School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC)
Rubloff Auditorium
230 South Columbus Drive
Chicago
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) presents a new season of the Visiting Artists Program—a public forum that features today’s most influential practitioners and thinkers.
An invaluable resource for SAIC students, the Visiting Artists Program is central to SAIC’s interdisciplinary curriculum. In addition to public lectures, visitors directly engage with SAIC students through studio critiques and roundtable discussions, fostering a greater understanding and appreciation of contemporary art and culture.
All events are free and non-ticketed, unless otherwise noted. Lectures begin at 6pm and are held in the Art Institute of Chicago, Rubloff Auditorium, 230 South Columbus Drive. Visit saic.edu/vap for details.
February 7
Ann Hamilton: Bill and Stephanie Sick Distinguished Visiting Professor
Ann Hamilton is known for her site-responsive, large-scale installations, public projects, and performance collaborations. Her ephemeral projects are based on her career-long interest in felt experience as the basis for recognition and knowledge and in the relationships between written language and tactile experience, cloth and body, and motion and stillness. Established in 2006 by a generous gift from Bill and Stephanie Sick, this distinguished professorship enables internationally renowned artists and designers to visit and teach at SAIC.
March 14
Huma Bhabha
New York-based artist Huma Bhabha creates work that addresses universal themes of colonialism, war, displacement, and memories of place. Using found materials and the detritus of everyday life, Bhabha creates haunting figures that hover between figuration and abstraction, the monumental and the abject.
March 28
Sonya Clark: Distinguished Alumni Lecture Series
Through materials such as textiles, hair, beads, combs, and sound, Sonya Clark (BFA 1993) unravels complex issues to address nationhood, identity, and racial constructs. Her works invoke ancestral ties, recall historical legacies, and address contemporary relationships through crafted materials, found objects, and collaborative actions.
Presented in partnership with SAIC’s Office of Alumni Relations.
April 3
Daniel Joseph Martinez
Daniel Joseph Martinez’s practice engages an interrogation of social, political, and cultural mores through artworks that have been described as nonlinear, asymmetrical, and multidimensional propositions. Martinez’s work takes the form of text, sculpture, photography, painting, installation, robotics, performance, and public interventions to unapologetically question issues of personal and collective identity, vision and visuality, and the fissures formed between the appearance and the perception of difference. Presented in partnership with SAIC’s Office of the Dean of Graduate Studies.
April 12
Wael Shawky
Based in Alexandria, Egypt, Wael Shawky’s work tackles notions of national, religious, and artistic identity through film, performance, and storytelling. Whether instructing Bedouin children to act out the construction of an airport runway in the desert or organizing a heavy metal concert in a remote Egyptian village, Shawky frames contemporary culture through the lens of historical tradition and vice versa. Presented in partnership with SAIC’s Department of Film, Video, New Media, and Animation’s Conversations at the Edge series. A screening of Wael Shawky’s trilogy of puppet animations, The Cabaret Crusades, will take place on April 13 at the Gene Siskel Film Center. Visit siskelfilmcenter.org for screening tickets.
April 25
Walid Raad
Walid Raad’s work explores how historical events in the Middle East have affected the creation, exhibition, and experience of art in the region and abroad. He is well known for The Atlas Group, a 15-year project between 1989 and 2004 about the contemporary history of Lebanon. The collection of documents archived by Raad presents a fictional universe where the hysterical symptoms of the Lebanese wars are preserved and scrutinized.
About the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
For 150 years, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) has been a leader in educating the world’s most influential artists, designers, and scholars. Located in downtown Chicago with a fine arts graduate program consistently ranked as a top program in the nation by U.S. News and World Report, SAIC provides an interdisciplinary approach to art and design as well as world-class resources, including the Art Institute of Chicago museum, on-campus galleries, and state-of-the-art facilities. SAIC’s undergraduate, graduate, and post-baccalaureate students have the freedom to take risks and create the bold ideas that transform Chicago and the world—as seen through notable alumni and faculty such as Michelle Grabner, David Sedaris, Elizabeth Murray, Richard Hunt, Georgia O’Keeffe, Cynthia Rowley, Nick Cave, and LeRoy Neiman. For more information, please visit saic.edu.
