Calendar
Do want to go on a cool camping trip this fall? Learn how to make photo books? Participate in an art book fair? Listen to visiting artists? Then come to the first photo club meeting on September 5 at 5:00pm in room 35 in Kresge! We will talk about up coming events this fall, pick officer positions, and learn how to stitch photo books.
Photographer Alec Soth documents American social and geographic landscapes. Soth has published over twenty-five books, and his work was featured in the 2004 Whitney Biennial. His work is in the permanent collections of the Getty Museum, CA, Walker Art Center, MN, and the Whitney, NY, along with many others. Soth is a member of Magnum Photos and the creator of Little Brown Mushroom.
The West African country of Mali has long been home to a creative community of photographers, many based in urban studios. This exhibition explores five exemplary practitioners of the art of photography–Mamadou Cissé, Adama Kouyaté, Abdourahmane Sakaly, Malick Sidibé, and Tijani Sitou– spanning the period from the 1940s to the 1990s. Their works document the region’s transition from colonial French West Africa to the independent nation of Mali, featuring portraits taken within and outside the studio, as well as cultural events and transcultural trends. The exhibition is anchored in the collaborative Malian-US partnership, the Archive of Malian Photography, and is curated by Dr. Candace M. Keller, Associate Professor in the MSU Department of Art, Art History, and Design.
RECEPTION January 19, 6-8PM, REMARKS 7PM
Artist Statement:
In the absence of sight is a new body of work that draws on the erasures of Pilipinx people by American occupiers during the era of US colonialism in the early 1900s. Through an investigation of American archival photographs, postcards, and images housed in various collections in Michigan and Washington DC, this work reimagines erasure as an opening to speculate other forms of presence. While early depictions and characterizations of the Philippines projected a “savage” people “unfit for self-government”, US colonial officers, journalists, and writers used images of Indigenous Pilipinx people as a mechanism of persuasion to justify their sustained occupation to the American public. Though visual abjection often manifested in images of Pilipinx people either dead or in captivity persisting over three decades, this intervention draws on Pilipinx mythology of the Aswang, a shape shifting ghost-like spirit that wreaks havoc on its targets and their communities. In positioning Indigenous and mestizx resistance to US occupation as a metaphorical permutation of the Aswang, this work foregrounds Pilipinx sovereignty as a way to begin to challenge the formations of representation by the American colonial political agenda.
RECEPTION January 19, 6-8PM, REMARKS 7PM
Join us Friday, January 19, 2018 from 6-8PM for the opening reception for In the absence of sight, a solo exhibition featuring the work of Alejandro T. Acierto at (SCENE) Metrospace. Opening Remarks will be offerd at 7PM.
Artist Statement:
In the absence of sight is a new body of work that draws on the erasures of Pilipinx people by American occupiers during the era of US colonialism in the early 1900s. Through an investigation of American archival photographs, postcards, and images housed in various collections in Michigan and Washington DC, this work reimagines erasure as an opening to speculate other forms of presence. While early depictions and characterizations of the Philippines projected a “savage” people “unfit for self-government”, US colonial officers, journalists, and writers used images of Indigenous Pilipinx people as a mechanism of persuasion to justify their sustained occupation to the American public. Though visual abjection often manifested in images of Pilipinx people either dead or in captivity persisting over three decades, this intervention draws on Pilipinx mythology of the Aswang, a shape shifting ghost-like spirit that wreaks havoc on its targets and their communities. In positioning Indigenous and mestizx resistance to US occupation as a metaphorical permutation of the Aswang, this work foregrounds Pilipinx sovereignty as a way to begin to challenge the formations of representation by the American colonial political agenda.
For more than a century, Pentecostal Signs Followers have handled venomous snakes during worship services, risking death as evidence of their unwavering faith. What is their faith about, and what motivates them to continue their potentially lethal practices across generations?
2018 Department of Art, Art History, and Design Faculty Triennial Exhibition
Eli & Edythe Broad Art Museum
March 17-May 13, 2018
Exhibition Reception April 8, 6-8PM
The 2018 Department of Art, Art History, and Design Faculty Triennial Exhibition showcases the recent work of twenty studio art & design faculty members. Recognized nationally and internationally, Michigan State University studio art & design faculty member’s creative research is regularly exhibited in venues all over the world. Collectively they have received recognition and support from Fulbright, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Pollack-Krasner Foundation. Representing a broad-range of media and contemporary art and design approaches, the exhibition highlights the faculty’s dedication to actively pursuing creative research.
The 2018 MSU Department of Art, Art History, and Design Faculty Triennial exhibition is organized by the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at MSU and guest curated by Christopher Atkins, Curator of Exhibitions & Public Programs at the Minnesota Museum of American Art. Support for this exhibition is provided by the John and Susan Berding Family Endowment.
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.
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.