• The Department of Visual Art at Brown University presents a Marjorie Cutler sponsored lecture by Summer Wheat.

    Summer Wheat (b. 1977, Oklahoma City, OK) is known for her vibrant paintings, multifaceted sculptures, and immersive installations that weave together the history of materiality, figuration, and abstraction in both fine art and craft milieus. Each series engages individual and collective human experiences drawn from historical and contemporary sources, mediated through a variety of references ranging from ancient art and medieval tapestries, to etchings from the Renaissance, to modernist abstractions. Wheat’s work examines various manifestations of labor, leisure, commerce, and class through the depiction of numerous figures and archetypes such as farmers, hunters, beekeepers, gardeners, weavers, bankers, and movie stars. The artist’s densely populated “scapes” envision worlds where time seems to have collapsed and every person, regardless of social status, occupies a shared/equal space, in which both labor and leisure are paths to healing humanity. Using a tongue-in- cheek type of humor inspired by comic strips, Wheat subverts conventional hierarchical structures and stereotypes to create more expansive depictions of daily life throughout history.

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  • The Department of Visual Art at Brown University presents a Marjorie Cutler sponsored lecture by Nicoletta Daríta de la Brown.

    Nicoletta Darita de la Brown (Panamanian-American b. 1981 Baltimore, MD) is an award-winning interdisciplinary artist and curandero chamána (shamanic practitioner). Her artworks re-conceive the life of an artist as thriving, nourishing others during and through her art practice, while healing herself in public space as a Black-Latine woman. She is 2022-23 Tabb Center Public Humanities Fellow at Johns Hopkins University, 2023 Artist-In-Residence at The National Aquarium, and 2023 Baltimore Museum of Art JJC Summer Artist-in-Residence at Maryland Institute College of Art. ‘Mindfulness in Art Practice’ instructor at Baltimore School for the Arts; former sculpture professor at Towson University and former adjunct faculty in the MFA in Community Arts Graduate Program at Maryland Institute College of Art. Nicoletta’s performances have been presented at The Phillips Collection, Washington DC; The Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC; The Smithsonian Arts + Industries Building, Washington DC; Walters Art Museum, Baltimore MD; Eubie Blake, Baltimore, MD. Exhibitions of Nicoletta’s video artworks and installations have been presented at The Tribeca Film Festival, New York, NY; Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore MD; IA&A at Hillyer Gallery, Washington DC; Cardinal Gallery, Baltimore MD; Pinkard Gallery, Baltimore MD; The Segal Gallery, Baltimore MD; Leidy Atrium, Baltimore MD; MICA PLACE, Baltimore MD. Her work is included in private and public collections, such as The National Aquarium, The Sheridan Libraries at Johns Hopkins University, and GLB Memorial Foundation Collection.

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  • The Department of Visual Art at Brown University presents a lecture by Ruby Lerner, JOYFUL GENEROSITY.

    Ruby Lerner is the Founding Executive Director of the Creative Capital Foundation, an innovative arts foundation that adapts venture capital approaches to support individual artists. Under her leadership, the organization committed $40 million in financial and advisory support, which leveraged an additional $100 million for the grantees. After beginning her professional career at The Manhattan Theatre Club in the 1970’s, she also ran Alternate ROOTS, IMAGE Film and Video Center and The Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers prior to Creative Capital. Currently, she works with the Open Society Foundation and serves on many boards and advisory boards, including the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

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  • Practice Rooms: Art in the Social Sphere is a two-day symposium led by the Department of Visual Art at Brown University in the Perelman Arts District, as part of the Brown Arts Institute (BAI) IGNITE series. The program features artists whose multidisciplinary practices extend beyond art objects, into the realm of social engagement.

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    Tuesday, April 16 | 6pm-8pm | Panel Discussion | Granoff Center, Martinos Auditorium
    Moderated by curator Diya Vij from Creative Time, the opening public panel featuring Chloë Bass, Anaïs Duplan, and Shey ‘Rí Acu’ Rivera Ríos, provides an introductory discussion on contemporary practices that push genres and boundaries between audience and participant. Please see the agenda below for further details.

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    Wednesday, April 17 | 11am-1pm | Morning Sessions | Granoff Center, Fishman Studio
    The Wednesday workshops, each taking place in a different “practice room” within the BAI, allows an opportunity to interact with each artist and connect with their practice on a more intimate level. The culminating event will be an artist talk given by artist and craftsperson, Tanya Aguiñiga at the List Art Building across campus. Please see the agenda below for further details. No re-entry; please plan on attending the entire morning and/or afternoon session.

    • 11am | Anaïs Duplan | Mindfulness for Creative Professionals

    Anaïs will guide participants through an embodied artistic practice. The first 15-30 mins will be spent engaging a somatic (grounding) exercise, while the second half will involve improvised/spontaneous collective artistic practice. This offering is especially geared toward folks with marginalized bodies.

    • 12pm | Tanya Aguiñiga | Sharing the Northern Hemisphere

    As the global south migrates north, how can art advance pro-migrant narratives and create opportunities to address the traumas of displacement? Together we will unpack organizing strategies, methods of making and communication, and create a shared toolkit of resources.

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    Wednesday, April 17 | 2pm-5pm | Afternoon Sessions | Lindemann Performing Arts Center, Performance Lab

    • 2pm | Shey ‘Rí Acu’ Rivera Ríos & Vatic Astahili Tayari Kuumba | Moral Docs: Collective Imagining for Abolitionist Futures

    An immersive creative visioning session, anchored by the screening of a fragment of the virtual reality project MoralDocs. Participants will engage with movement, poetry, and be part of generating questions related to abolitionist futures and socially engaged work. Participants will be prompted to use their smart phones to access YouTube. Please bring: Your smart phone, headphones, and download the YouTube app.

    • 3pm | Chloë Bass | A brief probing of value(s)

    A short lecture performance and conversational offering regarding ideas of value (how much something is worth) and values (the beliefs and principles that guide the way you live and work). If a budget is a way of telling a story, how does our allocation of funds, energy, and attention begin to describe a world? If these are practice rooms, who are we practicing to be, or to become? How does a demonstration of value (or values) help or hurt us in practice for the world that we’re making?

    • 4pm | Diya Vij

    Student facilitated discussion between all the featured artists and Helina Metaferia’s Social Practice students, in collaboration with Creative Time curator Diya Vij. This 4-5pm portion of the event is not open to the general public.

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    Wednesday | 6pm-7pm | Artist Talk | List Art Building, room 120

    • 6pm | Tanya Aguiñiga

    Tanya Aguiñiga was born in 1978 in San Diego, California, and raised in Tijuana, Mexico. An artist and craftsperson, Aguiñiga works with traditional craft materials like natural fibers and collaborates with other artists and activists to create sculptures, installations, performances, and community-based art projects.

    Drawing on her upbringing as a binational citizen, who daily crossed the border from Tijuana to San Diego for school, Aguiñiga’s work speaks of the artist’s experience of her divided identity and aspires to tell the larger and often invisible stories of the transnational community. She is the founder of AMBOS (Art Made

    Between Opposite Sides), an ongoing series of projects that provides a platform for binational artists. She was recently awarded the Latinx Art Forum: Latinx Artist Fellowship (2022), Heinz Award (2021) and American’s for the Arts Johnson Fellowship for Artists Transforming Communities (2018).

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  • The Department of Visual Art at Brown University presents a Kenneth List sponsored lecture by Tanya Aguiñiga.

    Tanya Aguiñiga was born in 1978 in San Diego, California, and raised in Tijuana, Mexico. An artist and craftsperson, Aguiñiga works with traditional craft materials like natural fibers and collaborates with other artists and activists to create sculptures, installations, performances, and community-based art projects. Drawing on her upbringing as a binational citizen, who daily crossed the border from Tijuana to San Diego for school, Aguiñiga’s work speaks of the artist’s experience of her divided identity and aspires to tell the larger and often invisible stories of the transnational community. She is the founder of AMBOS (Art Made Between Opposite Sides), an ongoing series of projects that provides a platform for binational artists. She was recently awarded the Latinx Art Forum: Latinx Artist Fellowship (2022), Heinz Award (2021) and American’s for the Arts Johnson Fellowship for Artists Transforming Communities (2018).

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