Morehshin Allahyari
October 20 – November 22, 2017
Morehshin Allahyari is an artist, activist, educator, and occasional curator. She is the recipient of the leading global thinkers of 2016 award by Foreign Policy magazine.
Morehshin was born and raised in Iran and moved to the United States in 2007. Her work deals with the political, social, and cultural contradictions we face every day. She thinks about technology as a philosophical toolset to reflect on objects and as a poetic means to document our personal and collective lives struggles in the 21st century. Morehshin is the co-author of The 3D Additivist Cookbook in collaboration with writer/artist Daniel Rourke– (published on December 2016 online in 3DPDF format and in print by the Institute of Networked Cultures). Her modeled, 3D-printed sculptural reconstructions of ancient artifacts destroyed by ISIS, titled Material Speculation: ISIS, have received widespread curatorial and press attention and have been exhibited worldwide.
Bivens, Kelley, Laube, Powers
December 2017
An exhibition of four faculty members from the UT School of Art.
Emily Ward Bivens is an Associate Professor of 4D arts and Time-Based Art at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She received her MFA from The University of Colorado, Boulder in 2004. Bivens uses found and made objects to forge narratives, provoke or encourage interaction, and reveal fictional and non-fictional mysteries. These objects shift from prop to subject to evidence when used in performance, video, and installation. Characters or identities are created to act as subjects, authors, inventors, and curators of the work.
John C. Kelley is an Assistant Professor of 4D and Time-Based Arts at the University of Tennessee Knoxville. His video work has screened domestically at venues such as The Mid-America Arts Alliance (Kansas City, MO), the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (Bentonville, AR) the Arizona International Film Festival (Tucson, AZ), The Front (New Orleans, LA), the Index Art Center (Newark, NJ), Living Arts (Tulsa, OK), internationally in cities such as London, Moscow, Berlin, Sao Paolo, Mexico City, Edinburgh, Vienna, Prague, Amsterdam and others. Kelley has written original music for award winning feature length narrative and documentary films through Gray Picture in St. Louis, MO, released music as a solo artist through King Electric Records in Austin, TX, and has appeared on more than 25 recordings and albums.
Mary Laube was born in Seoul, South Korea. She received her M.F.A. from the University of Iowa. Recent exhibitions include Piecing It Togetherat the Hawn Gallery in Dallas, Signaling to the Cipher towards a Segway at Field Projects in New York City, and Paper Planes at Whitdel Arts in Detroit. Her work has been supported by several artist residencies including the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and Stiwdeo Maelor in Wales. She received the Illinois National Women in the Arts Award in 2009 and a Project Grant from the Iowa Arts Council in 2014. Laube is co-founder of the Warp Whistle Project, a collaborative duo with composer Paul Schuette. Their work was presented at the 2016 International Symposium on Electronic Art in Hong Kong. Recent exhibitions include shows at the Czong Institute for Contemporary Art in Gimpo, South Korea and Phyllis Weston in Cincinnati. Laube has served as a visiting artist at various institutions including the Virginia Commonwealth University Qatar, Kent State University, and Knox College. She is an Assistant Professor at the University of Tennessee Knoxville.
John Douglas Powers studied art history at Vanderbilt University and earned his MFA in sculpture, with distinction, at The University of Georgia. His work has been featured in The New York Times, World Sculpture News, Sculpture Magazine, Art Forum, The Huffington Post, Art in America, The Boston Globe and on CBS News Sunday Morning. He is the recipient of the 2013 Virginia A. Groot Foundation Award, a Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA Grant as well as a Southeastern College Art Conference Individual Artist Fellowship, an Alabama State Council on the Arts Fellowship, and the Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet Award. Powers currently lives and works in Knoxville, Tennessee and is Assistant Professor of Sculpture at The University of Tennessee.
Christina West
February 2018
West is a sculptor based in Atlanta, GA. She earned her MFA from Alfred University in 2006 and since has extensively exhibited her work across the country in venues such as Plug Projects (Kansas City, MO), the The Bellevue Arts Museum (Bellevue, WA), The Bemis Center for Contemporary Art (Omaha, NE), Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center (Buffalo, NY), the Zuckerman Museum of Art (Kennesaw, GA) and the Mindy Solomon Gallery (Miami). Additionally, Christina’s work has been supported by a grants and fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, The Archie Bray Foundation for Ceramic Arts, the George Sugarman Foundation, and the Southeastern College Art Conference. Christina is an Associate Professor of Art at Georgia State University.