building materials, aesthetics, and symbols that shaped Ukrainian public space. She graduated from the Taras Shevchenko State Art School. She received PinchukArtCentre Main Prize, 2013, and Special Prize, 2011, as well as the Kazimir Malevich Artist Award, the Sergey Kuryokhin Contemporary Art Award for Public Art, and the Grand Prix of the Kyiv Sculpture Project (all 2012). Kadyrova's works were featured in the 58th Venice Biennale International Art Exhibition curated by Ralph Rugoff, 2019, and twice in the Ukrainian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, in 2015 and 2013. Her works were shown at the M17 Contemporary Art Centre, Kyiv, 2021; the Shanghai International Sculpture Project JISP, 2020; Kunsthalle Mulhouse, France, 2020; the Ludwig Museum, Budapest, 2018; Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2016; Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2013; Bureau for Cultural Translations, Leipzig, 2016 (solo); the Kunstraum Innsbruck, Austria, 2015 (solo); Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, 2013; the National Art Museum of Ukraine, 2010, Zacheta National Art Gallery, Warsaw, 2008; De Appel, Amsterdam, 2008; and several times at the PinchukArtCentre in Kyiv, where her first major retrospective will be held in 2023. She lived and worked in Kyiv - since March 2022, she has been displaced to rural Western Ukraine.

| kadyrova.com | instagram.com/jannkad

Alevtina Kakhidze (b. 1973 in Zhdanivka, Donetsk oblast) is an artist, performer, curator, and gardener who focuses on drawing, and social and ecofeminist practice. Since 2018, she has served as the United Nations (UNDP) Tolerance Envoy in Ukraine. Kakhidze graduated from the National Academy of Fine Arts in Kyiv, 2004, and Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht, 2006, and was awarded the Kazimir Malevich Artist Award in 2008. She presented her performances and lectures at the UNWomen Conference, 2020; PinchukArtCentre, Kyiv, 2019; Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2016; Manifesta 10, 2014; The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, 2015; 7th Berlin Biennale: KW Institute for Contemporary Art, 2012; and The New Theatre in the New Great World, Warsaw, 2010. Her solo exhibitions include rum24, Aarhus, Denmark, 2020; Bozar, Brussels, 2017; PinchukArtCentre, Kyiv, 2014; FUTURA Centre for Contemporary Art, Prague, 2013; and Iaspis, Stockholm, 2009. Her works were featured in group shows at the M17 Contemporary Art Center, Kyiv, 2021; Elisabeth Jones Art Center, Portland, OR, 2021; Ludwig Museum, Budapest, 2018; M HKA, Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp, 2018; Wurttembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, 2017; Kunsthall Trondheim, Norway, 2016; National Museum of Modern Art, Kyiv, 2014; CCA Zamek Ujazdowski, Warsaw, 2013; Moroccan Pavilion project at the 54th Venice Biennial, 2012; MOCAK, Krakow; Galeria Arsenał, Białystok, Poland; and Mystetskyi Arsenal, Kyiv, all 2011. Since 2009, Kakhidze has lived and worked in Muzychi village near Kyiv.

| www.alevtinakakhidze.com | instagram.com/truealevtina

Conversation with artists
Lesia Khomenko and Anna Scherbyna
and special guest Ksenia Nouril (The Print Center, Philadelphia)
moderated by curator Monika Fabijanska
accompanying the exhibition

WOMEN AT WAR

at Fridman Gallery
169 Bowery, New York City

Wednesday, July 27, 1 PM WATCH HERE
Lesia Khomenko (b. 1980 in Kyiv) is a multidisciplinary artist who reconsiders the role of painting – she deconstructs narrative images and transforms paintings into objects, installations, performances, or videos. Her interest lies in revealing tools of visual manipulation in the context of history-making and myth-making. She graduated from the National Academy of Fine Art and Architecture in Kyiv, 2004. A member of R.E.P. group since 2004, she is also a co-founder of curatorial union HUDRADA, a self-educational community based on interdisciplinary cooperation, 2008. Khomenko is an initiator and program director of the “Contemporary Art” course at the Kyiv Academy of Media Arts. Her works were shown in many exhibitions, including at the Lviv Municipal Art Center, 2021 (solo); PinchukArtCentre, Kyiv, 2018 (solo); MNAC, Bucharest, 2016; The Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki, 2015; CCA Zamek Ujazdowski, Warsaw, 2014; The Future Generation Art Prize@Venice2013; Kyiv Biennial 2012 (main project); National Art Museum of Ukraine, 2012; Mystetskyi Arsenal, Kyiv, 2011 (solo); Kalmar Konstmuseum, Sweden, 2011; White Box, New York, 2010; MUMOK, Vienna, 2009; Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, 2008; De Appel, Amsterdam, 2008; Ukrainian pavilion at Venice Biennale, 2007 (a collaboration with Mark Titchner); and Kunsthalle Vienna, 2006. She was a finalist of the Pinchuk Art Prize in 2009, 2011, and 2013, and a 2016 finalist of the Kazimir Malevich Award, Kyiv. She lives and works in Kyiv - since March 2022, she has temporarily been in the West.

| lesiakhomenko.com | instagram.com/lesia_khomenko

Anna Scherbyna (b. 1988 in Zaporizhzhia) is artist, curator, and illustrator. Her artistic practice examines the critical potential of mediums such as installation and video, drawing and painting, exploring the visual traditions of Ukraine’s painting school, political aspects of a landscape, historical memory, and gender performativity. She graduated from the National Academy of Visual Art and Architecture (2015) and Contemporary Art Course (2015). She participated in numerous exhibitions and projects, including The Portal, VBKÖ, Vienna, 2021; Armed and Dangerous, 2019; A Space of One’s Own, Pinchuk Art Centre, Kyiv, 2017; Edenia, the city if the future, Kharkiv, 2017; Socialist Realism. Seeming to Be Another, Kyiv, 2017; TEXTUS. Embroidery, textile, feminism, Kyiv, 2017; In a shelter, Paris, 2015.

Scherbyna’s curatorial practice is driven by the feminist approach to building artistic communities and collaborations. As a member of curatorial groups, she organized a reading club for artists and theoreticians Chytanka (2020), international feminist exhibition The Cave of the Golden Rose, Kyiv, 2019, and Sabber, Deer and Spining Wheel in Stanica Luhanska, 2018. She was a co-founder of the Concrete Dates Collective (2015–17), and a member of the art-group “Iod” (2013–15). Since 2009, she has lived and worked in Kyiv; and since March 2022 in Germany.

| scherbynaanna.com | instagram.com/annascherbynaaaa

Conversation with artists
Dana Kavelina and Olia Fedorova
moderated by curator Monika Fabijanska
accompanying the exhibition

WOMEN AT WAR

at Fridman Gallery
169 Bowery, New York City

Wednesday, July 13, 1 PM WATCH HERE

Olia Fedorova (b. 1994 in Kharkiv) is a conceptual artist who works with performance, photography, video, and text. She graduated from the Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Fine Arts in 2016. She was the winner of the Nathan Altman Contemporary Visual Art Contest, Vinnytsia, 2017; a finalist of Ukrainian Biennale of Young Art, Kharkiv, 2019; and MUHi (Young Ukrainian Artists), Kyiv, 2017. Solo exhibitions include: Municipal gallery, Kharkiv, 2021, 2017; Contemporary Art Center Tea Factory, Odessa, 2017; and several galleries in Kharkiv, Kyiv, and Dnipro. Group exhibitions include Eye/View II organized by Videocity, Electronic Billboard at the Congress Center Basel, 2022; Association for Contemporary Art, Graz, 2020; Brüdershaft project, supported by the German Embassy in Ukraine (Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipro), 2020; International Winter Land Art Festival Mythogenesis (Nemyriv, Ukraine, 2017-2020; and Museum of Ideas, Lviv, 2017. Fedorova participated in many artist residency programs, including in Mariupol, Ukraine; in the UK, Austria, Germany, and Poland; as well as online during the covid-19 pandemic, including Co-iki Arts Living Space (Tokyo), and American Art Incubator residency (Isolation Fund, Kyiv/Zero1, San-Francisco). Fedorova lives and works in Kharkiv – since May 2022, she has been a refugee in Graz, Austria.

| oliafedorova.com | instagram.com/olia_off

Dana Kavelina (b. 1995 in Melitopol) works primarily with animation and video, but also installation, painting and graphics. She graduated from the Department of Graphics at the National Technical University of Ukraine. Her works often address military violence and war, seen from gender perspective—especially with regard to the position of a victim as a political subject—as well as the distance between historical and individual trauma, and memory and misrepresentation. Her works were exhibited at the Museum Folkwang Essen, 2022; MAXXI – Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo, Rome, 2022; Zionskirche, Berlin, 2022; Kristianstad Kunsthalle, Sweden, 2021; Kmytiv Museum of Soviet Art, Ukraine, 2019; and Closer, Kyiv, 2019. Kavelina’s films were screened at the Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Rivoli-Turin, 2022; HKW, Berlin, 2022; ICA LA, Los Angeles, CA, 2022; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, 2022; and e-flux, New York, NY, 2021. Her animated film Mark Tulip, who spoke with flowers received the Special Jury Mention at the 2019 Odessa International Film Festival, and the Grand Prix of the 2018 KROK animation festival, Kyiv. Kavelina was based in Kyiv and Lviv, Ukraine; since March 2022, she has been a refugee in Germany.

| instagram.com/frau.hiroshima

CLOSING CONVERSATION: "IF YOU GRIND THE THRESHOLD OF THREE OTHER HOUSES"
Friday, May 13, 2022 | 1:30 - 2:30 PM

Join us via Zoom for a special conversation between artist Bang Geul Han and curator Monika Fabijanska next Friday, May 13 at 1:30 pm as part of a closing event for Han’s solo exhibition “If You Grind the Threshold of Three Other Houses.”

In light of the recent Supreme Court leak overturning Roe v. Wade, the conversation will focus on Han’s recent works exploring the intersections of reproductive rights, abortion law, and questions of race and class, in relation to wider questions of relationships between text, desire, power, and representation.

To register for this online conversation, click the link HERE.

ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVISM - TFAP ECOFEMINISMS, PART 1
The Feminist Art Project Day of Panel(s) @CAA
Live Session and Q&A: Fri. February 12, 5-6:30 PM EST Free, TFAP registration required

109th CAA Annual Conference (complete program)
February 10–13, 2021

Presenters:
Alicia Grullón, artist, CUNY and School of Visual Arts
Notes from an Artist: From Climate Change to Pandemic in the Bronx
Monika Fabijanska, independent art historian and curator
The Evolution of ecofeminim(s)
Diane Burko, artist
My 50 Year Journey from Feminist Activist to Environmental Activist: From Observer to Investigator to Communicator

Taking my exhibition ecofeminism(s) (Thomas Erben Gallery, 2020) as a starting point, my presentation The evolution of ecofeminism(s) will discuss how the legacy of the pioneers of ecofeminist art has been continued, developed or opposed. Ecofeminist art of the 1970s was largely defined by spiritual feminism, leading by the mid-1980s to activist positions which resulted in their inventing some of most radical art forms. The historical perspective acquired over the last fifty years reveals how revolutionary the work of pioneer feminist artists was, and how relevant it remains in the era of #MeToo Movement, climate change, and the decolonialization activisms in the U.S. 

This session aligns with both the Committee on Women in the Arts 50/50 Initiative and the CAA's 2021 theme of climate crisis.

Image: Kai Lumumba Barrow and Gallery of the Streets, ECOHYBRIDITY: Love Song for NOLA. a visual [black] opera in 5 movements, 2015 ©Kai Lumumba Barrow. Courtesy of the artist.

SPIRITUAL ECOFEMINISM AND PATRIARCHAL GODS:
THE ART OF BILGE FRIEDLAENDER, HELÈNE AYLON AND JOAN JONAS

Conference registration required

109th CAA Annual Conference (complete program)
February 10–13, 2021; recorded sessions available through March 15

Chair: Monika Fabijanska
Presenters:
Mira Friedlaender, Director, Bilge Friedlaender’s Estate
Bilge Friedlaender’s Cedar Forest
Rachel Federman, Ph.D., Associate Curator, The Morgan Library & Museum
On the Path: Helène Aylon’s Earth Ambulance (1982) and two sacs en route (1985)
Jovana Stokic, Ph.D., School of Visual Arts
Emergent Ecologies in the Works of Joan Jonas

The recognition by pioneer ecofeminist artists that Western patriarchal philosophy and religions have served to subordinate and exploit both women and nature is particularly resonant in the era of #MeToo Movement and climate change. This session will discuss three alternative approaches to ecofeminist critique of patriarchal religious or mythological systems.

In her 1980s works about Gilgamesh, Bilge Friedlaender (1934-2000) exposed the motif of the Sumerian king cutting the sacred cedar forest in quest for fame. Her questioning of the myth of the male hero corresponds to Helène Aylon’s (1931-2020) ecofeminist activist projects, rooted in the critique of the Torah as a patriarchal system of belief, and of gender roles in Judaism.  Joan Jonas (b.1936), working from myths, has creatively transformed roles assigned to women in society since the 1970s, predating the theory of gender performativity. In Moving Off the Land II (2019), she transformed the role of a Witch into its enlightened version of a Guide/Teacher that women can play in postmodernity—when both gender roles and speciesism have been questioned. 

This session aligns with both the Committee on Women in the Arts 50/50 Initiative and the CAA's 2021 theme of climate crisis.

Image: Joan Jonas, Moving Off the Land II, 2019, video still, courtesy of the artist

AVIVA RAHMANI: FROM ECOFEMINISM TO CLIMATE JUSTICE

109th CAA Annual Conference (complete program)
February 10–13, 2021; recorded sessions available through March 15

Prerecorded session available Feb. 9 - Mar. 15; live Q&A: Wed. February 10, 2-2:30 PM EST
Conference registration required

Chair: Robert R. Shane, Ph.D., College of Saint Rose in Albany, NY
Presenters:
Rebecca Lowery, MOCA, Los Angeles
Tender Investigations: The Early Work of Aviva Rahmani
Monika Fabijanska, independent art historian and curator, New York
Models of Healing after Rape and Ecocide: The Art of Aviva Rahmani
Chave Maeve Krivchenia, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Rock Formations: Aviva Rahmani's “Blue Rocks” (2002)
Gale Elston, Law Offices of Gale P. Elston, PC, New York
Aviva Rahmani’s use of the Visual Artists’ Rights Act and Eminent Domain Law as a Medium in Her Artwork “Blued Trees Symphony”
Aviva Rahmani, discussant

Ecoartist, feminist, and composer Aviva Rahmani has been engaged with transdisciplinary art practices and social/ecojustice for over 50 years. Leading her performance group American Ritual Theater (1968-1971), Rahmani was one of the first artists to treat the topic of rape and went on to play a formative role in Ablutions (1972) with Suzanne Lacy, Sandra Orgel, and Judy Chicago. Since 1989 she has pioneered ecoart projects, such as Ghost Nets (1989-2000) and her continentally-scaled Blued Trees Symphony and Opera (2015-present), which not only address climate change, but make major changes to ecosystems through small-scale but strategic interventions she calls “trigger points”—the focus of her interdisciplinary PhD research. This conference session is similarly an intervention that seeks to make a major change by introducing Rahmani’s body of work to art historians, evaluate her legacy thus far, and engage with her current projects that address the most pressing issues of our time.

This session aligns with both the Committee on Women in the Arts 50/50 Initiative and the CAA's 2021 theme of climate crisis.

Image: Aviva Rahmani, Bed of Nets, 1992. Courtesy of the artist

ecofeminism(s) 

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

July 22, 6:30 PM EST
Betsy Damon
Eliza Evans 
Carla Maldonado
Eleanor Heartney, art writer, contributing editor, Art in America

Betsy Damon (American, b. 1940) is water artist whose public work and living systems have received widespread acclaim. She created important feminist ritual performances in public space in New York: 7,000 Year Old Woman (1976-79), Blind Beggar Woman (1979-81), A Rape Memory (1981-83), The Shrine for Everywoman (1985-1990), and A Mediation With Stones for the Survival of the Planet (1983-89), and exhibited at P.S.1 in the 1980s. The installation The Memory of Clean Water shown at the Everhart Museum, traveled to many museums, 1986-91. At the age of 50, Damon changed the focus of her art to center on water, its conservation and protection, and its impact on the society. Among her large scale projects mobilizing art, science and communities around local water problems, are those on the Cheyenne River, ND (2019), in Larimer, PA (2012-2016), Olympic Forest Park, Beijing, China (2002-06), for the Beijing Bureau of Hydraulic Research & Engineering, China (2001-2003), and Living Water Garden, Chengdu, China (1996).

Eliza Evans experiments with sculpture, print, video, and textiles to identify disconnections and absurdities in social, economic, and ecological systems. The initial parameters of each work are carefully researched and then evolve as a result of interaction with people, time, and weather. Evans was born in a rustbelt steel town and raised in rural Appalachia. She currently splits her time between New York City and the Hudson Valley. Her work was exhibited at the Chautauqua Institution, Chautauqua, NY (2019), Edward Hopper House Museum, Nyack, NY (2019), Chashama Sculpture Field, Pine Plains, NY (2018), BRIC, Brooklyn (2017), and Purchase College, Purchase, NY (2017). Residencies include the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, UC Santa Barbara (2020), Bronx Museum AIM, and Franconia Sculpture Park, Shafer, MN (both 2019). Evans holds an MFA from SUNY Purchase College in visual art and a Ph.D. in economic sociology from the University of Texas at Austin.

Carla Maldonado (Brasilian, b. 1986) is a multimedia artist, working in photography, film and installation. Her work responds to socio-political issues; patriarchy and the environmental crisis, and explores the struggle of progressive movements in Bolsonaro’s Brazil, and her immigrant experience in Trump’s era U.S. Maldonado's intuitively observational process is based on photographic and video documentation of environments she navigates and people she encounters – focusing on rebels, misfits and revolutionaries. She showed at the Satellite Art Show in Miami and Brooklyn; Film Fest at the Farm, Rhinebeck, NY; School of Visual Arts, NYC, SoMad Studio, NYC (all 2019); Barcelona Planet Film Festival, Spain (2018); and The Knockdown Center, Brooklyn (2017). She has BFA in Fashion Design from Senai Cetiqt, Rio de Janeiro, 2007; and MFA in Photography, Video & Related Media, SVA in New York, 2019. Maldonado lives and works in New York City and is currently AIM Fellow at The Bronx Museum.

Eleanor Heartney is an art critic and author and has written extensively on contemporary art issues for many publications, including Art in America, Artpress, Artnews, Art and Auction, The New Art Examiner, the Washington Post and the New York Times. Her books include Critical Condition: American Culture at the Crossroads, Postmodernism, Defending Complexity: Art Politics and the New World Order, Postmodern Heretics: The Catholic Imagination in Contemporary Art, Art and Today and Doomsday Dreams: the Apocalyptic Imagination in Contemporary Art. She is a co-author of After the Revolution: Women who Transformed Contemporary Art, and The Reckoning: Women Artists of the New Millennium. She is past President of AICA USA, the American section of the International Art Critics Association. Her awards include the College Art Association’s Frank Jewett Mather Award and the French government’s Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

MORE ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Image: Betsy Damon (American, b. 1940), The Memory of Clean Water, 1985, mixed media: paper pulp, grass, minerals ©Betsy Damon. Courtesy of the artist

ecofeminism(s) 

PUBLIC PROGRAM ONLINE: ZOOM CONVERSATIONS WITH THE ARTISTS

moderated by ecofeminism(s) curator, Monika Fabijanska

July 15, 6:30 PM EST

Aviva Rahmani
Sonya Kelliher-Combs 
Jessica Segall
Candice Hopkins, curator, writer, and a citizen of Carcross/Tagish First Nation

Pioneering ecological artist Aviva Rahmani (American, b. 1945) exhibits, publishes and presents internationally. Her project, The Blued Trees Symphony (2015-present), legally challenges expanding fossil fuel infrastructures with copyrighted and sonified installations across miles of North America. Her work has been included in exhibitions at the Independent Museum of Contemporary Art, Cyprus; the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Colorado; the Hudson River Museum, NY; the Cincinnati Center for Contemporary Art, Ohio; and the Joseph Beuys 100 days of Conference Pavilion, for the Venice Biennale, Italy. Her work has won numerous grants, fellowships and been written about internationally. She is an Affiliate with the Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado at Boulder; gained her PhD from the University of Plymouth, UK and received her BFA and MFA at the California Institute of the Arts. She is currently completing a residency with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council on Governors Island.

Sonya Kelliher-Combs (Native American, b. 1969) is an artist of mixed decent: Iñupiaq from the North Slope of Alaska, Athabascan from the Interior, German and Irish. She uses imagery and symbols that speak about culture and the life of her ancestors, and marginalization and the struggles of Indigenous peoples. She participated in numerous group exhibitions, including at Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., 2020; Minneapolis Institute of Art, 2019; Korundi Museum, Rovaniemi, Finland, 2018-19; John Jay College, NYC, 2018; Northern Norway Art Museum, Tromsø, 2016; Nordamerika Native Museum, Zurich, 2015; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 2013; National Museum of the American Indian, NYC, 2010; Museum of Art & Design, NYC, 2005; Cheongju International Craft Biennial, South Korea, 2005. Solo exhibitions include Minus Space, Brooklyn, NY 2019; the Northern Norway Art Museum, Svalbard, Norway, 2018; Institute of American Indian Art, Santa Fe, 2006; Anchorage Museum of History and Art, Anchorage, 2005; and Alaska State Museum, Juneau, 2001.

Jessica Segall is a multidisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, NY. Her work has been screened and exhibited internationally including The Fries Museum, the Havana Bienal, The National Gallery of Indonesia, The Queens Museum of Art, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, The Inside Out Museum, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Vojvodina, The Mongolian National Modern Art Gallery, The National Museum of Jewish American History and The National Symposium for Electronic Art. Segall received grants from The Pollock Krasner Foundation, The Rema Hort Mann Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, The Harpo Foundation and Art Matters and attended residencies at Princeton University, The Van Eyck Academie, The MacDowell Colony and Skowhegan. Her work has been featured in Cabinet Magazine, The New York Times, Sculpture Magazine, Mousse Magazine and Art in America. She received her BA from Bard College and MFA from Columbia University.

Candice Hopkins is a curator and writer and a citizen of Carcross/Tagish First Nation. She lives between Albuquerque, New Mexico and Toronto, Canada. She is Senior Curator of the 2019 and 2021 editions of the Toronto Biennial of Art. Hopkins was co-curator of major exhibitions including the Canadian Pavilion for the 58th Venice Biennial featuring the media art collective Isuma; the 2018 SITE Santa Fe biennial, Casa Tomada; documenta 14 in Athens, Greece and Kassel, Germany; Sakahàn: International Indigenous Art; and Close Encounters: The Next 500 Year. Her writing is published widely and her recent essays and presentations include "The Appropriation Debates (or The Gallows of History)" for MIT Press; “Outlawed Social Life," for South as a State of Mind; and "The Gilded Gaze: Wealth and Economies on the Colonial Frontier," for the documenta 14 Reader. 

MORE ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Image: Aviva Rahmani (American, b. 1945), Physical Education, 1973, performance documentation: slide projection ©Aviva Rahmani. Courtesy of the artis

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

Thursday, March 26, 2020, 6:30 PM
PANEL DISCUSSION opening the exhibition ADA TRILLO. LA CARAVANA
The New School University Center, Lecture Hall UL104
63 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10003
Register

The panel on the occasion of the opening of Ada Trillo first solo exhibition in New York City, La Caravana, featuring the artist; Professor Alex Aleinikoff, Director of the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility; and Alexandra Delano, Associate Professor of Global Studies, The New School; will be moderated by the exhibition curator, Monika Fabijanska.

Followed by the opening reception.

Presented by the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility, The New School
 
EXHIBITION: March 26-31, 2020
The New School
Skybridge Art Space
Eugene Lang College, 4th Floor
entrance from 65 W. 11th Street & 66 W. 12th Street, New York, NY 10011

In October 2018, Ada Trillo flew to Ciudad Hidalgo on the border of Guatemala, where the Caravan of Migrants was entering Mexico. Over the course of the following weeks, she traveled 2,600 miles to the U.S. border in Tijuana with 7,000 refugees, including 2,700 children, fleeing poverty and gang violence in Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua. Through photography, video and interviews, she presents La Caravana not just as a political issue but primarily a humanitarian crisis. Trillo positions her images as a mirror to fake words, making visible the narratives that are missing from public consciousness. Many in her photographs are young women disguising themselves as men to avoid rape, many are persons with disabilities, many – LGBT people. This is her first solo exhibition in New York.

“The people that I have met are not the criminals depicted by Donald Trump. I intend to tell their stories of bravery, strength and perseverance, that defy generalizations that intend to divide. I show what hope, and the loss of it, looks like for the asylum-seekers of our era.”

Born in El Paso and brought up in Ciudad Juarez – at one time called the most violent city in the world – Ada Trillo explores in her work human rights crisis at the U.S.-Mexican border. Over the period of four years, Trillo traveled to Juarez to interview and photograph women in local brothels. Her series How Did I Get Here? (2017) exposes the nexus between rape and prostitution, women trafficking, and feminicidios—violent deaths of hundreds of women in Juarez. In La Bestia (2017), she documented perils faced by Central American migrants travelling across Mexico on cargo trains. If Walls Could Speak (2019) presents the challenges facing asylum seekers under the new "Remain in Mexico" policy. Involved directly in the work with affected communities, and donating the proceeds from her work to organizations that help them, Trillo is an artist whose documentary work verges on social practice.

ADA TRILLO's work is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It was presented at the international festival of photography Cortona on the Move, Italy; University of The Arts and Saint Joseph's University – both in Philadelphia (2019); the exhibition The Un-Heroic Act: Representations of Rape in Contemporary Women's Art in the U.S., Shiva Gallery, John Jay College CUNY, New York; Passion for Freedom art festival, London; and Photo Meetings, Luxembourg (2018). Her work was featured in The Guardian, British Journal of Photography (UK), Hyperallergic, Smithsonian Magazine, HUFFPOST, CBS Philly, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Weekly, Philadelphia Magazine, Philadelphia Gay News, F-Stop Photography Magazine, The Candid Frame (U.S.); Al Dia News, Telemundo 51 (Mexico); Fotomagazin, Photonews (Germany); Le Quotidien, and Wort Luxembourg (Luxembourg).

Ada Trillo is based in Philadelphia, PA, and Juarez, Mexico. She is 2019 fellow at the Center for Emerging Visual Artists, Philadelphia, and the Leeway’s 2019-2020 Visual Artist-in-Residence at Fleisher Art Memorial. In 2018 she received Leeway Foundation's Art and Change Grant.

Image: Ada Trillo, Seeking Asylum, 2018, archival pigment print, 26 3/4 x 40 in. ©2020 Ada Trillo. Courtesy of the artist

Free and open to the public
Contact: tfap@cwah.rutgers.edu

RAPE, REPRESENTATION, AND RADICALITY
TFAP@CAA: The Feminist Art Project Day of Panels at the Annual College Art Association Conference 2019

Intersectional feminist art has long dealt with the oppressions and violations stemming from colonialism, slavery, and couverture. Rape, Representation, and Radicality is a full-day symposium that will explore sex, power, and justice through intersectional art and activism, academics, and healing. The forum brings academic study, intellectual discourse, and visceral candor together to create a shared space and to demand bodily autonomy.

Rape, Representation, and Radicality will address how sexual assault has affected feminist art practices, and who has power and why. What institutional changes are needed to work towards sexual justice, and how do race and gender impact the experiences and responses within the context of contemporary feminist discourse? The hidden legacy of Women of Color, within the conversation about sexual violence, sexual empowerment, artistic praxis, and art history, must be re-contextualized and revised to be included accurately. The current cultural narrative around sexual violence necessitates re-orientation to include those who are left out of the conversation. This forum will present strategies to understand, rectify, reclaim and move forward towards healing.

Symposium Chairs: Christen Clifford (Artist; The New School) and Jasmine Wahi (School of Visual Arts; Project for Empty Space)

SCHEDULE:

8:30am - 10am
Welcome and Introductory remarks:
Connie Tell, The Feminist Art Project, Center for Women in the Arts and Humanities, Rutgers University
Christen Clifford, Independent Artist, and The New School; and Jasmine Wahi, School of Visual Arts, and Project for Empty Space

The Un-Heroic Act: Representations of Rape in Contemporary Women's Art in the U.S.
Presenter: Monika Fabijanska, (Independent Curator)

Sexing the Canvas: The Rape of the Black Female Body in Art
Presenter: Indira Bailey (Penn State School of Visual Arts)

10:30am - 12:00pm: Gender, Sexuality, and Power: Social Activist Art Practices
Panelists: Suzanne Lacy (University of Southern California Roski School of Art and Design), Emma Sulkowicz (Independent Artist; Resident Artist, Museum of Arts and Design), María Magdalena Campos-Pons (Vanderbilt University), Moderator: Vivien G. Fryd (Vanderbilt University)

12pm - 12:30pm LUNCH BREAK

12:30pm - 2:00pm: Taking Back the Narrative
Conversation between Jaishri Abichandani (Independent Artist) and Christen Clifford, (Independent Artist; The New School)

Performances
Bad Woman Katya Grokhovsky
Operation Catsuit Ayana Evans
Action IV Castellanos

2pm - 3:30pm: Rewriting Narratives in the #MeToo Moment
Panelists: Natalie Frank (Independent Artist), Carmen Hermo (Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art), Naima Ramos-Chapman (Random Acts of Flyness!)

4pm - 5:30pm: Looking for Sexual Justice - Representing Sexual Violence Across Film and Video Art
Presenters: Kalliopi Minioudaki (Independent Scholar) What Rape Has to Do with Nanas? Niki de Saint Phalle's "Daddy.", and Talia Lugacy (The New School) Silence in Descent

Visible Invisibility: WoC in the Context of the #MeToo Movement
Presenters: Maria Hupfield (Independent Artist), Viva Ruiz (Independent Artist), Scheherazade Tillet (A Long Walk Home), Jasmine Wahi (School of Visual Arts; Project for Empty Space)

Healing Exercise and Finale: Christen Clifford and Jasmine Wahi

Image: The exhibition catalog, The Un-Heroic Act: Representations of Rape in Contemporary Women’s Art in the U.S.

ATOA's Critical Dialogues in the Visual Arts at:
National Arts Club
15 Grammercy Park South
New York, NY 10003
tel. 212.475.3424

CENSORSHIP AND THE ARTS
Moderator: Bill Pangburn, ATOA board member, artist, curator, professor
Panelists:
Monika Fabijanska, art historian
Patricia Karetzky, Oskar Munsterberg Chair of Asian Art at Bard College
Svetlana Mintcheva, program director for the National Coalition Against Censorship
Richard Vine, managing editor of Art in America
 

Tuesday, September 26, 2017, 6-8 PM (panel starts at 6:30 PM)
$8 general admission; $5 students and seniors, Passholders & NAC Members FREE

Censorship as a possibility, as a reality, is always near at hand. We like to think of it as being the problem of others, but the US has had and continues to have its share of battles over freedom of expression. The panelists on this symposium bring different insights to this timely and all-too-relevant topic.

Monika Fabijanska specializes in international contemporary art and has special interest in women's art and feminist art. Based in New York City, she is an art historian with over 15 years’ experience in curating, producing, and managing arts. She was Poland's cultural attache in NYC, 2000-2010, and Director of the Polish Cultural Institute, 2005-2010.

Patricia Karetzky is the Oskar Munsterberg Chair of Asian Art at Bard College, New York since 1988 and Adjunct Professor at Lehman College, City College of New York since 1994. She is the curator of the exhibition I Have no Enemies I Have No Friends - Contemporary Chinese Dissident Art, currently on view at the Anya and Andrew Shiva Gallery, John Jay College.

Richard Vine is the managing editor of Art in America and holds a Ph.D. in literature from the University of Chicago. He has written hundreds of critical essays, two nonfiction books on contemporary art, and is the author of Soho Sins, a novel.

Svetlana Mintcheva is the program director for the National Coalition Against Censorship. She is the co-editor of Censoring Culture: Contemporary Threats to Free Expression. Active as a curator, she also teaches at NYU.

Bill Pangburn (moderator) is an ATOA board member, artist, curator, professor, and director of the Anya and Andrew Shiva Gallery, John Jay College, City University of New York.

The mission of Artists Talk on Art (ATOA) is to provide a forum for critical discussions in the visual arts. After over 40 years we are one of the longest running art discussions. We depend upon artists who are willing to talk about their work, and volunteer their time. ATOA is a not-for-profit corporation run by artists.

The Watermill Center
39 Water Mill Towd Road
Water Mill, NY 11976
purchase tickets
online bidding opens on July 18 at 12 PM EST on ARTSY

The Watermill Center’s annual gala is one of the most spectacular evenings on the New York social calendar… – artnet news

Robert Wilson’s artistic base and incubator for his work, The Watermill Center, opened in 2006. Wilson envisioned it as a laboratory for experimentation – a space accommodating artists-in-residence, students, and collaborators, housing an extensive collection of art and artifacts and providing a “think tank” in which artists could conceive, develop, and rehearse new work.

The Watermill Center once again will bring together the worlds of theater, art, fashion, design, and society for The 23rd Annual Watermill Center Summer Benefit & Auction. Watermill’s International Summer Program participants come from over 25 countries to create installations and performances throughout eight-and-a-half acre grounds for the event. The funds raised support the Center’s year-round Artist Residency and Education Programs, providing a unique environment for young and emerging artists to explore and develop new work. The evening will begin with cocktails, a silent auction and guests touring installations and performances throughout The Center’s grounds. It continues with a seated dinner, live auction and performances, and concludes with a post-event party and dancing.

Monika Weiss is a Polish-born artist based in New York who creates public projects, film projections, drawings, and performances that evoke ancient rituals of lamentation and investigate relationships between body and history. Her current work focuses on memory and amnesia as reflected in the physical and political space of the City. The drawing Nirbhaya VIII-1 belongs to Two Laments (19 Cantos) (2015-ongoing) a series of 19 films projections inspired by events in India, juxtaposing two forms of global violence: the rape of women and the colonial subjugation of cities. Weiss' exquisite drawings are featured in the Albertina Museum in Vienna, Austria, one of the world's largest and most important print and drawing collections.

KN (Raum für Kunst im Kontext)
68 Skalitzer Straße
Berlin, 10997
Germany
This is a closed conversation circle, RSVP to vanessa.k.gravenor AT gmail DOT com

ƒƒ welcomes artist Monika Weiss to open up a discussion on lamentations and response-ability in the face of atrocity. Griselda Pollock’s Virtual Feminist Museum will be a subject of discussion as well as Bracha Ettinger’s Matrixial Border Space. Can images resonate traces of past events that they themselves defy speech thought and structural word patters? How can the breakdown of language manifest itself into a feminine space or border space where community can be facilitated and actualized?