The Graham Foundation is pleased to announce its inaugural Fellows as part of the organization’s new Graham Foundation Fellowship program: Brendan Fernandes, Torkwase Dyson, Martine Syms, Mark Wasuita, and David Hartt. Integrating the Foundation’s grantmaking and exhibition programs, the new Fellowship provides monetary support for the development and production of new and challenging works and the opportunity to present these projects in an exhibition at the Foundation’s Madlener House galleries in Chicago. Artist David Hartt piloted the new program with his new body of work in the forest, which premiered at the Graham in the fall of 2017.
The Fellowship program extends the legacy of the Foundation’s first awards, made in 1957 and 1958. These initial fellowships provided a diverse group of practitioners a platform to pursue experimental ideas in the field, and they included alumni such as Pritzker Prize winning architects Balkrishna V. Doshi and Fumihiko Maki, designer Harry Bertoia, photographer Harry M. Callahan, sculptor Eduardo Chillida, experimental architect Frederick J. Kiesler, and painter Wilfredo Lam, among others. The 2018 Fellows will continue this tradition of exploring new perspectives on spatial practices and design culture.
Brendan Fernandes
The Master and Form
Installation in Collaboration with Norman Kelley
January 25–April 7, 2018
The Master and Form, a new installation and performance series by Brendan Fernandes commissioned by the Graham Foundation, investigates themes of mastery and discipline within the pursuit of form in the practice of ballet. Using objects and an installation designed in collaboration with architecture and design collaborative Norman Kelley, the project responds directly to the Graham’s Madlener House. Classically trained ballet dancers activate the objects and space of the galleries making a new site for performance and a dynamic interplay between audience and dancer.
Brendan Fernandes is a Chicago-based Canadian artist of Kenyan and Indian descent. Fernandes has exhibited widely domestically and abroad, including exhibitions at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Art and Design, New York; Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal; the National Gallery of Canada, Ontario; the Brooklyn Museum, New York; and the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York. He is represented by Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago.
Torkwase Dyson
Wynter-Wells School for Environmental Liberation
May 3–July 14, 2018
Artist Torkwase Dyson will use the Graham Foundation galleries as both a site of installation and an incubator for discussion in her latest convening of the Wynter-Wells Drawing School for Environmental Liberation—named for Jamaican writer Sylvia Wynter and American Civil Rights leader Ida B. Wells.
Torkwase Dyson, born in Chicago, is an artist based in New York whose practice draws on her interest in abstraction, social architecture, and environmental justice. Dyson’s work has been presented at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Drawing Center, New York; Eyebeam, Brooklyn; the National Museum of African Art, Washington DC; the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education, Philadelphia; and the Studio Museum in Harlem. She is represented by Davidson Contemporary, New York; and Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago.
Martine Syms
Incense Sweaters & Ice
September 6–December 15, 2018
Incense Sweaters & Ice is an immersive installation centering around a Graham-funded feature-length film, inspired by the idea that anything one does while being watched is a performance. This will be the first exhibition of this work, after its debut at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2017. Syms is creating a unique installation and program, site-specific to the Graham Foundation. Programming will be co-presented with The Art Institute of Chicago during a concurrent exhibition of Syms’ work.
Martine Syms works in video, performance, and publishing. Her work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Camden Arts Centre, London; Sadie Coles HQ, London; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Berlin Biennale; Manifesta, Zurich; the ICA London; Bridget Donahue, New York; the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Syms is represented by Bridget Donahue, New York; and Sadie Coles HQ, London.
Mark Wasiuta
The Entenza Years: the Early History of the Graham Foundation, 1960-1971
March–July, 2019
This exhibition will delve into the Graham Foundation’s formative early years under the directorship of John Entenza, past editor of Art and Architecture magazine, and illuminate the Foundation’s role in postwar architecture culture for the first time. The exhibition will feature archival material from the Foundation’s own archive to tell this unique history and it will be curated in collaboration with current Graham Foundation Director Sarah Herda.
Mark Wasiuta is a curator, writer, and architect who teaches at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation (GSAPP), where he is co-director of the Critical, Curatorial, and Conceptual Practices in Architecture Program. Over the last decade, as director of exhibitions at the GSAPP, he developed a body of research and archival exhibitions that focus on under-examined practices of the postwar period. His recent exhibitions, produced with various collaborators, include Environmental Communications: Contact High, Information Fall-Out: Buckminster Fuller’s World Game, and Les Levine: Bio-Tech Rehearsals 1967–1973. Other exhibitions recently on view are Detox USA, at the Istanbul Design Biennial; Control Syntax Rio at Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam; and Every Building in Baghdad: The Rifat Chadirji Archives at the Arab Image Foundation, at the Graham Foundation in Chicago and at LAXART in Los Angeles. Wasiuta is recipient of recent grants from the Asian Cultural Council, the Graham Foundation, and the New York State Council on the Arts.
David Hartt
The multi-part installation in the forest continues Hartt’s investigation into the relationship between ideology, architecture, and the environment by revisiting architect Moshe Safdie’s unfinished 1968 Habitat Puerto Rico project. Commissioned for the Graham Foundation, in the forest was a pilot program for the new Graham Foundation Fellowship program. Additional support was provided by Oakville Galleries, Ontario, where the exhibition will travel in the fall of 2018.
David Hartt lives and works in Philadelphia where he is Assistant Professor in the Department of Fine Arts at the University of Pennsylvania. Recent solo exhibitions have been held at The Art Institute of Chicago; the Graham Foundation, Chicago; LAXART, Los Angeles; and Or Gallery, Vancouver. Hartt is represented by Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago; David Nolan Gallery, New York; and Galerie Thomas Schulte, Berlin.
About the Graham Foundation
Founded in 1956, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts fosters the development and exchange of diverse and challenging ideas about architecture and its role in the arts, culture, and society. The Graham realizes this vision through making project-based grants to individuals and organizations and producing exhibitions, events, and publications.
