Video, above, a behind-the-scenes look at the work of Luis Camnitzer for the 2010 MoMA exhibition On Line: Drawing through the Twentieth Century.
Today at noon, the Art, Justice & Global Aesthetics: The Equity and Diversity Lecture Series welcomes artists Luis Camnitzer and Michele Wallace for A Town Hall on Art & Race in the 21st Century.
Camnitzer is a New York-based conceptual artist and academic who’s known for biting humor in his politically tinged works of sculpture, installation, printmaking, drawing and photography. Although he has a 50-year art practice behind him (Camnitzer was one of the original founders of the New York Graphic Workshop in 1964), the German-born Uruguayan artist only recently had his first New York museum survey earlier this year. The show at El Museo del Barrio in East Harlem was reviewed favorably in The New York Times.
Wallace is a feminist author of several books and a professor of English at The City College and Graduate Center of the City University of New York. In 1979, at age 27, she published Black Macho and The Myth of The Superwoman in which she criticized black nationalism and sexism. In 2004, as a follow-up of sorts, she published Dark Designs and Visual Culture, a compilation of new and previously published essays and interviews. In many of the essays, she re-examines some of her older work and reflects on her own evolution as a writer and as a woman.
Sponsored by the Office of the Provost and the Diversity Committee at CalArts, this series brings renowned artists and speakers to campus to address issues of equity and diversity and their intersections with aesthetics and art-making.
“From my perspective Wallace and Camnitzer represent some of the most incisive thinking about the intersections of history, race, gender, culture and art,” says Matthew Shenoda, assistant provost for Equity and Diversity at CalArts. “They are both pre-eminent scholars in their respective fields and bring to CalArts a new set of perspectives and ways for us to think about the myriad facets that make up our society and our own art-making practices.”
Luis Camnitzer & Michele Wallace: A Town Hall on Art & Race in the 21st Century
at CalArts Main Gallery
Dec. 8 at noon