Paul Mellon
Distinguished Fellow Lecture:
Aruna D'Souza
Type
Lecture
Series
Barbara Lee Lecture Series
Location
Old Dominion Fresco Barn
Skowhegan Campus
39 Art School Rd
Madison, ME 04950
Date
7:30 PM
Related from The Library
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Raven Chacon, "Silent Choir (for Standing Rock)," 2017-22.
Aruna D'Souza. Photo: Grace Roselli, Pandora’s BoxX Project
1 of 2
Raven Chacon, "Silent Choir (for Standing Rock)," 2017-22.
Aruna D'Souza. Photo: Grace Roselli, Pandora’s BoxX Project
Aruna D’Souza joins us as this year’s Paul Mellon Distinguished Fellow with her lecture “Pictures for a New World.”
Aruna shares about her talk at Skowhegan: “This talk will revolve around artists who, to my mind, are offering lessons for how to understand the histories that brought us to our calamitous social and political moment, how to survive and thrive in such a moment, and how to invite ways to imagine new forms of living in the future. From Ruth Asawa, Raven Chacon, Shahzia Sikander, AK Burns, Martin Puryear, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Red Canary Song, Kenneth Tam, and others, we can begin to form answers to questions including what does solidarity actually look and feel like?
How can we rebuild a new world from the detritus of the old—not as a pale reflection of that old world, but as a potentially utopian space? How can we take the conditions imposed on us by oppressive systems to bind us to the status quo—the interlocking scourges of authoritarian, white supremacy, capitalism, patriarchy, and more—and turn those into power? Can we imagine a world without coercive power, in which everyone has what they need, not competition over scarce resources (even if those resources are intangible, like attention or care)?”
About the speaker:
Aruna D’Souza writes about modern and contemporary art, intersectional feminisms, and diasporic aesthetics. Her work appears regularly in 4Columns, The New York Times, Hyperallergic, and in numerous artist’s monographs and exhibition catalogues. Whitewalling: Art, Race, and Protest in 3 Acts was named one of the best art books of 2018 by the New York Times. Recent editorial projects include Linda Nochlin’s Making It Modern: Essays on the Art of the Now and Lorraine O’Grady’s Writing in Space 1973-2018; she co-curated the retrospective “Lorraine O’Grady: Both/And” at the Brooklyn Museum in 2021. She is the recipient of the 2021 Rabkin Prize for art journalism and a 2019 Andy Warhol Foundation Art Writers Grant. She was appointed the Edmond J. Safra Visiting Professor at the National Gallery of Art in 2022, and the W.W. Corcoran Professor of Social Engagement at the Corcoran School of Art, George Washington University, in 2022-2023. Her most recent book, Imperfect Solidarities, was published in 2024.
About The Barbara Lee Lecture Series
The Barbara Lee Lecture Series is an annual series that features faculty artists during our summer program. During this series, we open our campus to the public, welcoming our friends and neighbors into the conversations that take place at the School. After the summer program, the lectures become part of the Lecture Archive, a growing collection of recordings that can be accessed online or on request.
