Visting guest artists ANTOINE d’AGATA, SUSAN MEISELAS + PETER van AGTMAEL

Art Institute of Boston

Art in Context is proud to present Magnum photographers Antoine d’Agata, Susan Meiselas and Peter van Agtmael

Wednesday, March 28, 2012 | Auditorium | Room 215 at 2:30 p.m.

Top left: Susan Meiselas, top right: Peter van Agtmael, bottom: Antoine d’Agata

IN CONJUNCTION WITH

101 Photos for Press Freedom: Magnum Photos celebrates the 25th Anniversary of Reporters Without Borders

AIB and the Consulate General of France in Boston collaborate in presenting an exhibition of 101 images that document seminal world events since the founding of Magnum in 1947. The exhibit and related events honor the 25th anniversary of Reporters Sans Frontieres (Reporters Without Borders), an international organization that advocates freedom of the press, founded in 1985 by Robert Ménard, Rony Brauman and journalist Jean-Claude Guillebaud.

Art Institute of Boston Gallery

March 21 to April 22 | 700 Beacon Street, Boston, MA

+

Strauch-Mosse Visiting Artist Panel Discussion

Three award-winning photojournalists Antoine D’Agata, Susan Meiselas and Peter van Agtmaelwill speak about the role and importance of independent journalism and press freedom, moderated by New York Times writer Alex Kershaw, who is also author of The Life and Times of Robert Capa.

Thursday, March 29th, at 7:00 pm
Washburn Auditorium
Lesley University’s Brattle Campus
10 Phillips Place
Cambridge, MA 02138

Visiting guest artist ANNETTE LEMIEUX

The Art Institute of Boston

Friday, March 23 | Auditorium | 12pm

Annette Lemieux in her studio/home, 83 Canal Street, NYC in 1985. Photo: Peter Bellamy

Annette Lemieux is one of the few wunderkind of the 1980s global art scene who has endured beyond that feverish time to become a significant artist whose work continues to grow in depth and resonance. Lemieux is a prominent figure in the US and abroad. Her work has been exhibited in major institutions internationally and is recognized in preeminent museum and private collections. Currently, Lemieux is Professor of the Practice of Studio Arts at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Lemieux’s commitment to content over material motivates her to work with an ever-expanding range of media. Whether employing marble or scrim, she masters and invents techniques and processes that correlate with states of mind. Her process incorporates intellectual analyses of social codes with an emphasis on psychological and emotional content. Fundamentally interdisciplinary in content and form, Lemieux’s works continue her exploration and explication of our cultural constructs and how objects that reflect the self define the self within the culture. [press release excerpt Krannert Art Museum, IL 2011]

Annette Lemieux, Hell on Wheels, 1991 Found steel helmets, rubber tires, steel rods 100 parts, overall dimension variable

Annette Lemieux, The great Outdoors, 1989, Water-based ink on canvas, Adirondack chair, table, lamp

Currently on view:

CARPENTER CENTER FOR VISUAL ARTS | HARVARD UNIVERSITY

ANNETTE LEMIEUX: UNFINSHED BUSINESS

Curated by Lelia Amalfitano

Until April 1, 2012

Annette Lemieux, Eskapo, from La Itala Laborposteno, 1996–2011, Archival Inkjet Print, 29 3/4 x 47 inches

[press release] Unfinished Business continues to trace her investigations of memory and meaning. However, here we are presented with an unfiltered personal and poetic connection to the vivid lives of objects. Collectively the works function as if a road map to her creative process, a process that incorporates intellectual analyses of social codes with an emphasis on psychological and emotional content and direct engagement with material. More…

Visiting guest artist SHEN WEI

Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University

AiC is pleased to announce the visiting guest artist lecture by Shen Wei on Wednesday, February 29 at 1pm.

© Shen Wei, Untitled Self-portrait (New York), from the series I Miss You Already, 2011

© Shen Wei, Yu And Li, Shanghai, from the series Chinese Sentiment, 2010 

© Shen Wei, from the series Table Setting, commissioned by Aperture Foundation in 2010 

Born and raised in Shanghai, Shen Wei is a fine art photographer currently based in New York City. His works have been exhibited nationally and internationally, with venues including the Museum of the City of New York, Griffin Museum of Photography, Lincoln Center Avery Fisher Hall, the Harn Museum of Art and the Museum of Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. His photographs have been featured in publications such as The New Yorker, Aperture, American Photo, Chinese Photography, PDN and Life Magazine China.

Shen Wei’s work is featured in many private and public collections including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), J. Paul Getty Museum, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Museum of Fine Arts St. Petersburg, Library of Congress, Florida Museum of Photographic Arts, Museum of Chinese in America, Rockefeller Brothers Fund and Kinsey Institute.

Shen Wei is a recipient of the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Creative Artist Residency, the Griffin Award from the Griffin Museum of Photography, the Excellent Photographer Award from China Pingyao International Photography Festival and the Urban Artist Initiative New York City Fellowship.

Shen Wei holds an MFA in photography, video, and related media from the School of Visual Arts, New York; a BFA in photography from Minneapolis College of Art and Design; and a BA in decorative arts from Shanghai Light Industry College.

Upcoming solo exhibitions include Chinese Sentiment at epSite Epson Imaging Gallery, Shanghai, China (April 28 – May 27, 2012), Chinese Sentiment at Monika Olko Gallery, Sag Harbor, NY (May 30 – June 20, 2012) and I Miss You Already at Daniel Cooney Fine Art, New York, NY (September/October, 2012).

Visiting guest artist TARA SELLIOS

Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University

February 15th | 1pm

“I strive to create images that elegantly articulate the totality of existence, focusing heavily on the broad themes of life and death, with further emphasis placed on ideas of fragility, impermanence and carnality. Death has always possessed a significant presence within the history of art, ranging from the various Christian based work that dominated art’s early years to the work of the Dutch still life painters. Manifesting melancholic themes with beauty and precision, as these artists did, results in an image that is seductive, forcing the viewer to look, despite its apparent grotesque and morbid nature. Through these images, I aspire to make apparent the restlessness of a life that is knowingly so temporary and vulnerable.” - Tara Sellios

Less than two years since graduating from The Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University, Sellios has been awarded an Artist Fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, landed her first solo exhibition in Boston, won a curator prize at the Griffin Museum of Photography, was named one of New England’s “Seven Emerging Photographers” by Art New England magazine, and captured an international Flash Forward award from The Magenta Foundation in 2011.

The Boston Globe hailed Lessons of Impermanence, her first solo exhibition staged in the Suffolk University Art Gallery through Jan. 11, 2012, as “hair-raising (photos) prodding at the intersection between sumptuous and gruesome.”

“Sellios strides right into the territories between nourishment and violence,” acclaimed the Globe review, “between how we anthropomorphize animals and how we use them. But her main fascination is the realm that mingles attraction and repulsion, and how art uses beauty to anoint violence, make it more palatable, and raise it to mythic realms.” (excerpt form LU’s blog post- read more)

Interview with LISA WILTSE | New Zealand

Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University

April 26th | Room 215 | 3pm

AiC will conduct an online interview with AIB photography alumna Lisa Wiltse who currently resides in New Zealand.

© Lisa Wiltse, From the series Mennonites of Manitoba, Bolivia 2009

© Lisa Wiltse, From the series Mennonites of Manitoba, Bolivia 2009
Mennonite Johan Martin, 11, riding on the back of a pickup truck. Vehicles are forbidden in the colony of Manitoba but a few wealthy residents have drivers to enable them to travel far distances to conduct business

© Lisa Wiltse, From the series Mennonites of Manitoba, Bolivia 2009

Lisa Wiltse  graduated from the Art Institute of Boston with a BFA in photography, and moved to Sydney, Australia in 2004 where she worked as a staff photographer for the Sydney Morning Herald. In 2008, she started her freelance career and subsequently moved to La Paz, Bolivia. Awards in 2010 include Voies – Off winner, Berenice Abbot Emerging Photographer finalist, Magenta Forward winner, Julia Margaret Cameron Award runner up,  The PDN Emerging Photographer, and her work was published in The Fader, TIME magazine, GEO, Internazionale, Private Photo Review, The Sun Magazine, Marie Claire, The Australian Financial Review and The Sydney Morning Herald. She is currently a contributor with Getty Reportage.

Lisa is the ONE LIFE Photo Grand Prize Award recipient for her images documenting a community of Mennonites living in Manitoba, Bolivia, where horse-drawn buggies, manicured lawns and planted fields reflect a quiet, religiously inspired way of life. She captures the Mennonites of Manitoba in their everyday lives, struggling to erase a recent painful past and existing in communal isolation.

Visiting guest artist REBECCA MEYERS

AiC visits Emerson College | April 12th | 1:30pm

© Rebecca Meyers, Night Side, 2009

In Night Side she focuses on windows. and division.  Windows allow us visual access to the world but protect us from it at the same time. In her film we see various animals outdoors– the squirrel is protected from the wind and cold behind its bushy tail like we are protected behind our windows. This thin buffer is challenged when she records the lights reflecting off of the window’s double pane. As the window creaks and flexes, the double reflection of household lights sway and move for the camera. The light’s dance goes in tune with the wind that cannot reach us.

© Rebecca Meyers, Blue Mantle, 2010

Rebecca Meyers was born in New York, spent several years in the Midwest, and has been living in Massachusetts since 2005. She has been making 16mm films since her graduate studies at the University of Iowa and has screened internationally at festivals and museums, most recently in the New York Film Festival’s Views from the Avant-Garde and Festival Les Inattendus in Lyon, France. Meyers has been involved with nonprofit arts organizations since her days in Iowa City, when she became active as a programmer, for both the THAW Festival of Film, Video, and Digital Media and the monthly screening series Light Reading, which she founded. She served three years as Co-Programmer of Chicago’s Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival and has curated film programs for the Chicago Underground Film Festival, the Massachusetts College of Art Film Society, Brooklyn’s Light Industry and the Harvard Film Archive, where she acted as Archive Coordinator. She was awarded a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship in 2009 and is at work on a cinematic essay about the sea and our relationships to its ineffable power, a project begun while a Fellow at the Harvard Film Study Center.

Visiting guest artist DOMINIC CHAVEZ

The Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University

March 22 | 1pm | Room 215

© Dominic Chavez, AIDS victim, Lilongwe, Malawi

© Dominic Chavez, AIDS, Lagos, Nigeria

© Dominic Chavez, AIDS, Livingstone, Zambia

Dominic Chavez’ photographic career began at age 19 at The Denver Post where he freely explored his craft, interweaving creative vision, personal documentary and photojournalism. At the age of 25, The Boston Globe brought him East, where he worked until the summer of 2008.

Since 1991, Dominic has covered a wide range of domestic and international issues. He has reported from the front lines of Iraq to the war-torn streets of Angola, and the effects of the ongoing drug war in Colombia.

Presently, Dominic focuses on his true passion: bringing awareness on domestic and global health issues through his personal work. From 1999-2009 he has documented the height of the AIDS epidemic in Africa, also producing two books, one about the impact of the epidemic in Nigeria in 2006 and a second about AIDS Treatment in Africa in 2009, both in tandem with Harvard School of Public Health. His latest project was on drug-resistant tuberculosis with the World Health Organization in 2009.

Dominic has been recognized with many awards, and two most notable include the Kaiser Family Foundations’ Media Fellowship Award 2007-2008 and First Place in the Pictures of the Year International Competition, for his work during the Iraq War in 2004.

Visiting guest artist FRED LIANG

Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University

Tuesday, March 1 | 1pm, Room 215

Fred H. C. Liang
Descending Night 2007
Chinese and Japanese gouache, acrylic, screenprinting and oil on linen on panel

Fred Liang, ICA Foster Prize installation | Boston, 2010-2011

Murial by Fred Liang, Beijing, China

Liang received a BFA from the University of Manitoba and a MFA from Yale University.

Solo Exhibitions Carroll and Sons Gallery, Boston; 798 Art Complex, Beijing; Bernard Toale Gallery, Boston; Boston Drawing Project; Gallery One One One, The University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada; Art Space, John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Kohler, WI; Dean Jensen Gallery, Milwaukee, WI; Gas Station Theater, Winnipeg; University of Manitoba Art Gallery, Winnipeg, Canada

Group Exhibitions FoCi Art Fair, Miami Basel, Miami, FL; Oasis Gallery, Beijing, China; Today’s Museum, Beijing; Visual Arts Center, Tsinghha University, Beijing; Jewett Gallery, Wellesley College, MA; Two Lines Gallery, Beijing; Sunshine International Art Museum, Songzhuang, Beijing; Galerie Ardizón, Bregenz, Austria; Galerie Edition Stalzer, Vienna, Austria; The Art Complex Museum, Duxbury, MA; Beijing Gallery, Beijinh China; Chazen Musuem, University of Wisconsin, Madison; LNC Gallery, Columbia University, NY; Ace Art Gallery, Vienna, Austria; SCA Gallery, Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney, Australia; Gallerie HMH Junstereighisse, Linz, Austria; A&A Atelier, Milan; International Print Center, NY; Gallery Song Ha, Kyungsangnamdo, South Korea; National Gallery of China, Beijing; The Nieman Center for Print Studies, Columbia University, NY; Art Miami, Miami Beach Convention Center; Watkin Gallery, American University, Washington D.C; Schwarzenber Chen Meiere, Scheifing, Austria; Fassbiner Gallery, Chicago, IL; Kingston Gallery, Boston, MA; Johnson Museum, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY; Fukuya Art Gallery, Higashi Hiroshima, Japan; The Coptic Society, Boston, MA; Gallery Oh, Aich, Japan; Art Space, Aich, Japan; Gallery-M, Aich, Japan; Lebel Gallery, University of Windsor, Ontario; Yale University/Norfolk Summer School of Art, Norfolk, CT

Awards/Grants Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation Artist Resource Trust Fund; Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow, Boston, MA; William Hicks Faculty Fellow, MassArt; State Department Cultural Grant; Artists Trust Resource Fund Grant; MIAD Traveling Research Grant, Milwaukee, WI; Canada Art Bank Purchase, Ottawa, Ontario; Manitoba Visual Arts Grant, Winnipeg, Manitoba; Manitoba Arts Council Grant, Winnipeg, Manitoba; Yale Graduate Scholarship; Shanski Fine Arts Award, Winnipeg, Manitoba; Heinz Jordon Prize in Painting, Winnipeg, Manitoba

Publications The Boston Globe; China Daily; The Boston Herald; The Chronicle, WCVB; Boston; WGBH; Boston; Milwaukee Journal/Sentinel; The Yale Literary Magazine

Residencies Include Assilah Moussem, Assilah, Morocco; Hotel Pupik, Schrattenberg, Austria; Art Week Residency, Aabenraa, Denmark; Rong Bao Zhai Printshop, Beijing, China

Visiting guest artist DAVID HILLIARD

Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University

Tuesday, February 15th | 12pm, Room 215

For years I have been actively documenting my life and the lives of those around me, recording events and attempting to create order in a sometimes chaotic world. While my photographs focus on the personal, the familiar and the simply ordinary, the work strikes a balance between autobiography and fiction. Within the photographs physical distance is often manipulated to represent emotional distance. The casual glances people share can take on a deeper significance, and what initially appears subjective and intimate is quite often a commentary on the larger contours of life.

For me, the construction of panoramic photographs, comprised of various single images, acts as a visual language. Focal planes shift, panel by panel. This sequencing of photographs and shifting of focal planes allows me the luxury of guiding the viewer across the photograph, directing their eye; an effect which could not be achieved through a single image.

I continually aspire to represent the spaces we inhabit, relationships we create, and the objects with which we surround ourselves. I hope the messages the photographs deliver speak to the personal as well as the universal experience. I find the enduring power and the sheer ability of a photograph to express a thought, a moment, or an idea, to be the most powerful expression of myself, both as an artist, and as an individual.

- David Hilliard

Bleeder, 2008, © David Hilliard

Weather Gathering, 2010, © David Hilliard

David Hilliard received his BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and MFA from Yale University. He worked for many years as an assistant professor at Yale University where he also directed the undergraduate photo department. He has also taught at Harvard University, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. He is currently an assistant professor in Boston at the Massachusetts College of Art & Design. David Hilliard exhibits his photographs both nationally and internationally and has won numerous awards such as the Fulbright and Guggenheim. His photographs can be found in many important collections including the Whitney Museum of American art in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and the Philadelphia Musem of Art. His work is represented by the Yancey Richardson Gallery in New York, Carroll and Sons Gallery in Boston, Jackson Fine Art in Atlanta and the Mark Moore Gallery in Santa Monica. In 2005 a collection of his photographs was published in a monograph by Aperture Press. This spring David will be the artist in residence at Dartmouth College where he will also mount a large scale exhibition of his work.