Last semester’s Visiting Artist Lecture Series brought artists Hannah Black, Michael Queenland and Malik Gaines to campus. This semester, the series is on once again — and it’s bringing important Black voices into conversation via Zoom: Devin Kenny, Nicole Miller, Sondra Perry and Tomashi Jackson.
The first webinar will kick off Nov. 5 at noon, with the series running weekly through Dec. 4. Each lecture is free and open to the public.
Rice University’s Fall 2020 Visiting Artist Lecture Series is co-sponsored by the Center for African and African American Studies (CAAAS) and the Department of Visual and Dramatic Arts (VADA), with support from the Dean of Humanities, the Mellon Foundation and the Center for Engaged Research and Collaborative Learning and the Moody Center for the Arts.
Two of the artists in this year’s series are currently showing work on campus — and both pieces happen to have Texas connections.
“Having actual contact with the work of these two artists in the lecture series will be exciting and meaningful to our students, and our university and Houston communities,” said John Sparagana, the Grace Christian Vietti Chair in Visual Arts and VADA professor who helped organize this semester’s lineup along with fellow VADA professors Natasha Bowdoin and Lisa Lapinski.
In “A Pnyx for Crystal Mason in Fort Worth, TX,” Jackson reflects on the story of a North Texas woman sentenced to five years in prison for a mistaken vote. The work is currently on display in the Moody Center as part of its fall exhibition, “States of Mind: Art and American Democracy,” and is one of several contemporary pieces contemplating the complex issue of voting rights in the United States.
Perry’s “Ocean Modifier” is a site-specific installation in the Brochstein Pavilion that addresses the centuries-old linkages between water and Black bodies. It was inspired in part by her research into Houston’s Freedmen’s Town: Despite, and indeed because of, its propensity for severe flooding, the neighborhood was given over to Texas’ freed slaves — an example of the environmental racism Perry often addresses in her work.
Sparagana also gave credit for the lecture series to CAAAS director Anthony Pinn, the Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor of Humanities, who envisioned the first collaborative visiting artist series as means of highlighting the tremendous reach of the arts and exemplifying how artists have informed and shaped our thinking on a range of public issues — for instance, voting rights and environmental racism.
“The series was incredibly impactful to students, faculty and the Houston community, and we are excited to continue it into the current moment, with the arts providing leadership in articulating and shaping the pressing issues in these times of protest, reckoning and reflection,” Sparagana said.
Each lecture will also be livestreamed at vimeo.com/ricemediacenter. Below, the full lineup of visiting artists:
Devin Kenny (noon Nov. 5) is an artist, writer, musician and independent curator whose work is centered on cultural products of the African diaspora in the U.S. and network culture before and after the internet. It’s
Nicole Miller (noon Nov. 11) uses video installation and sculpture to propose that active viewing can be used as a tool to reconstitute personal histories, or even one's own body. Her work stems from the possibility that representation can allow for such reconstitution.
Sondra Perry (12:30 p.m. Nov. 19) is an interdisciplinary artist working in video, computer-based media, installation and performance. Her work addresses concepts of Blackness, productivity, labor and the African diaspora. Perry explores ways in which technology can shape identity, often interweaving her own personal history with fictional narratives.
Tomashi Jackson (noon Dec. 4) works across painting, video, textiles and sculpture and brings together formal and material experimentation with art-historical, legal and social histories, investigating and visualizing stories of displacement and disenfranchisement.