Calendar
Please stop into (SCENE) Metrospace to see our latest exhibition traveling to us from Bloomington, Indiana where it was recently on view at I Fell Gallery. COMMAND + N was co-curated by Anna Buckner and Sul-Jee Scully of Command Zine and Bill Bass and Raphael Cornford of Noise Project. This special exhibition brings together the work of nine artists; Roxana Azar, Israel Campos, Zachary Carlisle Davidson, Jonathan McFadden, Rowland Ricketts, Saman Sajasi, Caleb Weintraub, Tyler Wilkinson, and Chad Wys.
Curators Statement
I can’t follow everything going on. You can’t either. I can grab a few strands here and there, focusing my reading and my podcast listening and my conversations. Still, I’m falling woefully short. I know that any sources I access have bias, that I’ve been lied to by dominant narratives across media forms, that my experiences have been misrepresented if represented at all.
So let art speak to us all at once and emotively and with information and through reference and via updated, augmented, and even subverted traditions. For art does
indeed reveal our new narratives and emergent mythologies, forces that selectively continue and negate aspects of their older counterparts. “But which art?” you
might ask, “Where? How? Will there be beer?”
NOISE and COMMAND Zine co-curate the exhibition “COMMAND + N,” a traveling group show of artists whosework is invaluable, transformative and alive, acting upon us just as much as we respond in turn. Working across multiple media these artists reveal untold stories, recontexualize traditions, speak from marginalized identities, and play with the boundaries between digital and tangible.
Bringing together an expertise that spans the contemporary fields of painting, textile, printmaking, photography, comics and digital art, the curators present two exhibitions at I Fell in Bloomington, IN and (SCENE) Metrospace in East Lansing, MI, highlighting selected works as simultaneously discrete narrative objects and cohesively indicative of the story of our time.
ZIG JACKSON / OCTOBER 8 / B310 WELLS / 7PM
Photographer and Professor at SCAD, Zig Jackson identifies and tackles issues that sometimes radically different Native American tribes have in common such as how to deal with tourism. marketing, myth, traditions, and stereotyping. He uses his work to raise awareness about cultural identity, representation, and appropriation to touch on issues like paternalism, sovereignty, and commodification.
For more information about Zig Jackson, please visit:
RENEE MUSSAI / OCTOBER 25 / 107 S KEDZIE / 6PM
London-based curator, writer, and art historian, Renée Mussai is Curator and head of Archive at Autograph ABP, an arts charity that works internationally in photography and film, addressing themes of cultural identity, race, representation and human rights.
TITUS KAPHAR / NOVEMBER 5 / MSU Union Ball Room /6PM
Born in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Titus Kaphar lives and works on the east coast. Kaphar’s
mixed media work, speaks to the most vital discussions happening around race,
diversity, and reconciliation in the U.S. Kaphar exposes how all depictions, no matter
how personal or grandiose, are always fictional, imperfect, and capable of being
remade. He is the distinguished recipient of the Gwendolyn Knight and Jacob Lawrence
Fellowship as well as the 2015 Creative Capital Award and 2016 Rauschenberg Artist
as Activist Fellowship.
For more information about Titus Kaphar, please visit:
MSU Union Art Gallery
49 Abbott Road, Rm. 230, East Lansing, MI 48824
The Wash (As It Seams)
Solo exhibition featuring the work of Babette Shaw.
January 21 – March 2, 2019
Artist Lecture January 31 6pm, Natural Science Rm. 326
Exhibition Reception February 1, 6 – 8pm
Babette Shaw Artist Statement
As human beings, we communicate through language, visual and verbal. We have within us an innate desire to connect with one another, yet our language, essential to communication, often serves to polarize us both interpersonally and through the maintenance of institutionalized systems of dominance, oppression, and coercion. Inherent within our language are misogynistic words, phrases, and ideals that inform us and affect the way we interact with one another.
Inception of this work began with a certain group of political leaders speaking mis-information about womxn’s bodies; as a consequence, most womxn, regardless of party alignment, voted against their interests. Yet, statements and occurrences made public throughout the recent United States election processes reveal what low-base views we are willing to accept about womxn, however damaging or oppressive to the potential growth beyond them. Misogynistic language, gendered ideals, gendered scripts influence our politics, our laws, our institutions, the wage gap, our public and personal spaces, our social and interpersonal relationships. These bodies of work are representative of personal narratives and of individual womxn who have chosen to share their stories.
Babette Shaw Bio
Babette Shaw, native to California, is an exhibiting photography-based social practice artist whose work includes photography, sculpture, fiber art, installation, and the written or spoken word.
She received her MFA in Photography from The University of Memphis with undergraduate academic pursuits in fine art photography, creative writing, and gender studies. As an artist, she addresses issues concerning gender and race constructions and disparities in contemporary culture, as well as their historic and archaic underpinnings. Shaw currently teaches at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. Alongside her art practice and her teaching, she has served on numerous panels for organizations, including the National Center for Research on Women (CROW), and has given lectures at various academic and community-based institutions. Her work is in public and private collections across the country.
Shaw is here to engage the Michigan State University campus as Visiting Artist and Scholar to invite students, past and present (as well as other members from the community), to participate in one of her social practice projects, The Panty Project, which is designed to help individuals and communities heal from gendered and sexual trauma and abuse. While on campus, Shaw will be meeting with womxn from the greater MSU community who have chosen to share their stories as part of this ongoing work. If you are interested in participating in The Panty Project, please email b@babetteshaw.com.
BABETTE SHAW / JANUARY 31 / 326 NATURAL SCIENCE / 6PM Photography-based social practice artist, Babette Shaw addresses issues concerning gender and race constructions and disparities in contemporary culture, as well as their archaic underpinnings. Shaw teaches at UNC, Greensboro and her lecture accompanies a solo exhibition at the MSU Union Art Gallery.
Atul Bhalla | Monday, September 16 | 105 S. Kedzie | 6pm
Atul Bhalla is a conceptual artist who uses photography, performance, video, sculpture, and installation to immerse himself in the physical, historical, spiritual, and political significance of water. Bhalla is a Professor in the Department of Art and Performance Art at Shiv Nadar University in India.
Luis A. Sahagun | Wednesday, November 20 | Broad Art Museum | 7pm
Luis Sahagun is an AAHD Artist-in-Residence: Critical Race Studies. Sahagun’s drawings, sculptures, paintings, and performances confront the palpable inescapability of race and transforms art into an act of reclamation. As a previously undocumented immigrant and former laborer, Sahagun’s work focus on the importance of Latinx cultures and contributions in order to combat the anti-immigration and anti-Latinx national rhetoric that persists throughout the country.
Support for this lecture is provided by the MSU Federal Credit Union, Broad Art Museum, The College of Arts and Letters, and the Department of Art, Art History, and Design.
The Honors College will be presenting Sharper Focus/Wider Lens on Monday, February 3, 2020, at 7 pm in the MSU Union Ballroom.
Speakers include:
- John Grey, Department of Philosophy
- Emily Conroy-Krutz, Associate Professor in the Department of History
- Jeffery T. Freymueller, Endowed Chair fro Geology of Solid Earth in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences
- Carolyn Isaac, Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology
- G. Mark Voit, Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and Associate Dean in the College of Natural Science
MSU Philosophy & Environmental Governance regrets to announce that the Elusive Conversations Symposium has been postponed. Please look for a new date for this event coming this August 2020.
hosted by MSU Philosophy & Environmental Governance
Two day symposium with three keynote speakers.
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Deborah McGregor
York University’s Osgoode
Hall Law School
Christopher Preston
University of Montana
Andrew Light
George Mason University & World Resources Institute
The richness and diversity of contemporary environmental philosophy remains largely absent from the everyday dis- course and decision-making processes of
environmental governance. One reason for this is a sincere difficulty in translating the less tangible and measurable aspects of our environmental relationships into community practices and governing policies. More difficult still, the mechanisms of environmental decision-making have been historically structured
under the influence of latent environmental philosophies that are neither neutral nor equally welcoming to all considerations. The best plans too often produce the same impoverished results.
THIS SYMPOSIUM seeks to envision a richer and more inclusive environmental governance, proposing specific steps for how environmental philosophy can better engage current governance practices.