A Seminar for Emerging Artists
Saturday, March 26, 2011
@ Pratt Institute of Art and Design
Brooklyn Campus
200 Willoughby Ave.
Brooklyn, New York
SAWCC presents an opportunity for emerging visual artists to meet established artists, curators, and arts professionals; participate in a slide slam; receive individual portfolio reviews; and tour artists’ studios. Process/Practice/Portfolio is an intensive all-day seminar geared toward helping female South Asian visual artists who are committed to their practice. The aim is to provide artists with a community of peers to support, challenge, and fine-tune their practice through sustained interaction.
Regular monthly meetings will be held subsequent to the seminar at the studios of the selected participants, culminating in group presentations to the public. Women wishing to access SAWCC’s resources beyond the seminar are strongly encouraged to apply.
Application Guidelines:
There are 22 slots available for this seminar and for the studio circle. Pre-registration and work samples are required. Please submit 5 images of work or website info, one page CV, 200 word bio, 200 word statement of work, and address of your studio to be considered for this program.
Please indicate whether you are looking for:
> Peer interaction
> Studio critiques
> Networking
> Presentation opportunities
> Other________
Submission deadline is March 1, 2011. Please contact us immediately to indicate interest or with any questions. Send emails and applications to studiocircle@sawcc.org
Seminar Schedule:
10:30-11am
Introduction by Jaishri Abichandani and Uzma Rizvi to SAWCC, Pratt, and presenters. Receive agenda and supplemental materials.
11-12pm
Artists’ talks by Samira Abbassy, Yamini Nayar, and Ruby Chishti. Established and award-winning artists with divergent practices present slide shows and talk about overarching themes in their work. Facilitated by Jaishri Abichandani.
12-1:15pm
Slide slam. Each participant will present their work in three minutes. Facilitated by Uzma Rizvi.
1:15-2:15pm
Lunch.
2:30-3:30pm
Curatorial presentations by Meenakshi Thirukode, Jasmine Wahi, Avni Doshi, Maymanah Farhat, Baseera Khan, and Jaishri Abichandani. Facilitated by Meenakshi Thirukode.
3:30-5pm
Individual Portfolio reviews by senior artists and curators. Facilitated by Jasmine Wahi.
5-6pm
Walk over to Jaishri Abichandani’s studios for tour/talk.
6-8pm
Wine reception with South Asian artists.
Presenter bios:
Samira Abbassy
Born in Ahwaz, Iran, Abassy moved to London, UK as a child. After graduating from Canterbury College of Art, she began showing in London. She then moved to New York in 1998, where she helped to set up the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Studio Center, where she currently has a studio and is a board member. Her work is shown internationally and has been acquired for private and public collections, including the British Government Art Collection, The British Museum, the Burger Collection, the Donald Rubin collection (Rubin Museum, NY), and the Farjaam Collection, Dhubai. Her NY solo show in 2007 was reviewed by Benjamin Genocchio in the New York Times and by Ariella Budek in Newsday. Her awards include: a Yaddo residency fellowship in 2006, a NYFA in 2007, and a Joan Mitchell Painting/Sculpture award in 2010.
Jaishri Abichandani
Born in Bombay, India, Abichandani immigrated to New York City in 1984. She received her MFA from Goldsmiths College, University of London and has continued to intertwine art and activism in her career, founding SAWCC in New York and London. She has exhibited her work internationally at various venues including P.S.1/MOMA, the Queens Museum of Art, and Exit Art in New York; the 798 Beijing Biennial and the Guangzhou Triennial in China; the IVAM in Valencia; and the House of World Cultures in Berlin. Jaishri served as the founding director of public events and projects from 2003–06 at the Queens Museum of Art where she co-curated Fatal Love: South Asian American Art Now and Queens International 2006: Everything All at Once. Other international curatorial projects include Sultana’s Dream, Exploding the Lotus, Artists in Exile, Anomalies, and Transitional Aesthetics, with an upcoming exhibition of Iranian women artists in London. Her work is included in various international collections including the Burger Collection, the Florian Peters Messers Collection (www.fpmcollection.com), and the Saatchi Collection.
Ruby Chishti
Over the last 12 years, Chishti has produced a series of lyrical sculptures and installations that touch on such issues as gender politics, cultural self-deï¬nition, and the authority of religion. Drawing on both her domestic experiences and as a Pakistani émigré in the US, the universal themes of identity, desire, and social isolation in her work have garnered huge public attention. Titles of exhibitions in which she has participated reveal the nature of her art: The Eye Still Seeks, Afï¬liations, Intensity of Space and Substance, Intimacy, Threads Dreams and Desires, Engendered, There is no hero, Malleable memory, and Placed displaced misplaced. She has been showing internationally since 2000 after graduating from National College of Arts Lahore Pakistan. Ruby Chishti now lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Avni Doshi
Doshi is an independent art historian and curator living between Mumbai and New York. Her interest in contemporary Indian art began when she did her BA in art history at Barnard College, Columbia University in New York. Following this, she received her masters in the History of Art from University College in London. Since moving to Mumbai, Avni writes for publications like Art India magazine, Varta magazine, Take On Art, ArtAsiaPacific, as well as the website ArtSlant. She is also undertaking curatorial projects with galleries and artists, including The Pill at Latitude 28 in New Delhi during the India Art Summit 2011.
Maymanah Farhat
Farhat is a Mexican-Lebanese writer specializing in modern and contemporary Arab art. She received a bachelor’s degree in the History of Art and Visual Culture (magna cum laude) with an emphasis in non-Western visual culture from the University of California Santa Cruz. In addition to conducting extensive research in Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, she has focused on the arts of Oceania, Africa, and the Americas. From 2005 to 2007 Farhat was the editor of ArteNews, an online magazine focusing on art and culture of the Middle East and North Africa. In 2005 she began working on ArtAsiaPacific magazine’s annual almanac. She was the West Asia editor of the almanac from 2006 to 2009. She is currently based in New York City.
Baseera Khan
Khan is an artist working toward an MFA ’12 at Cornell University. Khan spent the past three years collaborating and curating many projects and public program initiatives for BRIC | Arts | Media | Bklyn’s Rotunda Gallery where she was the assistant curator. She was a board member for the South Asian Women’s Creative Collective in 2009-10 and is currently working on a solo exhibition for Hosfelt Gallery, NY, opening September 2011. Khan received a BFA ’05 in drawing/painting/sociology at the University of North Texas. She was an artist-in-residence at the University of Texas at Dallas, 2004-05. Khan received the 2005 Arch and Anne Gilles Kimbrough Fund through the Dallas Museum of Art. Her works were included in the Texas Biennial, 2007 and 22 to Watch exhibition at the Austin Museum of Art, 2008, featured in the New Museum’s 2009 Younger Than Jesus: Artist Directory, and was a guest artist blogger-in-residence for Art:21 in 2010.
Yamini Nayar
Nayar, raised in and around Detroit, MI, lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and MFA from School of Visual Arts, NY, where she was a recipient of the Aaron Siskind Memorial Scholarship. In 2010, Nayar was invited to give the Lightborne Lecture at the Cincinnati Art Museum and has held artist residencies at the Art Academy of Cincinnati and the Center for Photography in Woodstock. Nayar’s work has been exhibited with Thomas Erben Gallery, NY; NADA, Miami; Art Basel, Switzerland; Saatchi Gallery, UK; Indian Art Summit; Gallery Experimenter, Kolkata; Queens Museum; and the Cincinnati Art Museum. Publications and reviews include the New Yorker, New York Times, Vogue India, Artpulse magazine, ArtIndia, the Guardian, and recently in Philips de Pury’s NOW: Art of the 21st Century by Vince Aletti. Yamini Nayar’s work is included in numerous private and public collections, including the Saatchi Collection, Queens Museum, Cincinnati Art Museum, and the US Arts in Embassies. Yamini Nayar is represented by Thomas Erben Gallery, NY.
Uzma Z. Rizvi
Rizvi is assistant professor of urban studies and anthropology at Pratt Institute in the Department of Critical and Visual Studies, with a joint appointment in social science and cultural studies. Since receiving her doctorate from the Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania in 2007, Rizvi has been faculty fellow and Chair for the Initiative on Art, Community Development and Social Change at the Pratt Center (2007–2008; 2010–current) and a postdoctoral fellow in the humanities at Stanford University (2008–2009). Rizvi’s research has been supported by grants received from Fulbright Hayes DDRA (2003), George Dales Foundation (2004), and the Mellon Foundation (2006-2007). In addition to academic publications on research, Rizvi has written catalog essays for various contemporary art exhibitions; recent (2010) essays include, “Seducing Structures and Stitches: Reappropriating Love, Desire and the Image” (Chatterjee and Lal Gallery, NYC – Swati Khurana solo), “Feminism’s Iconicity: Dedicated to Dirty Bombs, Moms and Lace†(Rossi and Rossi, London UK – Jaishri Abichandani solo), and “Metamorphosis” (Guild Gallery, NYC, S. Rehman and G. Samizay). She also serves in an advisory board capacity to various academic and cultural institutions, including the journal Dialectical Anthropology, South Asian Women’s Creative Collective (SAWCC), and South Asian Theater Arts Movement (SATAM).
Meenakshi Thirukode
Thirukode is a writer and curator based in New York. She graduated with honors for art critical and historical development from the masters program at Christies Education, New York. She is a columnist for White Wall magazine as well as Artconcerns.com, and has writtenhas written for on contemporary art for The Hindu (Sunday Magazine), ArtAsiaPacific, Art India, Art and Deal, Art Journal, ArtMap (China), Of Note, and Grassroots Literature blog. Her curatorial projects include Structures Within An Intervention, The Guild, New York and Untitled Projects:Thingamajigs, part 1, India, among others. Thirukode is the co-founder of Project For Empty Space, a nonprofit public art initiative that brings contemporary art out of institutional spaces and into vacant lots in cities. Thirukode is a member of the Christies Alumni Society Board and recently served on the curatorial committee of CURATE NYC. She worked as gallery manager at the Guild Art Gallery between 2008–2010 and is currently the curator of South Asian art for ArtStar, an online art advisory. For further information on past, present and future projects please visit her website.
Jasmine Wahi
Wahi is the Founder of Jasmine Wahi Contemporary, a multifaceted company that works in both art advisory and curatorial services. She is also the co-curator and co-founder of Project For Empty Space, a nonprofit that is dedicated to bringing contemporary art to communities through the utilization of abandoned and unusual outdoor spaces. In addition to her roles as an advisor and curator, Wahi is the co-founder of Pink Brick House, a budding new media start up that creates empowering and entertaining pop culture for young New York women. Wahi has both a professional and personal interest in the female presence in South Asian and Middle Eastern contemporary art and is currently working on several curatorial endeavors in addition to her daily work in media and art. She is a board member of the South Asian Women’s Creative Collective (SAWCC). Wahi graduated from New York University with a degree in art history and South Asian studies.