Event
Studio Salon
On the occasion of Lorraine O'Grady's extended exhibition, Art Is..., we are pleased to present this special edition of Studio Salon, in which author Uri McMillan will frame a cross-generational dialogue around the release of his new book, Embodied Avatars: Genealogies of Black Feminist Art and Performance, published by NYU Press.
Representing a diversity of artistic media and approaches, Lorraine O'Grady, Simone Leigh and Narcissister each uniquely subvert viewer expectations and challenge social norms, often utilizing the black female body as public flashpoint. McMillan will guide us as we discuss Art Is... and each artist's distinct practice in relation to the book's in-depth exploration of performance and black female embodiment. We will also unpack the perils and possibilities in staging oneself as an art object, and delimit the evolving stakes for black women artists entering into the museum context.
Uri McMillan is Assistant Professor of English, African American Studies, and Gender Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he teaches classes in performance studies, queer theory, Afrofuturism, and contemporary literatures. He is the author of Embodied Avatars: Genelogies of Black Feminist Art and Performance, published with NYU Press in the fall of 2015. His work has been published in Women and Performance: a journal of feminist theory, SOULS, and GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies as well as essays in Flow (2008), Evidence of Accumulation (2011), and Re: Collected (2010), all published with The Studio Museum in Harlem.
Lorraine O'Grady is an acclaimed artist that combines strategies related to humanist studies on gender, the politics of diaspora and identity, and reflections on aesthetics by using a variety of mediums that include performance, photo installation, moving media, and photomontage. After serving as an intelligence analyst for the United States government, a literary and commercial translator, and a rock music critic, O' Grady turned towards the visual arts in the late 1970s, becoming an active voice within the alternative New York art world of the time. In addition to addressing feminist concerns, her work tackled cultural perspectives that had been underrepresented during the feminist movements of the early 1970s. In the 1980s, O'Grady created Art Is... (1983), a joyful performance in Harlem's African-American Day Parade that embodied O'Grady's desire to fully connect with the audience. She used a 9 x 15 foot antique-styled gold frame mounted on a gold-skirted parade float that moved slowly up Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard, framing everything it passed as art. Today, the work is a compelling reminder of the politics and power of art making, as well as the joy of experiencing art.O'Grady has continued an ongoing commitment to articulating "hybrid" subjective positions that span a range of races, classes and social identities. In addition to her work as a visual artist, she has also made innovative contributions to cultural criticism with her writings, including the now canonical article, "Olympia's Maid: Reclaiming Black Female Subjectivity".
Simone Leigh's practice is an object-based on-going exploration of black female subjectivity. She creates sculpture, videos and installations informed by her interest in African art, ethnographic research, feminism and performance. Leigh is an alumna of the Artist-in-Residence program at the Studio Museum in Harlem from 201011, and was awarded the 2011 Joan Mitchell Foundation grant for Sculpture, the 2012 LMCC Michael Richards award, and the 2013 Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Award. Recent and upcoming exhibitions include: The Free People's Medical Clinic (2014), and solo presentations at; The Fowler Museum at UCLA, The Atlanta Contemporary Art Center and The Kitchen in New York, NY, and group exhibitions at Contemporary Art Museum in Houston, SculptureCenter, NY, Kunsthalle Wien in Vienna; L'Appartement22 in Rabbat, Morocco; the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh; and the AVA Gallery in Cape Town, South Africa. Her work has been featured in several publications including: Bomb Magazine, Modern Painters, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Small AxE and Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art and EBONY Magazine.
Narcissister is a performance artist that employs a spectacle-rich approach to explorations and deconstruction of stereotypes in relation to gender, racial identity, and sexuality through humor, pop songs, elaborate costumes, contemporary dance, and her trademark mask. Narcissister exposes, in live performance, video and photography, the practice of representation itself, and challenges the audience to question its own attraction and repulsion. Wearing a mask, and portraying a variety of roles, Narcissister is an example of a visceral and kinesthetic experience of seeing the world through another's eyes, of seeing another point of view, and thereby allowing for a broader transpersonal experience.
This program is free with Museum admission, which is a suggested donation of $7 for adults and $3 for students and seniors. To purchase advance tickets, please register through this website. All seating will be on a first come, first served basis
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LocationThe Studio Museum in Harlem (View)
144 West 125th Street
New York, NY 10027
United States
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