36 South Wabash Avenue
Chicago, Illinois 60603
United States
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.
Formalized in 1951 with the establishment of an endowed fund by Flora Mayer Witkowsky, the Visiting Artists Program has featured more than 1,000 international artists, designers, and scholars representing more than 70 countries. All events are free and open to the public. Learn more.
Brendan Fernandes
Tuesday, February 28, 6–7:30pm CT
The Art Institute of Chicago, Fullerton Hall, 111 S. Michigan Ave.
Brendan Fernandes is an internationally recognized Canadian artist working at the intersection of dance and visual arts. Fernandes’s projects address issues of race, queer culture, migration, protest, and other forms of collective movement. Always looking to create new spaces and new forms of agency, Fernandes’s projects take on hybrid forms: part ballet, part queer dance party, and part political protest, they’re always rooted in collaboration and fostering solidarity.
Torkwase Dyson
Tuesday, March 7, 6–7:30pm CT
The Art Institute of Chicago, Fullerton Hall, 111 S. Michigan Ave.
Working in painting, drawing, and sculpture, Torkwase Dyson combines expressive mark-making and geometric abstraction to explore the continuity between ecology, infrastructure, and architecture. Dyson deconstructs, distills, and interrogates the built environment, exploring how individuals—particularly Black and Brown people—negotiate, negate, and transform systems and spatial order. Throughout her work and research, Dyson seeks to confront issues of environmental liberation, envisioning a path toward a more equitable future.
Whitaker Malem
Tuesday, March 14, 6–7:30pm CT
The Art Institute of Chicago, Fullerton Hall, 111 S. Michigan Ave.
Patrick Whitaker and Keir Malem have been together professionally and personally for more than 35 years. Renowned for their leatherwork, the self-proclaimed “pop artisans” have spent more than three decades obsessing over the human form and crafting what they describe as body-based sculptures that occupy the fantastic realm between art, fashion, and costume. Their influence on popular culture encompasses various creative fields and has led to involvement with many leading visionaries. Presented in partnership with SAIC’s Fashion Council and the Penny Stamps Speaker Series at the University of Michigan.
Haas Brothers
Tuesday, March 21, 6–7:30pm CT
The Art Institute of Chicago, Fullerton Hall, 111 S. Michigan Ave.
Since founding the Haas Brothers in 2010, twin brothers Nikolai and Simon Haas have spurned arbitrary artistic boundaries and hierarchies, creating a provocative world that merges art, fashion, film, music, and design. Playful and at times irreverent, they explore aesthetic themes related to nature, science fiction, sexuality, and psychedelia. Their inventive use of materials ranges from copper, porcelain, and fur to technical resins and polyurethane.
Athena LaTocha: Distinguished Alumni Lecture Series
Tuesday, April 4, 6–7:30pm CT
The Art Institute of Chicago, Fullerton Hall, 111 S. Michigan Ave.
Athena LaTocha (BFA 1992) is an artist whose massive works on paper explore the relationship between human-made and natural worlds. The artist incorporates materials such as ink, lead, earth, and wood, while looking at correlations between mark-marking and displacement of materials made by industrial equipment and natural events. LaTocha’s process is about being immersed in these environments while responding to the storied and, at times, traumatic cultural histories that are rooted in place. Presented in partnership with SAIC Alumni Engagement.
Firelei Báez
Monday, May 1, 6–7:30pm CT
The Art Institute of Chicago, Fullerton Hall, 111 S. Michigan Ave.
In exuberantly colorful works on paper and canvas, large-scale sculptures, and immersive installations, Firelei Báez combines representational cues that span hair textures, textile patterns, plant life, folkloric and literary references, and wide-ranging emblems of healing and resistance. Often featuring strong female protagonists, her paintings incorporate the visual languages of regionally specific mythology and ritual alongside those of science fiction and fantasy to envision identities as unfixed and inherited narratives as perpetually evolving.
About the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
For more than 155 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 ranked number two in the nation by US 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, and adults, teens, and kids in our Continuing Studies classes have the opportunity to explore their creative sides, build portfolios, and advance their skills. Notable alumni and faculty include Georgia O’Keeffe, Nick Cave, David Sedaris, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Cynthia Rowley, Michelle Grabner, Richard Hunt, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and Jeff Koons.
