Art Now! Lecture Series
The lecture series brings artists, curators, researchers, and practitioners to Columbia to give students exposure to the rich range of perspectives, practices, and professional pathways possible for the contemporary creative.
Fall 2022 Schedule
We are excited to welcome the community in person to our Fall 2022 lecture series. Lectures will be held in person at Film Row Cinema, 8th floor, 1104 South Wabash.
All lectures are free and open to the public. American Sign Language interpretation will be provided.
Register for individual events at the link in each description.
Past lectures can be viewed here.
Events are Wednesdays, 6:00–7:30 pm Central time.
Fall 2022 Schedule
- 10/05/2022 - Ginny Huo
(left) Gi (Ginny) Huo, an act or offering, what if?, 2021, wood, vinyl, paint, 14 x 41 x 8 feet. Courtesy of the artist. (right) photo: Saif Al-Sobaihi
REGISTER HERETracing / Navigating
In their multidisciplinary practice, Gi (Ginny) Huo inquires the legacies of belief systems through inspiration from their family‚ religious history and migration. The artist conversation will discuss language, tracing, and traversing new topographies in their current projects.
Gi (Ginny) Huo is an artist and educator exploring the intentions of people’s beliefs. Huo’s recent exhibits include CANADA Gallery, Socrates Sculpture Park, BAMCinemafest, and The Smithsonian Archives of American Art. Huo’s fellowships include Smack Mellon, Baxter St Camera Club of New York, Robert Blackburn Printshop SIP Fellowship, Queens Museum Art Action Academy, American Academy in Rome as Visiting Artist, and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Their book published by Small Editions is named in the Best Art Books of 2021 by The Brooklyn Rail. Works are in the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art Library, Yale University, Ohio State University, Emily Carr University of Art and Design, School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. Huo holds a BFA from Brigham Young University and an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of the Arts. Huo is the Assistant Director of Education at the New Museum and Adjunct Professor at Parsons School of Design.
- 10/19/22 - Nicole Marroquin
(left) Nicole Marroquin, Bilingual, Spanish-language and Latinx Community-serving Newspapers from Chicago, 1929–1990, 2018, silkscreen, 36 x 23 inches. photo: Liz Born. (right) photo: Diana Solis
REGISTER HERETeach / Transform
Marroquin aims to disrupt dominant narratives by centering the histories of queer, feminist and youth resistance in Chicago using art and curriculum. She will share her experiences teaching from a temporarily lost collection of photographs by feminist artist Diana Solis, and she will share pieces from Syllabus (2022) an ongoing research project on view at Hyde Park Art Center through October 29.
Nicole Marroquin is a teacher educator and artist who explores youth resistance movements, belonging and spatial justice by uncovering and re-presenting histories of Black and Latinx Chicago. She has presented projects at the American Association of Research Librarians Annual Conference, Kochi Biennale, Jane Addams Hull House Museum, Gallery 400, Printed Matter, Midwest Archivist Conference, Northwestern University, DePaul Museum of Art and more. She is a member of the Chicago ACT and Justseeds artist collectives.
- 11/02/22 - Onur Öztürk
(left) Al-Jazari, The Elephant Clock, Folio from The Book of the Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices, 1315, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (public domain); (middle) Balbo Monument. Photo: Onur Öztürk, 2022. (right) photo: Jacob Boll, Columbia College Chicago
REGISTER HEREDismantling Persistent Myths, Revealing Intertwined (Hi)stories
How can contemporary practices of art and design history reveal our intertwined histories while tackling single-point and linear narratives that are so dominant and persistent? In this talk, Dr. Onur Öztürk will discuss his two projects: a recently published book, Deconstructing the Myths of Islamic Art (co-editors Xenia Gazi and Sam Bowker, Routledge, 2022), which is the result of an international collaboration of researchers, curators, and visual artists, and his current study on the Balbo Monument, an original Roman column brought to Chicago from Ostia in 1934 as a gift of Mussolini to the Century of Progress exposition. As he recognizes the legacies of white supremacy, eurocentrism, and other forms of oppressive constructs in his field and beyond, Öztürk will expand on the concept of intertwined (hi)stories, arguing that traditional disciplines, concepts, and discourses of art and design history need to be re-envisioned as we seek to transform our institutions. Dr. Öztürk will be joined by discussant Lisa Ayla Çakmak, PhD, Chair and Curator Arts of the Ancient Mediterranean and Byzantium, The Art Institute of Chicago.
Onur Öztürk is an Assistant Professor of Art History in the Art and Art History Department of Columbia College Chicago. Originally from Ankara, Turkey, he received an M.Arch degree from the Middle East Technical University, and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. Öztürk’s current research focuses on the built environments of Asia Minor (modern Turkey) and Chicago. In addition to the projects introduced above, he studies thirteenth-century funerary monuments of the female elite in Kayseri and prepares digital drawings for academic publications. Dr. Öztürk also teaches global art history and visual culture courses including Art of Islam, Art & Ritual, and Rethinking Museums.
- 11/16/22 - Arghavan Khosravi
(left) Arghavan Khosravi, The Garden, 2022, acrylic on canvas mounted on shaped wood panels, elastic cord, wood cutout, 59 x 71 x 6 inches; 149.9 x 180.3 x 15.2 cm. Courtesy of the artist. (right) photo: Hossein Fatemi
This lecture will be presented remotely via webinar and be simultaneously streamed into Film Row Cinema.
Expressive Dualisms
Born in Iran shortly after its 1979 revolution, Arghavan Khosravi was raised in a contradictory culture where one repressive regime—an ancient monarchy—was overthrown and replaced by an even more repressive theocracy. As the artist states “Despite public adherence to the authoritarian political culture, many Iranians are looser and freer in their habits and beliefs when in private. The contradiction is part of everyday life. We separate our life: public and private. In public there are restrictions imposed (for example the compulsory hijab), but we have our freedom in private space. Symbolism, metaphor, and abstraction have become essential parts of cultural expression within contemporary Iran’s dualistic social structure. Those same elements are also at the heart of my work. Like the ancient Persian miniatures they emulate, my paintings operate on multiple levels—intellectual, sensual, and emotional. They simultaneously critique and weaponize a particular type of authoritarian thinking: that which supposes art is frivolous and decorative, yet knows it has the power to communicate and affect social expectations and desires. My studio practice mobilizes visual art as a vehicle for cultural transformation.”
Arghavan Khosravi (b. 1984, Shahr-e Kord, Iran) earned an MFA in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design after completing the studio art program at Brandeis University. Khosravi previously earned a BFA in Graphic Design from Tehran Azad University and an MFA in Illustration from the University of Tehran. Khosravi has participated in numerous group exhibitions, at venues such as The Currier Museum of Art Manchester, NH; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Yinchuan, China; Newport Art Museum, Newport, RI; and Provincetown Art Association and Museum, MA; among others. Khosravi’s residencies include The Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, NH; The Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, MA; the Studios at MassMoCA, North Adams, MA; Monson Arts, Monson, ME; and Residency Unlimited, Brooklyn, NY. Khosravi is a 2019 recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation’s Painters & Sculptors Grant and a 2017-8 recipient of the Walter Feldman Fellowship. The artist’s work belongs to the collections of Those Rose Art Museum, The PAFA Museum, The Newport Art Museum and The Rhode Island School of Design Museum.
- 11/30/22 - Sa’dia Rehman
Sa’dia Rehman, This is my family, 2017, powdered, compressed and vine charcoals, graphite, drawing paper, inked tracing paper, cotton t-shirts, black artist tape on two walls: 101 x 196 and 124 x 209 inches. Courtesy of the artist.
REGISTER HERECommunities, Imaginations and Futures
Sa’dia Rehman explores how contemporary and historical images communicate, consolidate and contest ideas about race, empire and labor. During their artist talk, Rehman will share their references, influences, joys and pitfalls. Rehman will focus on selected early career highlights and works which span 20 years. They will also introduce current works in progress inspired by their family’s displacement from an area on the Indus River in Pakistan due to the building of a hydroelectric dam.
Sa’dia Rehman (b. Queens, NY) pulls apart and puts together images from family photographs, historical records and mass media to create her wall drawings, cut outs and assemblages. Rehman has exhibited work at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Queens Museum, Columbus Museum of Art, The Kitchen, Kentler International Drawing Space, Center for Book Arts, Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU and Pakistan National Council of the Arts. Rehman was the recipient of the Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson Grant and Meredith Morabito, the Henrietta Mantooth Fellowship and was awarded residencies at Abrons Art Center, Asian American Arts Alliance, Edward Albee Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, NARS Foundation and AIM Bronx Museum. They are the 2022–23 Artist in Residence at the Wexner Center where they are working towards a show opening February 2023.
Spring 2023 Schedule
- 02/08/2023 - Paul Gray
Bad at Sports with Alumni and Celebrated Art Dealer Paul Gray Talk About Art, Chicago, and Blue-Chip Collecting
Art and Art History Department Chair and founding member of the Bad at Sports collective and podcast, Duncan MacKenzie hosts a conversation with Paul Gray of GRAY Gallery about contemporary art dealing, Chicago’s art scene, contemporary arts reach and audience, healthy living through sports, and what it was like to grow up in and around the most important modern and contemporary art gallery in Chicago’s history, the Richard Gray Gallery.
Managing partner of GRAY, a leading international dealer in Modern and Post War American and European art with locations in New York and Chicago, Paul Gray has acted as advisor and consultant to prominent private collectors and museums for over 30 years. Gray currently serves on the Board of the Lookingglass Theatre, Chicago; member of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Education Committee; on the International Board of Human Rights Watch; and is a founding board member of the Abraham Path Initiative. Gray has served on the National Finance Committee of the Obama for America presidential campaigns; on the board of the Art Dealers Association of America; as past president of the board of the Peace Museum; and on advisory and support groups for The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Gray and his wife Dedrea, who was trained as a teacher and is currently a community activist, are very involved in fundraising for progressive education, a variety of political candidates, and for social justice and environmental causes.
- 02/22/2023 - Las Nietas de Nonó
(left) Las Nietas de Nonó: Posibles Escenarios, Vol. 1 LNN. Installation view, Artists Space, New York, 2022. Photo: Filip Wolak. (right) photo: Juan Carlos Malave
Las Nietas de Nonó
This lecture will be presented remotely via webinar.
Posibles Escenarios
Las Nietas de Nonó will present on their concept of posibles escenarios. For their first solo exhibition, Las Nietas created scenographic installations that incorporated found objects, organic materials and antiquated technologies. These installations were then activated through theatrical performances, and transformed into portals of possible healing, from destruction and chaos created by corrupt bureaucratic operations. Las Nietas have explored posibles escenarios and spaces of community through gatherings involving the exchange of food and memory—beginning in Loíza & San Antón in Puerto Rico, and evolving this year in Rome, London, and New York.
The afro-diasporic siblings, mulowayi and mapenzi are Las Nietas de Nonó. In their creative process, they evoke ancestral memory through personal archives. Their practice incorporates performance, found objects, organic materials, ecology, fiction, video and installation. In 2016, they created Ilustraciones de la Mecánica, a multimedia installation that was also commissioned by the 10th Berlin Biennial (2018) and the 79th Whitney Biennial (2019). They have received the United States Artist Award (2018), The Art of Change from the Ford Foundation (2017), and the Global Arts Fund from the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice (2017 & 2020). Las Nietas de Nonó are the recipients of the 2022 Rome Prize in Visual Art at the American Academy in Rome. Their art has been shown in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cuba, Ecuador, the United States, England, Norway, Scotland, and Germany. In 2019, they co-founded Parceleras Afrocaribeñas, an organization run by Black womxn, where spaces for environmental and racial justice are created in the face of industrial developments that threaten their barrio of San Antón, in Carolina, Puerto Rico.
- 03/08/23 - Willa Goettling
(left) Willa Goettling, imagine a world filled with collective care & radical understanding, 2020, screenprint on hand-sewn naturally dyed and recycled fabric, 36 x 48 inches (right) photo: Sam Liebert
Art, Activism, and Mutual Aid
Why do artist-run spaces so often end up at odds with the needs of the artists they were initially built to serve? As both an artist and an art-worker, Goettling perceives this tension as a failure of the commons. In this talk, Goettling will build connections between facilitating programming at artist-run spaces and her own socially engaged art practice to demonstrate art’s power to affect institutional change. This talk will also look at mutual aid networks, volunteer-run initiatives, and grassroots organizing efforts for communication, collaboration, and adaptability models that arts organizations could learn from.
Willa Goettling is an artist and educator interested in art as a tool for information sharing and community building. Her own art practice is largely based around the production and distribution of printed matter. Goettling received her MFA in Interdisciplinary Book & Paper from Columbia College Chicago (2019) and BA in Medical Anthropology & Global Health from the University of Washington (2016). While at Columbia, she was a Print Production Fellow and contributing writer for the Journal of Artists’ Books; taught undergraduate and graduate printmaking workshops; and received an Albert P Weisman Award for her MFA thesis. In 2020 she was an Artist in Residence at the Center for Artistic Activism (Kingston, NY). She currently teaches workshops through Ugly Duckling Presse (Brooklyn, NY), Dieu Donné© Paper Mill (Brooklyn, NY), and the Independent Publishing Resource Center (Portland, OR). She is the Programs Manager at Smack Mellon Gallery and a regular volunteer at Interference Archive (Brooklyn, NY).
- 03/22/23 - Monika Fabijanska
(left) Dana Kavelina, Letter to a Turtledove, 2020, still. (right) photo: Bartlomiej Barczyk, Agencja Gazeta
Women at War: Ukrainian Feminist Art Today
Monika Fabijanska, curator of the exhibition Women at War, will discuss the contemporary feminist art scene in Ukraine, providing a context for Russian-Ukrainian war as represented in art over the eight years of war following the annexation of Crimea and the creation of separatist Republics in Donbas in 2014. War is central to history. History has been written (and painted) by men. This presentation will provide a platform for female narrators of history and examine the perception of war as gendered. It will also be an introduction to Eastern European feminisms, which are significantly different from the Western mold, and will contribute to a conversation about how national identity is tied to the perception of women’s role in society.
Monika Fabijanska is a New York City-based independent art historian and curator who specializes in feminist art. In 2022, she curated Women at War at Fridman Gallery. Her previous exhibitions include critically acclaimed Betsy Damon. Passages: Rites and Rituals (La MaMa Galleria, The New York Times best shows of 2021); ecofeminism(s) (Thomas Erben Gallery, 2020, featuring Lynn Hershman Leeson, Cecilia Vicuña, etc.); and groundbreaking The Un-Heroic Act: Representations of Rape in Contemporary Women’s Art in the U.S. (Shiva Gallery, John Jay College, 2018). Fabijanska’s writing has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, Women’s Art Journal, Orońsko Sculpture Magazine, BLOK Magazine, etc. https://www.monikafabijanska.com
- 04/19/23 - Paul Ramírez Jonas
Paul Ramírez Jonas, The Commons, 2011, cork, pushpins, notes contributed by the public, 153 x 128 x 64 inches.
This is an equestrian monument. Unusual in that it has no rider. Unusual in that it implies the viewer. It is made of cork instead of bronze. Cork is a material that can ‘publish’ an endless number of voices. In opposition to the singular voice of the state, or the singular identity of the hero portrayed riding the horse, or the immutable inscription on the public space that bronze and stone allow. Courtesy of the artist.
After the Monument
This lecture will present examples of Ramírez Jonas’ work that propose different ways in which we can achieve monumentality through participation.
Paul Ramírez Jonas was born in Pomona, California in 1965 and raised in Honduras. Educated at Brown University (BA, 1987) and Rhode Island School of Design (MFA, 1989). Over the past 30 years Paul Ramírez Jonas has sought to challenge the definitions of art and the public and to engineer active audience participation and exchange. He has been made public in galleries, institutions and urban spaces around the world. He is the Art Department Chair at the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning at Cornell; and is represented by Galeria Nara Roesler in Sao Paulo and New York.
- 05/03/23 - Arthur Simms
(left) Arthur Simms, Float, Float, Float On, 2018, installation on the Staten Island shore, 127.5 x 99 x 99 inches. photo: Sam Samore. (right) photo of Arthur Simms in his studio: Charles Benton
Assemblage, Mixed Media and the CollageThe Jamaican-born artist Arthur Simms has been reflecting on his early years in Kingston via his artwork for many years. For decades, Simms’ journey from his native Jamaica to the United States has impacted his voice and his ability to transform lowly materials into works that transcend their humble origins, affording him a unique place in the world of contemporary art. Simms uses elements such as drawing, sewing, writing, collage, the use of his hair, his wife’s hair, photographs that he takes with his cell phone, found objects and various other items to create the works. In his lecture, Simms will discuss work that he has created over the past several decades.
Arthur Simms was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1961 and emigrated to Brooklyn, New York in 1969 with his family when he was seven years old. He received his Master of Fine Arts (1993) and Bachelor of Arts (1987) from Brooklyn College. Simms is the recipient of many prestigious grants and awards including the Irving Sandler Prize from the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program (2022); The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (2007); The American Academy of Arts and Letters (2006); The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (1999/2000); Prix de Rome (2002/2003); The Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant (1997); and many others. He is Program Director and Professor of the Arts at CUNY, LaGuardia Community College, New York. Simms also serves on the Board of Directors of MacDowell, Peterborough, NH, and the Board of Governors of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, ME. Recent solo exhibitions include, And I Say, Brother Had A Very Good Day, One Halo, Martos Gallery, New York (2021); Throughline, Shoot the Lobster, New York (2019). Simm’s work was featured in the Kingston Biennial in Jamaica (2022) and included in the 58th Venice Biennale (2019). https://arthursimms.com/home.html
Previous Art Now! speakers: Gwenn Aël-Lynn, Emanuel Aguilar, Candida Alvarez, Anna Arabindan-Kesson, Sampada Aranke, Nicole Awai, Jeremiah Barber, Chloë Bass, Dawoud Bey, Ben Blount, Adam Brooks, Amanda Browder, Robert Burnier, Zoë Charlton, Sue Coe, Dalziel + Scullion, Johanna Drucker, Krista Franklin, Maria Gaspar, Joan Giroux, Myra Greene, Tracie Hall, Ömür Harmanşah, Tempestt Hazel, EJ Hill, Taylor Hokanson, Jeremiah Hulsebos-Spofford, Jamillah James, Eduardo Kac, Lilli Kayes, Anna Kunz, David Leggett, Sharon Louden, Jorge Lucero, Faheem Majeed, Annika Marie, Monique Meloche, Harold Mendez, Amy Mooney, Matt Morris, Conor Moynihan, Natani Notah, Ebony G. Patterson, Debra Riley Parr, Chemi Rosado-Seijo, D Rosen, Paul Sacaridiz, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Shannon Stratton, Norman Teague, Lorenzo Triburgo, Folayemi Wilson
