ecofeminism(s)
PUBLIC PROGRAM ONLINE: ZOOM CONVERSATIONS WITH THE ARTISTS
moderated by ecofeminism(s) curator, Monika Fabijanska
July 15, 6:30 PM EST
Aviva Rahmani
Sonya Kelliher-Combs
Jessica Segall
Candice Hopkins, curator, writer, and a citizen of Carcross/Tagish First Nation
Pioneering ecological artist Aviva Rahmani (American, b. 1945) exhibits, publishes and presents internationally. Her project, The Blued Trees Symphony (2015-present), legally challenges expanding fossil fuel infrastructures with copyrighted and sonified installations across miles of North America. Her work has been included in exhibitions at the Independent Museum of Contemporary Art, Cyprus; the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Colorado; the Hudson River Museum, NY; the Cincinnati Center for Contemporary Art, Ohio; and the Joseph Beuys 100 days of Conference Pavilion, for the Venice Biennale, Italy. Her work has won numerous grants, fellowships and been written about internationally. She is an Affiliate with the Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado at Boulder; gained her PhD from the University of Plymouth, UK and received her BFA and MFA at the California Institute of the Arts. She is currently completing a residency with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council on Governors Island.
Sonya Kelliher-Combs (Native American, b. 1969) is an artist of mixed decent: Iñupiaq from the North Slope of Alaska, Athabascan from the Interior, German and Irish. She uses imagery and symbols that speak about culture and the life of her ancestors, and marginalization and the struggles of Indigenous peoples. She participated in numerous group exhibitions, including at Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., 2020; Minneapolis Institute of Art, 2019; Korundi Museum, Rovaniemi, Finland, 2018-19; John Jay College, NYC, 2018; Northern Norway Art Museum, Tromsø, 2016; Nordamerika Native Museum, Zurich, 2015; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 2013; National Museum of the American Indian, NYC, 2010; Museum of Art & Design, NYC, 2005; Cheongju International Craft Biennial, South Korea, 2005. Solo exhibitions include Minus Space, Brooklyn, NY 2019; the Northern Norway Art Museum, Svalbard, Norway, 2018; Institute of American Indian Art, Santa Fe, 2006; Anchorage Museum of History and Art, Anchorage, 2005; and Alaska State Museum, Juneau, 2001.
Jessica Segall is a multidisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, NY. Her work has been screened and exhibited internationally including The Fries Museum, the Havana Bienal, The National Gallery of Indonesia, The Queens Museum of Art, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, The Inside Out Museum, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Vojvodina, The Mongolian National Modern Art Gallery, The National Museum of Jewish American History and The National Symposium for Electronic Art. Segall received grants from The Pollock Krasner Foundation, The Rema Hort Mann Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, The Harpo Foundation and Art Matters and attended residencies at Princeton University, The Van Eyck Academie, The MacDowell Colony and Skowhegan. Her work has been featured in Cabinet Magazine, The New York Times, Sculpture Magazine, Mousse Magazine and Art in America. She received her BA from Bard College and MFA from Columbia University.
Candice Hopkins is a curator and writer and a citizen of Carcross/Tagish First Nation. She lives between Albuquerque, New Mexico and Toronto, Canada. She is Senior Curator of the 2019 and 2021 editions of the Toronto Biennial of Art. Hopkins was co-curator of major exhibitions including the Canadian Pavilion for the 58th Venice Biennial featuring the media art collective Isuma; the 2018 SITE Santa Fe biennial, Casa Tomada; documenta 14 in Athens, Greece and Kassel, Germany; Sakahàn: International Indigenous Art; and Close Encounters: The Next 500 Year. Her writing is published widely and her recent essays and presentations include "The Appropriation Debates (or The Gallows of History)" for MIT Press; “Outlawed Social Life," for South as a State of Mind; and "The Gilded Gaze: Wealth and Economies on the Colonial Frontier," for the documenta 14 Reader.
Image: Aviva Rahmani (American, b. 1945), Physical Education, 1973, performance documentation: slide projection ©Aviva Rahmani. Courtesy of the artis