UA News

Visual artists and scholars who have studied and worked all over the world will be speaking during the UA School of Art's "Transculturations: Cultural Hybridity in American Art" visiting artist series.

A two-year lecture series at The University of Arizona, examines hybridity and its manifestations in visual art, criticism and institutional curatorial practices.

The UA School of Art's annual series, which is free and open to the public, brings a range of prominent and award-winning artists and scholars to the campus. 

The series,"Transculturations: Cultural Hybridity in American Art," is the second part of a two-year series meant to bring to the public sphere a conversation about contemporary art within the context of multiculturalism and ethnicity.

"Cultural hybridity is looking at the multicultural experiences of artists and scholars either directly or indirectly manifest in their art or scholarship," said Jamie Martin, program coordinator for the UA School of Art. 

"People are negotiating different experiences," Martin added, noting that the artists and scholars tend to explore ways in which their varying enviornments and cultures affected them and those around them.

Running in conjunction with the speaker series will be a number of art exhibitions at the Joseph Gross Gallery. Each exhibition will center on the theme of transculturations. They are:

• The exhibition, "Confronting the Capitalist Crisis," by the JustSeeds Radical Art Cooperative, a New York group of street and fine artists, will be held Aug. 5 through Oct. 7.
• Lin + Lam's "Departure," which will be held Oct. 14 through Jan. 18.
• David Taylor's "Working the Line," which will be held Jan. 25 through Feb. 26. Taylor is an associate professor of photography at New Mexico State University.
• Liz Cohen's untiled exhibition will be on display March 5 through April 7. 

The speakers are nationally and internationally known artists and scholars whose work examines hybridity, Martin noted. 

This year's series gets kicked off with with Kay Lawrence, a visual artist and formerly head of the University of South Australia's art school. She discuss several of her major public works during an event to be held Sept. 17.

Martin said she felt it was important to begin the series with Lawrence's work. She noted that that Lawrence, who comes from Australia, uses her work to explore interactions between indigenous populations and settlers. 

"The issues are the same as they are here, but Lawrence is coming from a completely different context," Martin said. "It will be interesting to have that different propective." 

All lectures will be held at 5:30 p.m. at the UA's Center for Creative Photography. The other visiting artists are:

Tim Van Tran, born in Vietnam and raised in Denver, Colo., will speak Sept. 24. His artform is to manipulate his paintings on paper, forcing them into asymmetrical shapes and odd bunches.

LIN + LAM, or Lana Lin and H. Lan Thao Lam, will speak Nov. 12. The artistic duo has worked together on projects for years, working to raise awareness to issues related to nationalism and national identity, memory, war, militarism and inequities. The artists use photography, sculpture, writing, performance and installation works.

Jaimey Hamilton, an assistant professor of art history at the University of Hawaii, will speak Dec. 3. Hamilton has taught contemporary visual culture and critical theory and is currently completing a book about contemporary sculpture.

A panel discussion will be held Jan. 21, moderated by Larry D. Busbea, an art historian and UA assistant professor of art. The panel, titled "Cultural Hybridity in Tucson," will provide a discussion with panelists Fatima M. Bercht, the curator of Latin American art at the Tucson Museum of Art; Dustinn Craig, a White Mountain Apache filmmaker and visual artist; Jamie Lee, a filmmaker and founder of Visionaries Filmworks; and Adela C. Licona, a UA assistant professor in rhetoric who is interested in visual culture and representation, including the creative and critical components of the construction of knowledge.

Bruce Yonemoto will speak Feb. 18. Yonemoto, a Japanese-American multimedia artist, uses photography, installations, sculptures and film to explore the intersections of traditional Japanese and contemporary American cultures.

Liz Cohen, an artist-in-residence and head of photography at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, will speak March 25. Cohen spent four years investigating for CANAL, a series of photographs and performances about a group of transgender sex workers near the Panama Canal. The worker's bodies become metaphors for Panama's geography and history.

Dipti Desai, an associate professor and director of art education at New York University, will close the series on April 8 when she speaks. Desai has taught in the United States, India and New Zealand and has published on a range of topics relevant to art history, education and multiculturalism. During her lecture, she will talk about terrorism, immigration and justice.

"Multicultural issues are everywhere and they touch on everything," Martin said. "Having a conversation about what people are experiencing, in general, is important."