Spring 2023 Rosalind Harris Visiting Critic program

The School of Art at CalArts is delighted to announce the upcoming Rosalind Harris Visiting Critic Program, taking place this semester. This spring, CalArts has appointed Nana Adusei-Poku, Alicia Piller, and Devin Kenny, as inaugural visiting critics in the Charles Gaines Faculty Chair program. Each Visiting Critic will participate in an on-campus residency that includes public talks, pedagogical workshops, and studio visits with the CalArts community.  These residencies are made possible by the support and generosity of the Eileen Harris Norton Foundation and Faculty Emeritus Charles Gaines. Events are free and open to the public. 

Nana Adusei-Poku lecture: Thursday March 2, 6:30pm PST
Adusei-Poku is an Assistant Professor in African Diasporic Art History in the Department of History of Art at UC Berkeley.  She is the curator of the exhibition Black Melancholia at CCS Bard and curated the event Performances of No-thingness at the Academy of Arts Berlin in 2018 and the program: Longing on a Large Scale in conjunction with Todd Gray’s exhibition Euclidean Gris Gris at Pomona College Museum of Art 2019-2020.  She is the editor of the book Reshaping the Field: Art of the African Diasporas on Display which was published by Afterall in 2022. The book expands the field of exhibition histories through a selection of pioneering exhibitions that have shaped Black art today. Her first Monograph Taking Stakes in the Unknown: Tracing Post-Black Art  (2021) contextualizes the term “post-Black” in its socio-historic and cultural contexts. Her articles have been published in Nka- Journal of Contemporary African Art, E-flux, Kunstforum International, Flashart!, L’Internationale, multitudes, Darkmatter, Afterall, and Yale Theater Magazine.

Alicia Piller, Distinguished Alumnx Lecture: Thursday March 16, 6:30pm PST
Los Angeles-based mixed media artist, Alicia Piller was born and raised in Chicago and received her Bachelors in both Fine Arts (Painting) and Anthropology from Rutgers University. While working in the fashion industry, living a decade in New York City and three and a half years in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Piller cultivated her distinctive sculptural voice. Continuing to expand her artistic practice, Alicia completed her MFA from CalArts. Alicia’s work is a part of the Hammer Permanent Collection, Glendale College Collection, Forrest Kirk Collection, the Pam Royalle Collection, and the Janine and Lyndon Barrois Collection. Her sculptural work was featured on the cover of Full Blede Magazine (Fall 2019), the Los Angeles Times “Water keeps us alive” (2022), and The New York Times “5 Artist to Watch at the California Biennial” (2022) and currently has a solo exhibition, Within, at Craft Contemporary in Los Angeles.

Devin Kenny lecture: Thursday, April 13, 4:30pm PST
Devin Kenny is an artist, writer, and musician, and a DPhil Candidate in Fine Art at the University of Oxford. Born on the South Side of Chicago, Kenny relocated to New York City as a teenager. Kenny went on to receive a Master of Fine Arts from University of California, Los Angeles, in addition to attending the Whitney Independent Study Program in New York. Kenny has participated in residencies at the Rauschenberg Foundation, SOMA Mexico, Bemis Center, MFAH Core, Shandaken Projects, and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Kenny has exhibited, performed, and lectured across the United States, and in galleries and institutions abroad. Select venues include MoMA PS1, Contemporary Art Museum Houston, The Kitchen, Performance Space, REDCAT, Queens Museum, Tramway Glasgow, Ludlow38/Goethe Institut, Julia Stoschek Collection Dusseldorf, and the IMT Gallery in London among others. As Devin KKenny, Kenny has made their first official release NY Lottery/CBD Kratom, out now via PTP: a New York-based audio collective focused on sound art, noise, HipHop, and more.

About CalArts
The School of Art at CalArts is committed to artistic innovation and critical reflection, which has been key to our enviable success in training artists who go on to make important contributions to their respective fields. Programs in Art, Photography and Media, Art and Technology, and Graphic Design each prepare graduates to thoughtfully challenge the prevailing conventions of artistic expression, develop new forms, and forums of cultural experimentation.

To learn more about the Charles Gaines MFA fellowship at CalArts, please visit calarts.edu.