Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle,
Lorraine H. Morton Professor of Art,
Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle is an American conceptual artist known for multidisciplinary, socially oriented sculpture, video and installations and urban community-based projects. His work often explores a dialectical relationship involving minimalist aesthetics, the utopian ambitions of modernism and science, and the resulting—often negative—social, geopolitical, and ecological consequences of such ideologies. Manglano-Ovalle’s diverse work is connected by its interest in probing the underlying forces, systems and histories that shape and describe contemporary identity, ethics, aesthetics, climate, and politics. His projects have employed multi-faceted, community-oriented strategies to explore cultural identity, migration and immigration, social and geographic boundaries, and urban violence. His current work initiates wider sociopolitical dialogues on culture, science and technology, ecosystems, and geopolitics.
Jeanne Dunning,
Professor Emeritus,
Jeanne Dunning's photographic, sculptural and video work explores our relationship to our own physicality, looking at the strange and unfamiliar in the body, gender and notions of normality, and death. Her work has been shown extensively throughout the United States and Europe since the late 1980s. It has been included in major group exhibitions such as the Whitney Biennial, the Sydney Biennale, and the Venice Biennale. She has had one person shows at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington D.C., the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Konstmuseet in Malmö, Sweden, the Berkeley Art Museum and the Wattis Institute.
This exhibition presents work by:
Lilli Carré,
Max Guy,
Erin Hayden,
Dan Miller,
David Sprecher,
Culminating their Master of Fine Arts (MFA) studies in the Department of Art Theory & Practice at Northwestern University.
Co-organized by the Department of Art Theory & Practice and the Block Museum, Northwestern University. Support provided by the Norton S. Walbridge Fund; the Myers Foundations; the Mary and Leigh Block Endowment Fund; and the Alsdorf Endowment.
DATES & LOCATIONS,
Thursday, May 5, 6pmBlock Museum
40 Arts Circle Drive
Evanston, IL 60208
Michael Rakowitz,
Alice Welsh Skilling Professor of Art,
Based between Chicago and New York City, Michael Rakowitz is an Iraqi-American conceptual artist who operates within art spaces and beyond them. With his series paraSITE, Rakowitz built customized, inflatable shelters for the homeless using a mere budget of $5.00 for plastic bags and waterproof tape for each project, and the exterior vents of buildings for heat. In Return, produced by Creative Time in 2004, Rakowitz reopened his grandfather’s import and export business, Davison’s & Co., which first operated in Baghdad and then relocated to New York when his family was exiled in 1946.
Rakowitz’s resurrected family business offered free shipping to Iraq three months after the U.S. declared stifling trade restrictions on the country. Spoils of 2011, another Rakowitz and Creative Time collaboration, took a more provocative and personal approach to American-Iraqi relations. Housed at Park Avenue Autumn restaurant, the “culinary/art experience” provided patrons with rich traditional Iraqi dishes served on rare pieces of fine China from Saddam Hussein’s personal collection. More surprising than the sensory tensions experienced by each diner, notably the contrast between the “sweetness of the Iraqi date syrup, and the…bitter provenance of the dishware,” was the dramatic conclusion of the project. A cease-and-desist letter from the State Department calling for the “surrender” of the plates abruptly ended Spoils, and resulted in their return to Iraqi territory. It was, according to Rakowitz, a “kind of perfect” ending to the project.
A selection of graduate students speaking about their work in the MFA Thesis Exhibition, in the Alsdorf Gallery at the Block Museum.
Erin Hayden,
Max Guy,
David Sprecher,
DATES & LOCATIONS,
Saturday, June 4, 1pmBlock Museum,
40 Arts Circle Dr, Evanston, IL 60208,
