Rosalind Harris Visiting Critic Series

Nana Adusei-Poku: 'Black Melancholia as Critical Practice'

The School of Art is pleased to welcome Dr. Nana Adusei-Poku as our inaugural Rosalind Harris Visiting Critic as part of the Charles Gaines Faculty Chair program for Spring 2023.

Nana Adusei-Poku is assistant professor in African Diasporic Art History in the Department of History of Art at UC Berkeley. She is immersed in the void, the abyss, and sunken places and how those articulate themselves in texts, bodies, images, and relations. The question “What are the conditions of our existence”, which Stuart Hall asked, remains core to her journey and inspires her to embody and develop an engaged pedagogical approach and to explore the performativity of nothingness and life “in the hold”. Her research on Cultural Shifts and how they articulate themselves through the intersections of Art, Politics, and Popular Culture; Artistic productions from the Black Diasporas, and curatorial practice as a research tool to shape art historical discourses. She is the curator of the exhibition Black Melancholia at the CCS Bard Galleries, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York 2022, and curated a.o. 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 3xhibition Euclidean Gris Gris at Pomona College Museum of Art 2019-2020. No Humans Involved was her first co-curated project at the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam, which she realized during her curatorial fellowship in 2015.

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Alicia Piller: 'Journey to Materiality'

The School of Art is pleased to welcome Alicia Piller as an inaugural Rosalind Harris Visiting Critic as part of the Charles Gaines Faculty Chair program for spring 2023.
 
Los Angeles-based mixed media artist Alicia Piller was born and raised in Chicago and received her bachelor's in both fine arts (painting) and anthropology from Rutgers University in 2004. While working in the fashion industry, living a decade in NYC 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 focused on sculpture and installation from CalArts in May of 2019. Alicia’s work is a part of the Hammer Permanent Collection, Glendale College Collection, Forrest Kirk Collection, the Pam Royalle Collection, & Janine Barrois Collection. Her sculptural work was featured on the cover of Full Blede Magazine (Fall 2019), the LA Times' ‘Water keeps us alive’ (2022), & The New York Times' ‘5 Artist to Watch at the California Biennial’ (2022). Her solo show, Within, is currently up at Craft Contemporary until May 2023. You can find her on Instagram @thereal.aliciapiller 

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Devin Kenny: Rosalind Harris Visiting Critic Lecture Series

The School of Art is pleased to welcome Devin Kenny as an inaugural Rosalind Harris Visiting Critic as part of the Charles Gaines Faculty Chair program for spring 2023.
 
Devin Kenny is an artist, writer, and musician. 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, Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara, Ludlow38/Goethe Institut, Julia Stoschek Collection Dusseldorf, and the IMT Gallery in London among others. On Instagram: @crashingwavy, Kenny (as Devin KKenny) has a first official release NY Lottery/CBD Kratom, out now via PTP: a New York-based audio collective focused on sound art, noise, hip-hop, and more.

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