This talk and seminar will together be called Peace offerings. It will be a meditation from my experience on exhibition making, supported by readings and documentation. Rather than thematizing peace, I wish for us to share wisdom from practicing the art of peace (inner and collective). In other words to access the practical dimensions, which inevitably require technique/discipline and sacrifice.
Monika Szewczyk has been director of de Appel in Amsterdam from May 1 2019 to May 1 2022. Previously, she was curator for documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel (2015-2017); Visual Arts Program Curator at the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, University of Chicago (2012-2014); Head of Publications at Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam (2008–2011); Assistant Curator at the Vancouver Art Gallery (2004–2007) and Program Coordinator of the Belkin Satellite, a downtown outpost of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, University of British Columbia (2001-2003), her alma mater. Having studied International Relations and Art History as well as theatre, film and fine arts at UBC, she went on to lecture, advise and lead seminars that address the specific techniques of art- and history-making found along her own diasporic path. Her work draws on nearly two decades of practice organizing exhibitions and publishing in close dialogue with artists who pose vital and courageous questions – in key instances acting as co-curators, teachers, historians and lyricists themselves. Her own teaching experience began at Emily Carr University in Vancouver (2002-2007) and includes writing mentorship at Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam (2008-2012), political theology seminars at Bergen Academy of Art and Design (2011), exhibition study seminars at the University of Chicago (2012-2014) and the gradual evolution of de Appel’s Curatorial Programme curriculum. Her writings and interviews as well as her editorial work can be found in numerous artists’ publications, readers, catalogues and in journals such as South as a State of Mind, e-flux journal online, Mousse Magazine, Artforum and Afterall.
Her work at de Appel has been chronicled in a recent interview by Mirela Baciak for OCULA.
DATES & LOCATIONS,
Tuesday, May 24, 5:00pmat FORUM ROOM
KRESGE HALL ROOM 1515
1880 CAMPUS DRIVE
EVANSTON, IL 60208
Visiting Artist Talk: Maite Borjabad Lopez-Pastor
Maite Borjabad López-Pastor is a curator, architect and researcher whose work revolves around diverse forms of critical spatial practices, operating across architecture, art and performance. Having worked with important large cultural institutions, she describes her curatorial practice as “institutional infiltration” engaging at the intersection of those disciplines as well as museum studies and institutional critique.
Maite is currently curator at the Guggenheim Bilbao Museum where she is working on a major reinstallation of the museum's collection. Previously as the Neville Bryan Associate Curator of Architecture & Design at the Art Institute of Chicago, she took care of the contemporary collection and led fundamental research initiatives and acquisitions to redefine the collecting strategies since she joined in 2017. In her five years tenure she also curated a number of significant installations and exhibitions including PHANTOM. Mies as Rendered Society (2019), My Building, Your Design: Seven Portraits by David Hartt (2018), Past Forward: Architecture and Design Collection (2017-ongoing) and Designs for Different Futures (2019-2021) co-curated with the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Walker Art Center along with the published cataogue. Her last exhibition with Palestinain artists Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rhame: If only this mountain between us could be ground to dust (July 2021 - January 2022) presented a multimedia inmersive installation reflecting on ideas of amnesia, erasure, and return within the Palestinian condition. The exhibition’s visceral and material narratives raised timely and urgent questions about the ways history is constructed and continually obliterated and challenged the way museums play a role on this.
Previously she worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York collaborating on the roof garden commissions and the collection. Other projects as independent curator include the exhibition and book Scenographies of Power: From the State of Exception to the Spaces of Exception (2017) at La Casa Encendida, Madrid or Wet Protocols (2018) at MAO, Ljubljana. She has also taught at the Weitzman Schol of Design, University of Pennsylvania, University of Illinois Chicago and Columbia University and has shared her research in important forums such as the Fitch Colloquium at Columbia University (2017) – Ex-Situ: On Moving Monuments where she presented “Collecting Architecture and Moving Buildings.” Maite’s writing has appeared in renowned journals as Harvard Design Magazine like her article, “Rerighting” History:The Benito Juarez Community Academy and her work has been celebrated in major media such as the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, PIN-UP, Domus, Artforum, Hyperallergic, Terremoto Magazine, La Tempestad or El Cultural.
DATES & LOCATIONS,
Wednesday, April 13, 5:00pmat FORUM ROOM
KRESGE HALL ROOM 1515
1880 CAMPUS DRIVE
EVANSTON, IL, 60208
Angelo Madsen Minax, 2021, 85 min, DCP Digital
An unspeakable tragedy both binds and fractures filmmaker Angelo Madsen Minax’s family in this moving and formally audacious documentary. Over nearly five years of visits to his hometown of Grayling, Michigan, Minax chronicles his sister’s struggles with motherhood, mourning, and domestic abuse, as well as his own fraught conversations with his Mormon parents around his identity as a trans man. Through probing commentary and footage drawn from decades of home movies, NORTH BY CURRENT confronts the burdens of memory with candor and care, inviting us to bear witness to the power of healing and acceptance.
Director Angelo Madsen Minax will appear to introduce and discuss the screening.
Presented in collaboration with the Department of Art, Theory, and Practice at Northwestern.
DATES & LOCATIONS,
Wednesday, December 1, 7:00pmat BLOCK CINEMA
BLOCK MUSEUM OF ART
40 ARTS CIRCLE DR
EVANSTON, IL, 60208
