Platform CSU Art Speaker Series

CSU's ConSortiUm of Art Galleries and Museums 2020-2022 Event Series

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AN EVENT SERIES OF SOCIALLY ENGAGED ARTISTS,
COLLECTIVES, AND CURATORS IN CONVERSATION

Presented by ConSortiUm, a collaborative project of California State University
art galleries and museums

 

ConSortiUm, a collaborative project of art museums and galleries from the California State University (CSU) system, is pleased to announce a virtual event series that actively engages students, faculty, staff, and communities through visual arts-based dialogue. The inaugural program, PLATFORM, launched in September 2020, and planned through the whole academic year of 2020-2021, is to include six live virtual conversations with contemporary artists, collectives, and curators whose work is critical to current re-imaginings of the art world, and the world at large. 

All events will be presented live via Zoom and during Pacific Standard Time hours with access for all CSU campuses. These events are also free and open to the public. Recordings of the events will be available for live-stream viewing and archived by sponsoring institutions for future viewing whenever possible.

ConSortiUm is a ground-breaking collaborative that generates opportunities to include artists, curators, students, faculty, staff, and other allies from across the CSU campuses in visual arts-conversational exchange. The CSU system represents the largest public four-year college system in the country, with more than 480,000 students enrolled at twenty-three campuses. Formed in Spring 2020 in response to the distance learning implemented by the CSU during the Covid-19 pandemic, ConSortiUm members are dedicated to responding to current societal issues and the pressing demand for an end to systemic and overt racism in California and beyond. 

Events

Spring 2022 Events
(Left) La 72, Tenosique Chiapas. Albuergue Migrante. Courtesy of Caleb Duarte. (Right) Isabel, Queen of Harlem. The good mother we all wished we had. Messier no. 41., 2017. Courtesy of Umar Rashid.

March 8

Tuesday at 5:00 p.m.

Artist Caleb Duarte and Umar Rashid
in conversation with curator Bill Kelley, Jr.
 


Hosted by CSU Bakersfield,
CSU Dominguez Hills, CSU Fullerton,
Grand Central Art Center, CSU Northridge,
Sacramento State and San Francisco State

Event Open

Event 7

ConSortiUm’s PLATFORM online lecture series resumes with the artists Umar Rashid and Caleb Duarte, in conversation with curator Bill Kelley, Jr. It takes place Tuesday, March 8 at 5:00 p.m. and will be presented live via Zoom with a recording available for post-live-stream viewing. The event is free and open to the public.

Tuesday,
March 8,
5:00 p.m.

Artist Caleb Duarte and Umar Rashid
in conversation with curator Bill Kelley, Jr.

Hosted by CSU Bakersfield,
CSU Dominguez Hills,
CSU Fullerton,

Grand Central Art Center,
CSU Northridge,

Sacramento State and
San Francisco State


Event Open

Caleb Duarte Photo

Caleb Duarte

Artist Caleb Duarte

   

 


 

Umar Rashid Photo

Umar Rashid

Artist Umar Rashid

 

 


   

Bill Kelley, Jr. Photo

Bill Kelley, Jr.

Curator Bill Kelley, Jr.

 

 


   

Fall 2020 Events
A long rusted pyramid structure placed near a park's walking path

September 24 

Thursday at 5:30 p.m.

Artist Beatriz Cortez
in conversation with
Erin Christovale, Assoc. Curator,
Hammer Museum, Los Angeles

Hosted by Cal Poly Pomona,
CSU Long Beach,
and CSU Northridge

Event Closed

Dark Pink deep button tufting cushion, next to a multiline textile with different pink accents

October 22 

Thursday at 5:30 p.m.

Postcommodity: 
A conversation with
artists Cristóbal Martínez
and Kade L. Twist

Hosted by CSU Humboldt,
CSU Long Beach,
and Fresno State

Event Closed

A visual three dimensional plane with ships and divers on the ocean

November 12

Thursday at 12:00 p.m.

Forensic Architecture:
A conversation with
founder Eyal Weizman

Hosted by CSU Bakersfield
and Sacramento State

Event Closed

Recording Upon Request Only
with Jedediah Caesar

Fall 2020 Events
A long rusted pyramid structure placed near a park's walking path

September 24 

Thursday at 5:30 p.m.

Artist Beatriz Cortez
in conversation with
Erin Christovale, Assoc. Curator,
Hammer Museum, Los Angeles

Hosted by Cal Poly Pomona,
CSU Long Beach,
and CSU Northridge

Event Closed

Dark Pink deep button tufting cushion, next to a multiline textile with different pink accents

October 22 

Thursday at 5:30 p.m.

Postcommodity: 
A conversation with
artists Cristóbal Martínez
and Kade L. Twist

Hosted by CSU Humboldt,
CSU Long Beach,
and Fresno State

Event Closed

A visual three dimensional plane with ships and divers on the ocean

November 12

Thursday at 12:00 p.m.

Forensic Architecture:
A conversation with
founder Eyal Weizman

Hosted by CSU Bakersfield
and Sacramento State

Event Closed

Recording Upon Request Only
with Jedediah Caesar

Event 1

The first event in Fall 2020 took place Thursday, September 24 at 5:30 p.m. and brought together artist Beatriz Cortez in conversation with curator Erin Christovale. Cortez is a multidisciplinary artist originally from El Salvador and currently based in Los Angeles. Her work explores life in different temporalities and versions of modernity through memory, loss, experiences of migration, and the aftermath of war. In 2019, she was awarded the inaugural Frieze Arto LIFEWTR® Sculpture Prize to create a sculpture for Rockefeller Plaza in New York City, where the commissioned sculpture was inaugurated on September 1, 2020. Cortez teaches in the Department of Central American Studies at California State University, Northridge. The artist gave a bold and poignant talk about her work in light of recent immigation and socio-racial injustices occuring across our country. She was also joined in lively conversation with Erin Christovale, Assoc. Curator, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles for a compelling dialogue on the representation/misrepresentaion of people of color, and the lack thereof, and systemic rascism within the museum and art gallery industry.

Thursday,
September 24,
5:30 p.m.

Artist Beatriz Cortez
in conversation with
Erin Christovale, Assoc. Curator,
Hammer Museum, Los Angeles

Hosted by Cal Poly Pomona,
CSU Long Beach,
and CSU Northridge

Event Closed

Beatriz Cortez headshot

Beatriz Cortez

Artist Beatriz Cortez
Photo Credit: Carolyn Cole, LA Times.
Courtesy of the artist and
Commonwealth and Council.

 Erin Christovale headshot

Erin Christovale

Assoc. Curator Erin Christovale,
Hammer Museum, Los Angeles
Photo Credit: Paley Fairman.

Event 2

Event 2 was held on October 22 at 5:30 p.m. and featured Postcommodity, a collaboration between Cristóbal Martínez and Kade L. Twist, both of whom are currently based in California.

Creating interdisciplinary work that spans a variety of formats from video installation to land intervention, Postcommodity forges new metaphors through an Indigenous lens capable of rationalizing shared experiences within an increasingly challenging contemporary environment. The collective has exhibited nationally and internationally, and was represented in the 2017 Whitney Biennial. In 2015, Postcommodity’s historic land art installation Repellent Fence was completed at the U.S.-Mexico border near Douglas, Arizona, and Agua Prieta, Sonora, Mexico.

Thursday,
October 22,
5:30 p.m.

Postcommodity:
A conversation with artists
Cristóbal Martínez and
Kade L. Twist

Hosted by CSU Humboldt,
CSU Long Beach,
and Fresno State


Event Closed

The photo is of Some Reach While Others Clap, 2020 of a bare gallery room with white walls and concrete floors. In dim lighting there are two pillars in the foreground, the left one is bright turquoise with pink designs, immediately to the right is a thin pillar that is bright pink with turquoise designs. 2 sets of 2 angle beams, one set in turquoise and the other in pink, are laying on the ground in the background stretching across the floor. All are painted in glitter paint and upholstered in matching velvet fabric referencing low-rider cars.

Postcommodity. Some Reach While Others Clap, 2020. Photo Credit: LAXART.

Postcommodity

an interdisciplinary arts collective


Event 3

Event 3 for 2020 was held on Thursday, November 12 at noon and included a presentation by Forensic Architecture founder Eyal Weizman.

A London-based artists’ collective, Forensic Architecture undertakes advanced spatial and media investigations into cases of human rights violations, with and on behalf of communities affected by political violence, human rights organizations, international prosecutors, environmental justice groups, and media organizations. The collective’s work often involves open-source investigation, the construction of digital and physical models, 3D animations, virtual reality environments, and cartographic platforms.

 

Thursday,
November 12,
12:00 p.m.

Forensic Architecture:
A conversation with
founder Eyal Weizman:

Hosted by CSU Bakersfield
and Sacramento State

 

Event Closed

Recording Upon Request Only
with Jedediah Caesar
Background is composed of a series of a graphic, grid-like patterns of geometric shapes (squares and rectangles) in primary colors of blue, red and yellow, plus black and white, similar to a Mondrian painting in style. Overlayed in black, white and shades of grey are a series of synthetically-generated images of exploded tear gas grenade canisters used to disburse immigrants at the US/Mexican border in November 2018. libyan-coastguard .

 

Forensic Architecture, still from Triple Chaser, 2019. Image credit: Forensic Architecture, Praxis Films.

Forensic Architecture

a research agency for 
advanced spatial and media investigations 

A reconstruction of the altercation of search and rescue operations in the central Mediterranean on 6 November 2017. Computer enhanced  view of several  boats at sea: Three boats situated to the right. 4-5 others centrally located in a T-like formation. Seas are rough. Sky toward the top left is blue, and partially cloudy to the right. Totality of view appears somewhat like viewer is peering in from a dark portal inside a ship, with black triangulations happening at the bottom left and right borders of the picture frame.

Forensic Architecture, Sea Watch vs Libyan Coast Guard (with Forensic Oceanography), 2018. Image credit: Forensic Oceanography and Forensic Architecture, 2018.

Eyal Weizman

Founding Director of Forensic Architecture

Event 4

Event 4, the first event for Spring 2021 will take place Thursday, February 11 at 5:30 p.m. featuring a presentation by artist Shaun Leonardo. In his talk titled, From Seeing to Witnessing, Leonardo will discuss his multi-disciplinary work, which interrogates societal expectations of masculinity, namely definitions surrounding black and brown masculinities.

Speaking to his most recent body of work in The Breath of Empty Space, he will describe the physical and psychosocial negative space that is activated when viewers fill in the blanks, reframe details, and remix narratives based on both personal experience and perceptions ingrained by media and cultural biases. The artist will also describe his investment in performance as a process of embodiment—exploring the ways in which memory and trauma are lodged within our bodies.

Thursday,
February 11,
5:30 p.m

Artist Shaun Leonardo

Hosted by San Jose State,
San Diego State,
and Sacramento State

 

Event Closed

Photo of artist Shaun Leonardo seated in studio environment

Shaun Leonardo

Artist Shaun Leonardo, 
Photo Credit: New York Times. 

 

 

Performers dressed in white, engaging as pairs, in physical interactivity.

Shaun Leonardo, Primitive Games, 1 hr. performance, Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2018.
Photo Credit: Paula Court.

Primitive Games

performance art,
diversion program for court-involved youth

Event 5

Event 5, the second event of Spring semester 2021, will take place on Thursday, March 11 at 5:30 p.m. and will spotlight Valerie Cassel Oliver, curator of modern and contemporary art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in conversation with artist Howardena Pindell.

Valerie Cassel Oliver is the Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Prior to her position at the VMFA, she was Senior Curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston where she worked from 2000 - 2017. In 2000, she was one of six curators selected to organize the Biennial for the Whitney Museum of American Art. Her 2018 debut exhibition at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts was a 50-year survey of work by Howardena Pindell entitled Howardena Pindell: What Remains to be Seen. The exhibition co-organized with Naomi Beckwith, the Manilow Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, was named one of the most influential of the decade.

Born in Philadelphia in 1943, Howardena Pindell studied painting at Boston University and Yale University. The artist often employs lengthy, metaphorical processes of destruction/reconstruction in her work. She cuts canvases in strips and sews them back together, building up surfaces in elaborate stages. The artist’s fascination with gridded, serialized imagery, along with surface texture appears throughout her oeuvre. Even in her later, more politically charged work, Pindell reverts to these thematic focuses in order to address social issues of homelessness, AIDs, war, genocide, sexism, xenophobia, and apartheid. Pindell is a full professor at State University of New York, Stony Brook. Throughout her career, she has exhibited extensively with notable solo exhibitions at the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; and The Shed, New York; among many others. Pindell was the subject of the 2018 retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago titled Howardena Pindell: What Remains to Be Seen, which traveled to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (2018) and the Rose Art Museum (2019).

Thursday,
March 11,
5:30 p.m

Valerie Cassel Oliver, Curator
of Modern and Contemporary Art
at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
in conversation with
Artist Howardena Pindell

Hosted by
Grand Central Art Center,
CSU Fullerton,
Begovich Gallery, CSU Fullerton,
and CSU Dominguez Hills

Event Closed

Portrait of Valerie Cassel Oliver, Curator of Modern  and Contemporary Art at the Virginia  Museum of Fine Arts

Valerie Cassel Oliver

Valerie Cassel Oliver, Curator
Modern and Contemporary Art at
the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
Photo Credit: Courtesy Virginia
Museum of Fine Arts;
Travis Fullerton, photographer.

Portrait of Howardena Pindell, 2017. Photo Credit: Katherine McMahon.

Howardena Pindell

Artist Howardena Pindell, 2017.
Photo Credit: Katherine McMahon.




Event 6

The final event of the series will be on Thursday, April 29 at 5:30pm and will feature People’s Kitchen Collective.

People's Kitchen Collective (PKC) works at the intersection of art and activism as a food-centered political education project. Based in Oakland, California, their creative practices reflect the diverse histories and backgrounds of co-founders Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik, Jocelyn Jackson, and Saqib Keval. PKC creates immersive experiences that honor the shared struggles of our peoples, using family recipes as a map to reveal migrations and stories of resilience.  PKC’s social practice-based work is one of radical hospitality.

Thursday,
April 29,
5:30 p.m

Artist Collaborative
People’s Kitchen Collective

Hosted by San Jose State,
San Francisco State, Sonoma State,
and CSU San Bernardino

Event Closed

Group photo of co-founders of People's Kitchen Collective (PKC) Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik, Jocelyn Jackson, and Saqib Keval

Co-founders of People's Kitchen Collective (from left to right) Saqib Keval, Jocelyn Jackson, and Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik at the Montalvo Arts Center's Lucas Artist Residency Program. Photo Credit: Tina Case Photography.

People's Kitchen Collective

a food-centered political education project

People's Kitchen Collective Free Breakfast Program at Life is Living event with large group of participants gathered in outdoor assembly holding and waiving signs and multicolor event flyers.

 

People's Kitchen Collective Free Breakfast Program at Life is Living. Photo Credit: Brooke Anderson.

Solidarity Statement

In the People's Kitchen

Portrait of Artist-Collaborator Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik

Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik

Artist Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik
Collaborator/Co-founder,
People’s Kitchen Collective
Photo Credit: Molly DeCoudreaux

Portrait of Artist-Collaborator Jocelyn Jackson

Jocelyn Jackson

Artist Jocelyn Jackson
Collaborator/Co-founder,
People’s Kitchen Collective
Photo Credit: Molly DeCoudreaux

Portrait of Artist-Collaborator Saqib Keval

Saqib Keval

Artist Saqib Keval
Collaborator/Co-founder,
People’s Kitchen Collective
Photo Credit: Molly DeCoudreaux

ConSortiUm’s participating CSU art museums and galleries include venues at campuses in Bakersfield, Todd Madigan Gallery; Chico, Janet Turner Print MuseumDominguez Hills, University Art GalleryEast Bay, University Art Gallery; Fresno, Center for Creativity and the Arts; Fullerton, Nicholas & Lee Begovich Gallery and Grand Central Art Center; Humboldt, Reese Bullen Gallery and Goudi'ni Native American Arts Gallery; Long Beach, School of Art and Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum; Los Angeles, Luckman Gallery, Luckman Fine Arts Complex; Northridge, Art Galleries; Pomona, W. Keith & Janet Kellogg University Art Gallery and Don B. Huntley Gallery; Sacramento, University Galleries; San Bernardino, Robert and Frances Fullerton Museum of Art; San Diego, University Art Galleries; San Francisco, Fine Arts Gallery; San Jose, Natalie and James Thompson Gallery; Sonoma, University Art Gallery; and Stanislaus, University Art Gallery and Stan State Art Space. 

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Press Contact: Kelly Lindner 
Galleries & Collections Curator
University Galleries, Sacramento State 
kelly.lindner@csus.edu

CPP Campus Contact: Michele Cairella Fillmore
Galleries & Collections Curator
University Art Galleries & Collections, Cal Poly Pomona
michelec@cpp.edu

Need to request an accommodation? No problem, let us know by contacting us here: http://bit.ly/ACCESSIBLEEODA