Events

Final Projects, Spring 2014 – Counter / Current

June 1, 2014 by Eric Sihao Lin

The work in Counter/Current celebrates the dynamic role that artist educators can play at the crucial intersection of inquiry and creativity. Art that compels us to think is like a good teacher who opens up the world and encourages us to be intrepid explorers, critical thinkers, and emboldened meaning makers. The title Counter/Current also suggests the ability to expose new or hidden truths, to present untold stories or histories, and to debunk long-standing beliefs. The twelve artist educators in this exhibition were challenged to conceive of art making as a form of research that empowers viewers to find new meaning about the world around them. Each artist chose a question drawn directly from his/her classroom experience or personal history, and using this question as a starting point, selected a method of investigation that would inform their art-making process.

Final Projects, Spring 2014 – Counter / Current

Final project installed in the gallery — Final Projects, Spring 2014 – Counter / Current

Self-portrait of a student, using words and phrases such as "No Child Left Behind." — Final Projects, Spring 2014 – Counter / Current

More images are available at The Commons Gallery Blog.

Final Projects, Spring 2013 – Me You Us Them

May 15, 2013 by Eric Sihao Lin

The fourteen artists in Me You Us Them are individually distinct – in personal history, in concerns, in background, in representation, and in their material choices. They are the Me, yet the works they have produced for the exhibition telescope through the You Us Them by first offering the viewer an important opportunity to question and understand the human experience (the You). Addressing issues such as identity, perception, education, and technology, each one of the works springs from the artists’ commitment to critical pedagogy. While each artist gives voice and shape to a specific concern of their own, the objects and ephemera included in the exhibition do not rest in personal narrative—each work seeks to engage and unify certain universalities of experience (the We). Most important, these objects are not passive—they ask us each to move beyond our personal concerns and those of our immediate communities, and encourage us to shift our gaze outward to actively locate our experiences in the context of those around us, both known and unknown (the Them).

What is evident in Me You Us Them is an engaged process of inquiry, rather than a didactic or dogmatic point of view. In creating an environment and exhibition that is not only open to discourse but begs for it, these women demonstrate that they are teachers who are artists and artists who are teachers. The relationship is not binary, it is unified.

ME YOU US THEM Catalogue [Link]

Final Project Exhibition, 'Me You Us Them', Spring 2013 — Final Project Exhibition, ‘Me You Us Them’, Spring 2013

More images are available at The Commons Gallery Blog.

Unhappy Readymade Exhibition, 2012

January 17, 2012 by Eric Sihao Lin

Unhappy Readymade was an interactive exhibition featuring students in the Art Education program presented in the Commons Gallery in the Department of Art and Art Professions. Installed as a collection of prompts or instructions, the exhibition required viewers to enact the requests of participating artists using available materials. The show was inspired by the work of Marcel Duchamp and contemporary artists interested in pedagogical strategies and forums for their work. In 1919 Duchamp created a wedding gift in the form of instructions to be carried out by his sister and new brother-in-law. His gift, titled Unhappy Ready-Made, anticipated a shift in the way we understand the role of the artist. By imagining the artist not only as maker, but simultaneously as catalyst, agitator, or facilitator, a new precedent for the artistic act was established—and with it, new questions about the nature of both making art and teaching art to others. How can art take educational forms? Is teaching itself an artistic act?

Unhappy Readymade, 2012, Exhibition Opening

Parking Day, 2011

April 21, 2011 by Eric Sihao Lin

PARK(ing) Day is an annual worldwide event where artists, designers and citizens transform metered parking spots into temporary public parks. Students in the Spring 2011 Media Literacy course created their own installation for Parking Day on the NYU campus, engaging the public in imagining the possibilities for reclaiming urban spaces.

Conflux Festival, 2009 / 2010

December 1, 2010 by Eric Sihao Lin

Conflux Festival, October 2009 / November 2010

Psy-Geo-Conflux (better known as Conflux) is the annual New York City festival dedicated to psychogeography, where visual, performance and sound artists, writers, urban adventurers, researchers and the public gather for four days to explore the physical and psychological landscape of the city. Conflux was co-founded by David Mandl of the Brooklyn Psychogeographical Association and Glowlab’s Christina Ray. The Department of Art and Art Professions hosted the 2009 and 2010 festivals when Art Education faculty member and Department chair David Darts served as the curator. Graduate students from Art Education and other Steinhardt programs have the opportunity to participate in this annual event.

Bootwala, M. and Desai, D. (2009). Memoryscapes: Witnessing the crisis of internal refugees through visual practice. Journal of Cultural Research in Art Education. V.27, 94-106.

December 30, 2009 by Eric Sihao Lin

This visual, practice-based research project, a collaboration between Dipti Desai, the Director of Art + Education, and Munira Bootwala, a Graduate student in the program, centers around these questions: ‘What does it means to be a refugee in one’s own country and how do people renegotiate their identities as citizens of a country when their rights are stripped? What roles do material and symbolic culture (artifacts and photographs that invoke memories of life before displacements) play in recreating a sense of home and recovering a loss of identity?’ This research, conducted in Gujarat in 2007, combines oral histories and photographs to create a narrative of memory that gives voice to the Muslims who became internal refugees in 2002, during the worst Hindu-Muslim riots in India.

Bootwala, M. and Desai, D. (2009). Memoryscapes- Witnessing the crisis of internal refugees through visual practice

Desai, D., Bui, T., and DiFilippo, L. (2003). Critical Mass[es]: Reflections on the Flag Project as Activist Art, Journal of Cultural Research in Art Education, v. 21, 126-134.

December 30, 2003 by Eric Sihao Lin

Immediately following September 11, 2001, a series of discussions and ‘teach-ins’ were organized by an ad hoc group of NYU faculty, staff, and students. Each gathering addressed issues that were for the most part not dealt with by the media at the time, such as Islam and fundamentalism, labor, the meaning of an attack on the World Trade Center, war as a response, and media censorship. Dipti Desai, a professor in the Art Department, and Thi Bui, a graduate student in Art Education, became involved early on in the teach-ins. After three faculty-led teach-ins, the group decided to make the next one more student-centered, with a variety of forums for students to participate in the discussion and feel comfortable voicing their concerns, feelings, and experiences. We felt this was a perfect opportunity to engage students and the public through the visual arts in a dialogue about the role of art in a democratic society. Lisa DiFilippo, another graduate student in Art Education, joined us in planning this event. An on-site all day activist art project was agreed upon along with an hour-long workshop discussing the notion of activist art, its history, and the strategies activist artists employ.

Desai, D., Bui, T., & DiFilippo, L. (2003). Critical Mass[es]- Reflections on the Flag Project as Activist Art

Events

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