School of Art Visiting Artist Lecture Series (VALS)

We are currently facing several epidemics: the coronavirus, pervasive racial injustice, social inequity, immigrant incarceration, and ecological collapse, among others. Against this context, the School of Art at Syracuse University focuses the fall 2020 Visiting Artist Lecture Series (VALS) on Art and Activism. 

VALS is co-presented with In Plain Sight (IPS), a public collaborative artwork of 80+ artists and organizations dedicated to the abolition of immigrant detention and the United States culture of incarceration, and is led by artists Cassils and rafa esparza. IPS includes artist voices who are established and emerging, artists who have been detained, undocumented artists, indigenous artists, and artists descended from those who survived Japanese American incarceration, the Holocaust, and the afterlife of the AIDS crisis. 

This series features 13 IPS collaborators presenting their own work as socially conscious artists working across disciplines and media at the intersection of art and activism. This series is curated by Cassils and Jess Posner, who are co-teaching the fall 2020 AIC 321/621: Art, Activism, Modernity course at Syracuse University. 

Lectures take place each Thursday at 6:30pm (EST). Hosted by the Syracuse University Art Museum.

Livestream the lectures here.

Lectures
September 3: Cassils and Rafa Esparza
September 10: Dread Scott
September 17: Karen Ishizuka
September 24: Julio Salgado
October 1: Maria Gaspar
October 8: Set Hernandez-Rongkilyo
October 15: Arshia Fatima Haq
October 22: Marty Two Bulls Jr.
October 29: Dorian Wood
November 5: S.J. Norman
November 12: Karla Rosas/KARLINCHE
November 19: Jackie Sumell  

The School of Art at Syracuse University offers unique and exciting opportunities for students who are passionate about art in all of its diverse possibilities. Based in the University’s College of Visual and Performing Arts, the School of Art teaches the next generation of artists: those who are adventurous, complex, precocious, innovative, noisy, reflective, curious, socially conscious, and dedicated to a life in the visual arts. For more information, please visit vpa.syr.edu.

The Syracuse University Art Museum strives to be a place of rigorous interdisciplinary research, creative thinking, and mindfulness, as well as an inclusive space that serves as a forum for a broad range of discussions. The museum’s permanent collection of 45,000 artworks from 3500 BCE to present day includes important holdings from many areas of the world. For more information, please visit museum.syr.edu.

 For questions or inquiries about this series, please contact Prof. Jess Posner at jlposner [​at​] syr.edu.