Each semester this series brings to campus prominent artists and scholars to give free, public on-campus presentations, critique student work, and participate in events, projects, and lectures.
S/2021 Visiting Artist Series ​
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Sam Vernon
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03/3/21, 6-8pm
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Livien Yin
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03/3/21, 6-8pm
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Miguel Arzabe
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04/21/2021, 6-8pm
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Margarita Cabrera
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05/05/2022, 6-8pm
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S/2020 Visiting Artist Series ​
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Natani Notah
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09/24/20, 6-8pm
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Tuan Andrew Nguyen
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10/29/20, 6-8pm
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Genevieve Gaignard
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11/12/20, 6-8pm
Free and Open to the Public!
note: 20/21 AY Visiting Artist Series is online.
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JOIN US ON WED., MARCH 3, 2021 FOR VPA’s VISITING ARTIST SERIES | FEATURING SAM VERNON
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Date: March 3, 2021
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Time: 6-8pm
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Join us on Zoom | Registration Link
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Free & Open to the Public.
This is a virtual event of the Visual and Public Art Dept. @ CSUMB.
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About Lecture: Sam Vernon’s lecture, “On Belonging,” will address the artist’s influences, namely the power of art, creative activism and community. Sam will discuss her work in the context of Historical & Contemporary Analysis, including the origin of her studio practice and identifying patterns of connectivity from diverse cultural perspectives that consider historical, ethical, visual, and social-political perspectives; Individual & Aesthetic Exploration, including an examination of visual language that includes a reflective outline of personal experiences and/or larger socio-cultural perspectives; and Community & Audience Understanding, including an analysis of community issues as they relate to personal and professional identities.
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ABOUT Artist: Sam Vernon earned her MFA in Painting/Printmaking from Yale University in 2015 and her BFA from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in 2009. Her installations combine xerox collages, photographs, paintings and sculptural components in an exploration of personal narrative, identity and historical memory. Sam teaches in the Printmedia and Graduate Fine Arts program as an Assistant Professor at California College of the Arts (CCA) and Bard College as a Visiting Assistant Professor in Studio Arts.
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Artist website: https://www.samvernon.com/
* This event is by registration and waiting room enabled.
JOIN US ON WED., APRIL 7, 2021 FOR VPA’s VISITING ARTIST SERIES | FEATURING Livien Yin
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Date: April 7, 2021
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Time: 6-8pm
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Join us on Zoom | Registration Link
Free & Open to the Public.
This event is by registration and waiting room enabled.
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Livien Yin is an artist working in sculpture and painting. Her /works center on the imperial legacies of botanical expeditions, guano mining and the Chinese coolie trade. Yin’s sculptures serve as placeholders for the lost narratives of peoples within these histories. Her carvings are shaped after folk instruments and archaeological artifacts whose stories remain out of reach. In Yin’s recent paintings, she revisits American realist settings where scenes were pared down to the “essentials.” She stages these settings with vignettes of early American immigrants finding pleasure, belonging and new cultural proximities.
Yin received her MFA in Art Practice at Stanford University and her BA in Studio Art at Reed College. Her recent awards include the 2019-2020 Graduate Fellowship at Headlands Center for the Arts, the 2019 American Austrian Foundation/Seebacher Prize for Fine Arts and the 2019 Anita Squires Fowler Memorial Award in Photography from Stanford University.
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Artist website: http://livienyin.com
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All images courtesy of the artist.
Photography credit: Victor Yañez-Lazcano
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ABOUT Artist: Miguel Arzabe makes colorful and dynamic abstractions - weavings, paintings, videos. He starts by finding outdated beauty in paper ephemera from art shows, modernist paintings, discarded audio recordings. They are methodically analyzed, deconstructed, reverse-engineered. Drawing inspiration from the cultural techniques and motifs of his Andean heritage, Arzabe weaves the fragments together revealing uncanny intersections between form and content, the nostalgic and the hard-edged, failure and recuperation.
Arzabe lives in Oakland and is a charter studio member at Minnesota Street Project in San Francisco. Arzabe’s work has been featured in such festivals as Hors Pistes (Centre Pompidou, Paris), Festival du Nouveau Cinéma (Montreal), and the Geumgang Nature Art Biennale (Gongju, South Korea); and in museums and galleries including MAC Lyon (France), MARS Milan (Italy), RM Projects (Auckland), FIFI Projects (Mexico City), Marylhurst University (Oregon), Berkeley Art Museum, Albuquerque Museum of Art, the de Young Museum, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He has held many residencies including Facebook AIR, Headlands Center for the Arts, Montalvo Arts Center, and Santa Fe Art Institute. He holds a BS from Carnegie Mellon University, an MS from Arizona State University, and an MFA from UC Berkeley.
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Artist website: http://www.miguelarzabe.net
All images courtesy of the artist.
JOIN US ON WED., APRIL 21, 2021 FOR VPA’s VISITING ARTIST SERIES | FEATURING Miguel Arzabe
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Date: April 21, 2021
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Time: 6-8pm
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Join us on Zoom | Registration Link
Free & Open to the Public.
This event is by registration and waiting room enabled.
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This is a virtual event of the Visual and Public Art Dept. @ CSUMB.
Join us for Miguel Arzabe’s lecture, “Towards Weaving,” that will follow the threads of the artist’s thinking over the past ten years that have led him to incorporate weaving into his practice along with painting and video. Miguel will discuss his work in the context of Historical & Contemporary Analysis, including the origin of his studio practice and identifying patterns of connectivity from diverse cultural perspectives that consider historical, ethical, visual, and social-political perspectives; Individual & Aesthetic Exploration, including an examination of visual language that includes a reflective outline of personal experiences and/or larger socio-cultural perspectives; and Community & Audience Understanding, including an analysis of community issues as they relate to personal and professional identities.
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ABOUT Artist: Margarita Cabrera’s work centers on social-political community issues, including cultural identity, migration, violence, inclusivity, labor, and empowerment. Cabrera creates sculptures made out of mediums ranging from steel, copper, wood, ceramics, and fabric, and has worked on a number of collaborative projects at the intersection of contemporary art practices, indigenous Mexican folk art, craft traditions, and US-Mexico relations. In addition to studying and preserving endangered cultural and craft traditions, Cabrera’s projects have served as an active investigation into the creation of just working conditions, and the protection of immigrant rights with an emphasis on creating social consciousness, generating solutions, and empowering all members of highly diverse communities.
JOIN US ON WED., May 5, 2021 FOR VPA’s VISITING ARTIST SERIES | FEATURING Margarita Cabrera
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Date: May 5, 2021
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Time: 6-8pm
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Join us on Zoom | Registration Link
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Free & Open to the Public.
This event is by registration and waiting room enabled.
This is a virtual event of the Visual and Public Art Dept. @ CSUMB.
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ABOUT Artist Talk: Margarita Cabrera will talk about her socially engaged work in the community. Cabrera’s work engages international and local communities in transformative practices and features a diverse range of media, including fabric, steel, copper, wood, and ceramics. She will discuss her work in the context of Historical & Contemporary Analysis, including the origin of her studio practice and identifying patterns and connectivity from diverse cultural perspectives that consider historical, ethical, visual, and social-political perspectives; Individual & Aesthetic Exploration, including an examination of visual language that includes a reflective outline of personal experiences and/or larger socio-cultural perspectives; Community & Audience Understanding, including an analysis of community issues as they relate to personal and professional identities; and Collaborative & Community Planning Skills, including insights on how to effectively collaborate with with regional organizations.
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Margarita Cabrera received an MFA from Hunter College in New York, NY. Cabrera currently lives and works in El Paso where she recently had a two-year exhibit at the El Paso Museum of Art. Her most recent exhibitions include a show entitled “Pop Departures” at the Seattle Art Museum. Her work has been included in galleries such as 516Arts, Sara Meltzer, Walter Maciel, and Synderman-Works. Her work has been included in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston; the McNay Museum San Antonio; the Sweeney Art Center for Contemporary Art at the University of California, Riverside, the Sun Valley Center for the Arts, and El Museo del Barrio, NYC, LA County Museum of Art, CA. In 2012 she was a recipient of the Knight Artist in Residence at the McColl Center for Visual Art in Charlotte, NC. Cabrera was also a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant.
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Artist website: https://www.margaritacabrera.com/
All images courtesy of the artist.
S/2020 Visiting Artist Series:
Leila Weefur*
Date: April 9, 2020
Time: 6-8pm
Reception: 5:30-6pm
Location: VPA 72, VPA Complex
Free & Open to the Public
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Zoom Link: https://csumb.zoom.us/j/94727295567
Meeting ID: 947 2729 5567
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*This Event is in conjunction with the
24th CAHSS Annual Social Justice Colloquium
Theme: Trauma and Healing
ABOUT ARTIST
Leila Weefur (She/They/He) is a trans-gender noncomforming artist, writer, and curator based in Oakland, CA. Their interdisciplinary practice examines the performativity intrinsic to systems of belonging present in our lived experiences. The work brings together concepts of the sensorial memory, abject, hyper surveillance, and the erotic.
Weefur has worked with local and national institutions including SFMOMA, The Wattis Institute, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and Smack Mellon in Brooklyn, New York. Weefur is a visiting lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, the San Francisco Art Institute and is a member of The Black Aesthetic.
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Weefur is the Audio/Video, Editor In Chief at Art Practical and a member of The Black Aesthetic.
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ABOUT SOCIAL JUSTICE COLLOQUIUM
24th Annual Social Justice Colloquium Theme:
Trauma and Healing
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This year's Social Justice Colloquium focuses on the topic of trauma and healing. From the individual to the cultural and collective, trauma and its aftermath profoundly impact the lives of those who directly or indirectly experience trauma. Recent research on community, historical and intergenerational trauma clearly reveals how communities of color, women, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and other marginalized populations are disproportionately traumatized. Additionally, in the context of forced transnational migrations and cultural relocations as responses to political, economic, and environmental disruptions, trauma has clearly emerged as a significant social justice issue. In response to these realities and understandings, the 2020 Social Justice Colloquium presents writer Elizabeth Rosner, the daughter of Jewish Holocaust survivors and author of Survivor Cafe: The Legacy of Trauma and Labyrinth of Memory and Cheyenne author and filmmaker Cinnamon Kills First. These speakers will share their insights on issues of historic and intergenerational trauma and pathways toward recovery and healing.
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In addition, this series of events will include trans-gender non-conforming artist, writer, and curator Leila Weefur as part of the Visual and Public Art Department's Visiting Artist Series, a special art exhibition, Emergence: A Visual Navitation Through Mending, Memory and Experience featuring student artwork in the first student exhibit in the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences building.
Also featured will be a Communities Healing and Transforming Trauma (CHATT) event, organized and facilitated by CSUMB's Psychology Department.
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NOTE: Due to COVID-19, the Keynote and CHATT events have been postponed.
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