9am PT/ 11am CT/ 12pm ET / 6pm CET
Please join ArtTable for a special virtual discussion on Fluidity and Queerness in Art, in partnership with Speciwomen.
On the occasion of Speciwomen’s third issue launch, this panel will explore fluidity and queerness from various perspectives in the art world. We will hear from each panelist on what fluidity means to each of them, how identity has influenced their work and/or approach to their profession, and the “overtness” of queer art.
Panelists
- Grey, Artist & Cultural Activist, Moderator
- Philo Cohen, Founder & Editor-in-Chief at Speciwomen
- Opashona Ghosh, Artist, featured in the Fluidity issue of Speciwomen
- Anne-Sophie Guillet, Artist, featured in the Fluidity issue of Speciwomen
- Alyssa Nitchun, Director of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art
Admission
- ArtTable Circle Members– Free
- All other ArtTable Members – $10 (Members may bring a guest for an additional $5)
- Non-Members – $15
Not an ArtTable member? Join today!
Accessibility: ArtTable is pleased to offer closed captioning for this program. Please email [email protected] with additional accessibility requirements.
Additional Resources: We encourage all attendees to review these articles and resources in advance of the conversation – Gender fluidity: What it means and why support matters | Why the Art World is Focusing In on Gender Fluidity (2018) | ‘Museums Belong to Everyone’: Curator Clare Barlow on the Tate’s Groundbreaking Queer Art Show, and the Work Institutions Still Need to Do
About the Speakers
Grey (moderator) is a multimedia artist who identifies as AfroIndigenous, genderfluid, and queer. She’s currently known for making art pieces and installations in solidarity with the trans community as well as being the lead singer of the band God Save The Club Kids.
Philo Cohen is the founder and Editor-in-Chief at Speciwomen, an online archive and independent publishing initiative aiming to change the representation of womxn and femmes in the arts. Cohen lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 2020 with a BA in Visual Studies and Comparative Literature.
Opashona Ghosh (b. Kolkata 1987) is an artist and facilitator, based in London. Graduate of Central Saint Martins (University of the Arts, London). Their work explores feminist approaches to mental & sexual health, and club culture, locating the intersections of body, community & ritual. They curate FEMME NEW WORLD, an intersectional panel exploring migrating femme landscapes. Currently, they are co-publishing HONEY with Bahraini-British writer and editor Nadia Jones, a zine meditating on the experience of friendship. (Instagram)
Anne-Sophie Guillet was born in Oxford, UK. She’s a French photographer based in Brussels, Belgium. She graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels with an MFA in visual arts and photography. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally. In 2019, her book “Inner Self” was published with Case Publishing, a Japanese publisher. The book launch was at the same time as her solo show at Poetic Scape in Tokyo. Anne-Sophie Guillet is currently working on her “Together” series around love and relationships, what bonds one to another and questions their representation. The series suggests that we change our attitude and perception on the ways people live their relationships. (Instagram)
Alyssa Nitchun is Executive Director of The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, where she oversees the Museum’s many initiatives and long-term growth. Founded just weeks before the Stonewall uprising and located in Soho, New York, LLMA provides a platform for artistic exploration through multi-faceted queer perspectives. Prior to LLMA, Alyssa was an independent cultural consultant focused on the Middle East and Europe, advising artists and cultural institutions on projects at the intersection of art, social justice, and public space. From 2012 to 2018, Alyssa was with the public art organization Creative Time where she held a variety of positions focused on development, communications, and team management, culminating with Acting Executive Director. Prior to Creative Time, Alyssa oversaw Institutional Giving for StoryCorps – the public media organization archiving diverse oral histories at the Library of Congress. Alyssa has also served as Director of Development for the CUNY Graduate Center’s Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies and has held multiple creative positions in the worlds of art, fashion, and music. Alyssa received an MA in Gender Politics with a focus in Queer theory from New York University.
About Speciwomen
SPECIWOMEN is a community of emerging womxn makers from all over the world representing each other through the means of interviews, essays, new media and print publications. Our goal is to bring forward the work of artists that deserve a better representation than the one given to them in the art world.
Philo Cohen started SPECIWOMEN in 2015, aiming to foster intersectional communities built from equality and respect. Click here to view the website.
Thank you to Philo Cohen and the team at Speciwomen for partnering with ArtTable on this program.
Images:
- Cover of Speciwomen’s third issue.
- Headshots provided by the speakers.
Harriet F. Senie is professor of art history at City College and the CUNY Graduate Center. She is the author of Memorials to Shattered Myths: Vietnam to 9/11; The “Tilted Arc” Controversy: Dangerous Precedent?; and Contemporary Public Sculpture: Tradition, Transformation, and Controversy. She is co-editor and contributor to Teachable Monuments: Using Public Art to Spark Dialogue and Confront Controversy; Museums and Public Art?; A Companion to Public Art; and Critical Issues in Public Art. In 2008, she cofounded Public Art Dialogue, an international organization and College Art Association affiliate, and coedited its peer review journal Public Art Dialogue from 2011-17. She has served on the New York City Mayoral Advisory Commission on City Art, Monuments, and Markers; the She Built New York advisory committee, and selection committees for the Women’s Rights Pioneers Monument in Central Park; the Mexico City 1968 Memorial; and the Flight 587 Memorial. Her current book project is Monumental Controversies: Mount Rushmore, Four Presidents, and the Quest for National Identity.
Alison Saar was born in Los Angeles, California. She has been commissioned to create a number of Public Monuments including Swing Low a monument to Harriet Tubman, Terra Incognita a memorial to York of the Lewis and Clark expedition and Embodied a monument to Justice. She received the United States Artist Fellowship in 2012 and has also been awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and two National Endowment Fellowships. Alison has exhibited at many galleries and museums, including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Her art is represented in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Baltimore Art Museum, the Modern Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Marisa Williamson is a project-based artist who has produced site-specific works at Monticello, & by commission from Storm King Art Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Monument Lab, & the National Park Service. She has had solo exhibitions at the University of Virginia, the University of Washington, & SPACES in Cleveland. Her work has been exhibited nationally & internationally. Williamson has received grants from the Rema Hort Mann Foundation, the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, & the Graham Foundation. Williamson holds a BA from Harvard & an MFA from CalArts. She lives & works in New Jersey & Connecticut, serving as an assistant professor of media arts at the University of Hartford.
Deborah Fisher is an artist and creative leader working to expand the roles artists play in civic life. She is the founding Executive Director of A Blade of Grass, a non-profit solely dedicated to nurturing socially engaged art. Fisher has served as an art, strategy, and philanthropy advisor to Shelley and Donald Rubin, and has worked in many capacities at the intersection of art and civic life in New York City, including as studio manager at Socrates Sculpture Park, and as an educator and curriculum developer for the Brooklyn Center for the Urban Environment. Her approach to leadership is deeply informed by her training as a sculptor, particularly her experience making public art. She also writes and lectures internationally about arts funding and socially engaged art.
For fifteen years, curator Irene Mei Zhi Shum has actively explored the intersection of art and architecture, organizing ambitious projects and championing the artists and designers with whom she works. Most recently, she was the Executive Director of Art in General in New York City. Prior to this, Shum served as the Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at the Menil Collection in Houston, Texas (2018-2020) and the inaugural curator for the Philip Johnson Glass House, a site of the National Trust for Historic Preservation in New Canaan, Connecticut (2007-2018). An early and major responsibility at the Glass House was the coordination of the transfer of property from the estates of architect Philip Johnson and art patron David Whitney to the National Trust. Shum shaped the Glass House’s collection and implemented the site’s arts initiative, introducing exhibitions, music and dance performances. Notably, she organized and secured funding for the large-scale, site-specific exhibitions Fujiko Nakaya: Veil (2014) and Yayoi Kusama: Narcissus Garden (2016), as well as a highly acclaimed sound performance by composer Ryuichi Sakamoto and visual artist and musician Carsten Nicolai (Alva Noto), that was recorded and released as Glass (Noton, 2018). Shum holds a Master’s in Architecture from Yale University; a certificate of architecture from the École des Beaux-Arts of the Ecoles d’Art Américaines de Fontainebleau, where she was awarded the Prix de Ville de Fontainebleau; and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Architecture and Art History from Barnard College, Columbia University.
