Art

This lecture will take place on Wednesday, April 2, in the Common Room at 300 High St. (Romance Languages & Literatures).   

Bagasse: Caribbean Art and Literature and the Debris of the Sugar Plantation

Speaker:  Professor Lisa Paravisini-Gebert (Vassar College)

Location: Common Room in the Romance Languages Building (300 High Street)

Date: Wednesday, April 2 at 4:30pm

The Hispanic Literatures and Cultures Major Committee is pleased to present a lecture by Vassar Professor Lisa Paravisini-Gebert. The lecture examines, through the prism of ecocritical theory, recent installations by Caribbean artists reflecting the history of sugar production through its human and environmental costs. These works (many of which incorporate bagasse, the debris left after cane is crushed, as artistic material) metaphorically illustrate how Caribbean nations and peoples have been marked by the crushing and discarding of bagasse.

Lisa Paravisini-Gebert is a professor of Hispanic Studies at Vassar College as well as a member of the Programs in Environmental Studies, Latin American Studies, International Studies and Women’s Studies. Specializing in the multidisciplinary, comparative study of the Caribbean, she serves as an expert in Caribbean art and culture.

Refreshments will be served.

OPENING RECEPTION

 Friday, March 28, 5 to 7 pm

Gallery talk by Julia Randall at 5:30 pm

From hybrid lovebirds to disembodied mouths and monumental bubblegum, the subjects of Julia Randall’s drawings seduce the viewer. 

The title of this retrospective exhibition nods towards Sigmund Freud’s theory of oral-stage fixation, but Randall’s often monumental 

drawings go beyond psychoanalysis, presenting surreal, sensual, even visceral images, while surprising with a sense of humor.

Luring the Immortals: An American Artist’s Experiences in a Chinese Garden

Ian Boyden

Thursday, October 31, 4:30 PM

Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies

for info — 860-685-2330

Witness to the drama of burgeoning China and how it responds to, incorporates, and sometimes eclipses its past, Asian art historian and visual artist Ian Boyden (‘95) presents a talk about recent experiences as the first artist-in-residence in the Jia Yuan Garden, a 17th century classical garden in the heart of Suzhou, China. At the invitation of an investment arm of China Telecom, Boyden was the art consultant in the garden’s extensive renovation, an experience that provided an incredible stage upon which to witness and participate in the surreal clash of recasting and leveraging old-world culture according to new-world values. In this highly visual talk, Boyden contemplates multiple forms of acculturation: that of the often awkward and hilarious ways the Chinese made sense of him, of his own struggles making sense of the quickly shifting identity of China, and of the way his evolving knowledge of Chinese culture filters and informs his own art practice. His wild art trajectory in Suzhou included introducing the concept of a place-based artist residency, designing and overseeing the construction of a 4,700 sq ft art gallery, making a series of installations responding to the garden, and ultimately holding a solo exhibition at the I. M. Pei-designed Suzhou Museum where his ink paintings were hailed as starting a new tradition of Chinese painting.

Artist’s website: http://ianboyden.com/