COCO FUSCO, KIRSTEN LEENAARS TO TALK ART AND DESIGN AS PART OF MICA MIXED MEDIA SPEAKER SERIES

WHAT: "Making Good: Big Questions in Art and Design" with Coco Fusco and Kirsten Leenaars as part of MICA Mixed Media Speaker Series

WHEN: Thursday, March 7 at 7 p.m.

WHERE: Falvey Hall in the Brown Center, 1301 W. Mount Royal Ave.

BALTIMORE — The Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) will host artists with Coco Fusco and Kirsten Leenaars for “Making Good: Big Questions in Art and Design,” and event part of the college’s Mixed Media Speaker Series, which spans from January through April. This event is free and open to the public. For more information or to make group reservations, please contact events@mica.edu.

Fusco, an interdisciplinary artist and writer, is the Andrew Banks Endowed Professor of Art at the University of Florida. Fusco is a recipient of a 2014 Cintas Fellowship, a 2013 Guggenheim Fellowship, a 2013 Absolut Art Writing Award, a 2013 Fulbright Fellowship, a 2012 US Artists Fellowship and a 2003 Herb Alpert Award in the Arts.

Her performances and videos have been presented in the 56th Venice Biennale, two Whitney Biennials (2008 and 1993), BAM’s Next Wave Festival, the Sydney Biennale, The Johannesburg Biennial, The Kwangju Biennale, The Shanghai Biennale, InSite O5, Mercosul, Transmediale, The London International Theatre Festival, VideoBrasil and Performa05. Her works have also been shown at the Tate Liverpool, The Museum of Modern Art, The Walker Art Center and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona.

An interdisciplinary artist and experimental documentary maker based in Chicago, Leenaars’ various forms of performance, theater and documentary strategies make up the threads that run through her work. She engages with individuals and communities to create participatory video and performance work, and her work oscillates between fiction and documentation, reinterprets personal stories and reimagines everyday realities through staging, improvisation and iteration. She examines the nature of our constructed realities — the stories we tell ourselves and the stories we identify with — and explores the way we relate to others. In her work, she aims to bring to light a shared humanity, often through humor and play. Recent projects include (Re)Housing the American Dream (2015-ongoing), a multi-year performative documentary project with American born and refugee youth commissioned by the Haggerty Museum of Art in Milwaukee and Notes on Empty Chairs, a series of three performances about loss, community and empathy, produced for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago in response to the work of Doris Salcedo. Leenaars’ work has been shown nationally and internationally. She has been nominated for the 3Arts Award multiple times, and most recently was nominated for the USA Fellowship. She currently is an Associate Professor in the Department of Contemporary Practices and the Performance Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Interview: Kirsten Leenaars: (Re)Housing the American Dream

Kirsten Leenaars: (Re)Housing the American Dream September 6 – October 12, 2018 York College Galleries Opening Reception/Artist Q&A: Thursday, September 6, 5:00 – 7:00PM Lecture: Wednesday, October 10, 5:30PM, DeMeester Recital Hall

Kirsten Leenaars is an experimental documentary maker and engages with individuals and communities to create participatory video and performance work. Her work oscillates between fiction and documentation, reinterprets personal stories and reimagines everyday realities through staging, improvisation, and iteration. Leenaars examines the nature of our constructed realities—the stories we tell ourselves and the stories we identify with—and explores the way we relate to others. In her work, she aims to bring to light a shared humanity, often through humor and play.

This exhibition shows the collection of drawings, video and text work that make up (Re)Housing the American Dream; a cumulative documentary project (2015-ongoing) that explores the role of film as political action. This experimental multi-year documentary project follows a group of American and refugee youths in Milwaukee, growing up in the time of Trump. Through the collective making of video and text based work the construct of the American Dream is explored. The production period is structured as an annual summer camp in which the works are developed through collaborative processes with the participants. The produced work reflects on current socio-political issues, their lived experiences, individual perspectives and their collective imagination. The annual works cumulatively inform each other and tell the story of a resilient, diverse, opinioned group of youngsters living in divisive times.

Project website: rehousingtheamericandream.wordpress.com/

Illinois Humanities, Envisioning Justice Commission

Illinois Humanities to award seven commissions at February 13 event 

Illinois Humanities is commissioning seven artists to create works that examine how over-incarceration affects Chicago communities and will introduce them at a unique event offering “policy speed chats” on mass incarceration with leading Chicago experts.

The artists’ introduction and policy speed chats, “Envisioning Justice, Envisioning Joy,” will be held on Wednesday, Feb. 13 from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion, 201 E. Randolph St. in Chicago.

Each commissioned artist will create art for an exhibition that supports the work of Envisioning Justice, a two-year-old Illinois Humanities initiative that fosters citywide conversations about over-incarceration and strategies that lessen the impact of it. The artists’ work will be informed by activities and community conversations pertaining to over-incarceration within the seven Envisioning Justice hubs, which are stationed in communities that are most directly affected by incarceration: Bronzeville, Back of the Yards, Little Village, North Lawndale and Rogers Park, and through arts organizations that do programming inside the Cook County Jail and the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center.

“Illinois Humanities is honored to work with outstanding curators, artists and activists to present an exhibition that expands the city-wide conversation about mass incarceration in Chicago and explores the innovative, complex, and dynamic strategies and approaches that various communities and individuals are taking to create a future that is just for all,” said Deborah Epstein, interim director of Illinois Humanities.

The seven commissioned artists are

● Adela Goldbard of Mexico City to work with OPEN Center for the Arts in the Little Village hub.

● Jim Duignan of Dunning to work with SkyART/Just Art, which holds programming inside the Cook County Jail.

● Sonja Henderson of Pilsen to work with BBF Family Services in the North Lawndale hub

● Nicole Marroquin of Pilsen West to work with Free Write Arts & Literacy, which holds programming inside the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center.

● Dorothy Burge of Bronzeville to work with Bright Star Community Outreach, Inc. in the Bronzeville hub.

● Kirsten Leenaars of Ukrainian Village to work with Circles & Ciphers in the Rogers Park hub.

● Project Fielding, a collective of women and gender non-conforming artists, to work with #LetUsBreathe Collective in the Back of the Yards hub.

The commissioned artists will create original art reflecting conversations and activities at the Envisioning Justice hubs and surrounding neighborhoods on over-incarceration; and they will also engage in community art activities at the hubs.

“My desire for this particular group of artists and cultural stewards is that their contributions will support and further cultivate positive outlets for the locally partnered communities— communities that are already facilitating alternative strategies and new paradigms to establish forms of justice, harmony, and social equity,” said Alexandria Eregbu, curator of Commissioned Works for Envisioning Justice.

For nearly a year, each Envisioning Justice hub has gathered residents, activists, researchers, scholars and other professionals in exploring the topic of over-incarceration through art and public humanities events. Each hub has hosted a series of art classes and is now preparing to host community dialogues. The commissioned artists’ work, which will be inspired by the activities at the hubs, will be featured in an exhibition at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Sullivan Galleries, 33 S. State St., starting Aug. 6 – Oct. 12.