Light Work and the Art Photography Program in the College of Visual and Performing Arts announce the spring 2021 lineup for our Visiting Artist Lectures. The series brings together leading artists in the field contemporary art utilizing photography in ways that push the boundaries of the medium. Joiri Minaya, Dayanita Singh, Allison Janae Hamilton and Kaari Upson present an expansive view of the ways photography can be used and adapted across a vast range of aesthetic and conceptual practices. Lectures take place via Zoom (no account required). Please email lab [at] lightwork.org with any questions.
Joiri Minaya: February 16, 2:15pm EST
Click here to register.
Joiri Minaya is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work investigates the female body within constructions of identity, multi-cultural social spaces and hierarchies. Born in New York, she grew up in the Dominican Republic. Minaya has exhibited internationally across the Caribbean and the US. She is a grantee from the Nancy Graves Foundation, the Rema Hort Mann Foundation, the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Great prize and the Audience Award XXV Concurso de Arte Eduardo León Jimenes, the Exhibition Prize Centro de la Imagen (DR), and the Great Prize of the XXVII Biennial at the Museo de Arte Moderno (DR). She has participated in residencies at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Guttenberg Arts, Smack Mellon, BronxArtSpace, Bronx Museum’s AIM Program, the NYFA Mentoring Program for Immigrant Artists, Transmedia Lab at MA Scène Nationale, Red Bull House of Art Detroit, Lower East Side Printshop Keyholder Artist, Socrates Sculpture Park, Art Omi and Vermont Studio Center. Minaya graduated from the Escuela Nacional de Artes Visuales of Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic (2009), the Altos de Chavón School of Design (2011) and Parsons the New School for Design (2013).
Dayanita Singh: March 2, 7:30pm EST
Click here to register.
Dayanita Singh’s art uses photography to reflect and expand on the ways in which we relate to photographic images. Her recent works, drawn from her extensive photographic oeuvre, are a series of mobile museums that allow her images to be endlessly edited, sequenced, archived and displayed. Stemming from Singh’s interest in the archive, the museums present her photographs as interconnected bodies of work that are replete with both poetic and narrative possibilities. Publishing is also a significant part of the artist’s practice: in her books, often published without text, Singh extends her experiments on alternate forms of producing and viewing photographs.
A selected list of Singh’s international exhibitions include Frith Street Gallery, London, Callicoon Fine Arts, New York, Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, Tokyo, MAST, Bologna, Hawa Mahal, Jaipur, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Delhi, Philadelphia Museum of Art and Tate Modern, London. A selected list of Singh’s numerous monographs include titles with Steidl and Scalo Verlag, among others.
Allison Janae Hamilton: April 20, 2:15pm EST
Click here to register.
Allison Janae Hamilton is a multi-disciplinary artist working in sculpture, installation, photography, and video. Her work often incorporates natural materials such as reclaimed wood, animal hides, and feathers. Hamilton fuses land-centered folklore and personal family narratives into haunting yet epic mythologies that address the social and political concerns of today’s changing Southern terrain, including land loss, environmental justice, climate change, and sustainability. The artist’s commitment to the land is driven by her own migrations, from Kentucky, where she was born, to Florida, where she grew up, to rural Tennessee, the location of her maternal family’s homestead, and to New York, where she currently lives. Hamilton’s work connects the physicality of the landscape with the lived experience it carries, positioning landscape as critical to understanding both history and contemporary culture.
Allison Janae Hamilton has exhibited widely across the U.S. and abroad. Her work as been the subject of solo exhibitions at Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA), North Adams, MA (2018) and Atlanta Contemporary, Atlanta, GA (2018). Hamilton is the recipient of the Creative Capital Award and the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Grant. Hamilton holds a PhD in American Studies from New York University and an MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University. She lives and works in New York.
Kaari Upson: April 27, 7:30pm EST
Click here to register.
Kaari Upson works in a wide array of media including sculpture, video, drawing and painting. She has created a singular artistic universe that melds autobiographical and collective traumas, fears and fantasies and often illuminates what might be called “Americanness” or the “American psyche.” The Los Angeles-based artist’s artful conjuring of abject imagery targets viewers’ psychological comfort zones, confronting them with visceral and affecting evocations of loss and instability.
Solo shows include those at Kunsthalle Basel (2019), Kunstverein Hannover, Hanover (2019), New Museum, New York (2017), and Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2007). Recent group exhibitions include the 58th Venice Biennale (2019); La Triennale de Milano (2018); 15th Istanbul Biennial (2017), the 2017 Whitney Biennial, and others at Aspen Art Museum (2019), Yuz Museum, Shanghai (2018), Bergen Kunsthall (2016), Aïshti Foundation, Beirut (2015–16), Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2015), The High Line, New York (2015), Rubell Family Collection, Miami (2015), Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2014), CAPC Musée d’art contemporain, Bordeaux (2014), Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2013), and SITE Santa Fe (2010). She lives and works in Los Angeles and New York.
Light Work was founded as an artist-run, non-profit organization in 1973. Its mission is to provide direct support through residencies, publications, exhibitions, a community-access digital lab facility, and other related projects to emerging and under-represented artists working in the media of photography and digital imaging.
Light Work’s founding directors were Phil Block and Tom Bryan. The organization has been led by Jeffrey Hoone since 1982. Light Work is housed in the Robert B. Menschel Media Center at Syracuse University. Light Work receives support for its programs from the New York State Council on the Arts; the National Endowment for the Arts; The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; JGS (Joy of Giving Something, Inc.); Robert and Joyce Menschel; Vital Projects Fund, Inc.; Syracuse University (SU); the Central New York Community Foundation, and our subscribers.
The College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University has a tradition of excellence in educating cultural leaders that goes back nearly 150 years. Students in the Art Photography Program enjoy the benefits of an intimate and rigorous interdisciplinary program with access to the resources of a major university; small class sizes; an award-winning and diverse faculty; and national and international semester residency programs with mentoring from prominent artists and curators. Recent graduates have received numerous exhibitions, awards and residencies, including Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture, screenings at the Cannes film festival and a MacArthur “genius” grant. With semester residency programs opportunities in Los Angeles, New York City and Berlin, and such Syracuse institutions as Light Work, the Connective Corridor and the Urban Video Project, the college has built an educational environment that thrives on critical thought and action.
