October 29, 2015–January 17, 2016
Opening: October 29, 5–9pm
Miniatures workshop: November 22, 2–5pm (open to the public)
CamLab’s 10th anniversary party: December 11, 6–9pm
Weingart Gallery at Occidental College
1600 Campus Road
Los Angeles, CA 90041
CamLab, Occidental College 2015 Wanlass Artist in Residence
Occidental College is proud to host the artist collective CamLab as its 2015 Wanlass Artists in Residence. In addition to their exhibition With Respect To…, CamLab have designed their class “Power Play” as an opportunity to further explore the core values of their social practice, including working with a self-selected group on an intimate scale durationally. For the course, their exhibition at Weingart Gallery, and general presence on the Occidental College campus, the duo reference the current tension on U.S. college campuses around the reporting of sexual assaults. CamLab works with themes of power dynamics, feminism, and reparative history making, and uses relational objects as a way to self-organize or aspire to social change. CamLab perpetually and passionately models collaboration as a survival strategy.
With Respect To…
As part of their residency, CamLab’s exhibition With Respect To… will occupy Weingart Gallery from October 29 until January 17. With Respect To… is comprised of three spaces: The Reguarding Room, a Searching Center, and Holding Hearing Court. These differentiated realms reflect the various modes of CamLab’s approach and its celebration of practice-led knowledge creation.
The Reguarding Room houses an architectural model of the gallery that displays an exhibition in miniature of historic artworks with themes of rape and sexual assault. With consideration to the current nationwide conversation about rape and sexual assault reporting on campus, this miniature exhibition is intentionally staged at Occidental, one of 144 schools currently under investigation by the U.S. Department of Education. The to-scale reproductions will be made in a campus workshop prior to the exhibition’s opening and added to during a public workshop on November 22.
The workshop will take place in the adjoining Searching Center, which is outfitted with relevant research materials and miniature artmaking supplies. CamLab intends for the workshops and the Center to be the site of material exploration and intimate conversations around these difficult issues. Across the hall, Holding Hearing Court is CamLab’s latest addition to its “Speaker Mounds” series. This time the duo invites you to browse, read aloud, and stand/sit/crouch proudly! Not at all a place of judgment, the playful podiums therein will attempt to court you into trying on an alternate subjectivity for your sister citizens.
In January 2016, CamLab and OxyArts will publish a catalog about the exhibition and CamLab’s residency in general, with essays by Tracy Jeanne Rosenthal, Sean Donahue, and Aandrea Stang. The book will be designed by Ania Diakoff. Contact [email protected] to reserve your copy now.
About the Artist
CamLab is a collaboration between Anna Mayer and Jemima Wyman begun ten years ago at the California Institute of the Arts. This most recent multi-roomed exhibition emerges from the duo’s longstanding commitment to embodiment and intimacy, and to exposing the political implications of both. Using humor and relational rigor, CamLab continually develops a shared subjectivity that is both feminist and phenomenological.
About the Wanlass Artist in Residence Program
The Wanlass Artist in Residence Program Occidental College invites artists to investigate aspects of their practice and share it with a campus-wide and general art audience. The program engages the campus with a contemporary art dialogue and encourages cross-campus collaboration and sustained creative interaction. The Wanlass Artist in Residence Program is made possible by generous support from the Kathryn Caine Wanlass Charitable Foundation.
For more information about CamLab’s residency at Occidental College, the Wanlass Artist in Residence Program or Oxy Arts, please visit oxy.edu.
