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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260418T130000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20260418T150000
DTSTAMP:20260429T061130
CREATED:20250927T160725Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260428T172630Z
UID:9226-1776517200-1776524400@emersoncontemporary.org
SUMMARY:Public Art Walking Tour with artists Elisa Hamilton and Clareese Hill\, in Collaboration with MAAH
DESCRIPTION:Join artists Elisa Hamilton and Clareese Hill on a special artist-led walking tour of their two public art projects\, Glimpses of Glapion and The Black Boston Dream Oracle in the Beacon Hill neighborhood. \n\n\n\nMeeting Point: Boston Common Visitor’s Center \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nJoin artists Elisa Hamilton and Clareese Hill on a special artist-led walking tour of their two public art projects Glimpses of Glapion and The Black Boston Dream Oracle\, followed by a reception and Q&A with the artists at The Museum of African American History at 46 Joy Street\, Boston. The walking tour will begin at Boston Common Visitors Center at 139 Tremont St\, Boston\, at 1:00pm\, with the reception and Q&A at The Museum of African American History beginning at 2:15pm.Emerson Contemporary is thrilled to collaborate with the Museum of African American History (MAAH) for this program. After the walk\, an artist Q&A session will take place at the African Meeting House at 46 Joy Street\, Boston\, MA. \n\n\n\nElisa Hamilton’s project Glimpses of Glapion will present a series of digital vignettes honoring the life and legacy of Louis Glapion. Glapion was a French\, biracial hairdresser and barber who\, together with his friend George Middleton\, built and owned what is now considered the oldest extant house in Beacon Hill\, located at 5 Pinckney Street. While more is known about Middleton\, the artist’s research has uncovered glimpses of Glapion that speak to an interesting and noteworthy life based in Beacon Hill. Hamilton seeks to honor Glapion and enliven curiosity about his lived experiences in our city. The AR experience will be available on Hoverlay and accompanied by a research document designed for educational purposes.  \n\n\n\nClareese Hill’s The Black Boston Dream Oracle is a speculative reimagining of The Complete Fortune Teller and Dream Book written by Chloe Russel\, a 19th-century Black woman from Massachusetts. By blending historical wisdom with future-focused fabulations\, the Black Boston Dream Oracle will provide a unique space for reflection\, healing\, and imagining new possibilities for liberation and collective well-being through early Black feminist thought. The Oracle will be presented as an Extended Reality (XR) experience available on the Hoverlay application\, accompanied by a web-based research document designed for educational purposes.
URL:https://emersoncontemporary.org/event/artist-led-walking-tour-with-elisa-hamilton-and-clareese-hill/
CATEGORIES:Artist Talk,Gallery Talk,News,Public Program,Regarding Monuments: Visualizing Hidden Histories
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END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250901T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20251028T190000
DTSTAMP:20260429T061130
CREATED:20240527T162815Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251008T142334Z
UID:8548-1756728000-1761678000@emersoncontemporary.org
SUMMARY:Hidden Histories: Elisa Hamilton\, Clareese Hill\, Sue Murad\, and Kameelah Janan Rasheed part of Un-Monument
DESCRIPTION:Un-Monument is a two-year initiative that reimagines and fosters discourse around Boston’s monuments and memorials in a way that centers and amplifies a multiplicity of voices and creates authentic learning moments across the city. It invigorates public spaces through artist interventions that bring to the fore the rich histories that are often hidden. \n\n\n\nEmerson Contemporary enthusiastically announces Hidden Histories\, a series of four public art projects produced as part of the Un-Monument initiative of the City of Boston. Hidden Histories highlights the processes of collaboration\, artistic research\, and speculation in contemporary art.  \n\n\n\nLAUNCH PARTY: SEPTEMBER 18\, 5-7:30PM\, Media Art Gallery\, 25 Avery Street\, Boston\, 02111 \n\n\n\nWHAT: A Series of Public Art Activations that are part of Un-Monument\, a multi-year public art initiative to bring temporary monuments and free programming to the City of Boston that expand the inclusive histories represented in public spaces across the City. \n\n\n\nWHEN: September 1 through October 28\, 2025.  \n\n\n\nWHERE: Beacon Hill\, Boston Common\, and MBTA trains and stations along the Green and Orange Lines\, and virtually via the Hoverlay augmented reality application. \n\n\n\nThis initiative is funded by the Mayor’s Office of Arts & Culture and the Mellon Foundation. \n\n\n\nCurated and produced by Emerson Contemporary\, the exhibition will present a series of four public art projects featuring Elisa Hamilton\, Clareese Hill\, Sue Murad\, and Kameelah Janan Rasheed. Combining the gallery’s mission to educate by doing\, the inclusive experience of walking tours\, and the idea that history is a living subject that constantly evolves\, the artists received this prompt: find an aspect of the city’s past that is not currently well-known or understood and create art using new media technologies to amplify those stories.  \n\n\n\nEmerson Contemporary collaborated with Boston’s foremost historic archives: The Boston Athenaeum\, Historic New England\, and Massachusetts Historical Society\, and the artists were subsequently invited as community research fellows. With the generous support and collaboration of the archives’ staff\,  artists were provided access to their rich collections and many objects that served as inspiration for their thought-provoking projects. \n\n\n\nSue Murad\, ASSEMBLE\, 2025\n\n\n\nTo support public access to Hidden Histories\, the gallery has continued to build on their multi-year collaboration and partnership with Hoverlay\, a Boston-based augmented reality platform where users can compose and publish immersive content. Hoverlay enables any storyteller to utilize AR to transform how they tell their stories by placing virtual story objects out in the world to be accessed by visitors’ smartphones.
URL:https://emersoncontemporary.org/event/regarding-monuments-visualizing-hidden-histories/
LOCATION:Boston Commons\, 139 Tremont St\, Boston\, MA\, Boston\, 02111\, United States
CATEGORIES:Exhibition,News,Regarding Monuments: Visualizing Hidden Histories
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://emersoncontemporary.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/51/2024/05/Screenshot-2025-08-05-at-6.06.39-PM.png
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250228T000000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250228T235959
DTSTAMP:20260429T061130
CREATED:20250214T193235Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250214T193830Z
UID:8956-1740700800-1740787199@emersoncontemporary.org
SUMMARY:Call For Works: MOVEMENT/S
DESCRIPTION:Emerson Contemporary seeks critically engaged photographic series and lens-based works for a three-week exhibition considering ideas and issues related to “movement/s.” This topical and timely show is a part of an upper-level seminar on Curatorial Practices in the department of Visual & Media Studies.  \n\n\n\nSUBMISSION GUIDELINES: Artists are welcome to submit 3-5 artworks for consideration. Works should be from a cohesive series\, exhibition-ready\, and ready to hang. We expect to select several works per artist (rather than one piece per person). Format-wise\, media could include photographs captured or created using historical or contemporary processes; videos or projections; photomontage or sculptural photographs; experimental or new media; or installations that include or allude to photography. Genre-wise\, works could include fine art\, documentary\, conceptual\, or archival. \n\n\n\nARTIST CRITERIA AND LOGISTICS: This exhibition opportunity is for emerging artists and photographers\, broadly defined. We especially encourage those from historically under-represented communities to apply. Artists must live or work in the Greater Boston area and be able to drop off and pick up the selected works to the gallery. The gallery is not able to accept shipped works or pay for shipping. The gallery cannot provide framing\, but does have an extensive equipment inventory available for use including high single-channel projectors\, iPads\, monitors etc. \n\n\n\nDEADLINE for submissions is Thursday\, February 27th at 11:59pm*There are no fees to submit work for consideration or to participate* \n\n\n\nLINK to application form: https://www.cognitoforms.com/MediaArtGallery/MOVEMENTS \n\n\n\nQUESTIONS? Email EmersonCuratorialPractices@gmail.com No phone calls pleas \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCALL NARRATIVE: A photograph is never fully still and nothing remains truly static. The act of photographing is inherently active\, requiring the photographer to move towards or follow a subject\, to observe\, to respond. Photographs aid in our understanding by collecting singular moments and circulating in a world of relentless flux.Our era has rapidly oscillated between inertia and eruption — from massive lockdowns to global protest. This endless movement is crucial for progress but can be overwhelming individually. How do we process and picture this whiplash of stasis paired together with speed? \n\n\n\nMovement/s\, a student-curated exhibition at Emerson College\, seeks photographic and lens-based works that engage\, capture\, and reflect “movement.” The call welcomes artworks that examine movement as an idea — whether anticipated or abrupt\, chaotic or controlled\, internal or external — as well as those that document political and social\, environmental and scientific\, physical and abstract movements. We also solicit series that explore the role of photography as a tool for change\, organization\, or revolution as well as those that question the fluidity\, fractures\, and futures of movement. Whether we fight\, fly\, or freeze\, “moving through” can also be a transformative pause or confrontation and invite those interpretations as well. \n\n\n\nWe especially seek projects that challenge binaries — action/inaction\, progress/rewind\, agitation/anxiety\, construction/destruction — to map where we have been\, where we are stuck\, and how we might navigate\, connect\, learn\, and move forward. Our exhibition aims to be a reflection of and meditation on our time — from its perpetual motion\, shifting tides\, restless energy\, to continuous evolution. We look forward to seeing how artists incorporate and interrogate Movement/s at this inflection point — as the weight of history presses against the present and the fierce urgency of now foreshadows the future.
URL:https://emersoncontemporary.org/event/call-for-works-movement-s/
LOCATION:Boston Commons\, 139 Tremont St\, Boston\, MA\, Boston\, 02111\, United States
CATEGORIES:News,Regarding Monuments: Visualizing Hidden Histories
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250204T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250204T213000
DTSTAMP:20260429T061130
CREATED:20250119T005113Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250203T161029Z
UID:8916-1738695600-1738704600@emersoncontemporary.org
SUMMARY:Film Screening + Artist Conversation 
DESCRIPTION:Come watch In the Future They Ate from the Finest Porcelain (2016) and Familiar Phantoms (2023) by filmmakers Larissa Sansour and Søren Lind at Emerson’s Bright Family Screening Room. \n\n\n\nJoin us after the screening for a conversation with the filmmakers\, and Emerson’s Artist in Residence\, Julia Halperin.  \n\n\n\nThis screening is co-presented with the RPM Film Festival and the Salem Film Fest\, and Larissa Sansour and Søren Lind’s exhibition at Emerson Contemporary is made possible by the generous funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.  \n\n\n\n\nDate: Tuesday\, February 4\, 7-9:30pm. Doors open at 6:30pm.\n\n\n\nLocation: Bright Family Screening Room\, 559 Washington St. Boston\, Ma\, 02111\n\n\n\nRSVP required for tickets: EVENTBRITE\n\n\n\n\nThis exhibition \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDate: Wednesday\, February 5\, 5-7pm.\n\n\n\nLocation: Media Art Gallery\, 25 Avery Street\, Boston\, Ma 02111\n\n\n\n\nAbout the artists: https://larissasansour.com/ Larissa Sansour and Soren Lind are an artist duo who have collaborated on various films. They live and work in London. What underscores the significance of their work in the current context is the relationship between memory\, trauma and the present to envision a more peaceful future. In 2019 they represented Denmark at the 58th Venice Biennale.  \n\n\n\nBorn in East Jerusalem\, Larissa Sansour (PS/DK) studied Fine Art in Copenhagen\, London and New York. Recent solo exhibitions include Whitworth Gallery in Manchester\, KINDL in Berlin\, Copenhagen Contemporary in Denmark and Dar El-Nimer in Beirut. Soren Lind (DK) is a Danish author and director and visual artist with a background in philosophy. Lind wrote books on mind\, language\, and understanding before turning to art\, film\, and fiction. Lind screens and exhibits his films at museums\, galleries\, and film festivals worldwide.
URL:https://emersoncontemporary.org/event/film-screening-artist-conversation/
LOCATION:Bright Lights Theater\, Paramount Center
CATEGORIES:Film Screening,News,Public Program
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://emersoncontemporary.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/51/2025/01/Phantom3.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20241022T000000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20241022T235959
DTSTAMP:20260429T061130
CREATED:20240806T161521Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240806T161523Z
UID:8677-1729555200-1729641599@emersoncontemporary.org
SUMMARY:Emerson Contemporary Awarded $80\,000 Grant From The Andy Warhol Foundation
DESCRIPTION:Emerson Contemporary is excited to have received a generous $80\,000 grant from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts in support of our exhibitions and programming over the next two years. This contribution will have a profound impact on the gallery’s ability to present innovative and engaging visual art experiences to our community and fully support the artists we are exhibiting and inviting to our campus. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nOver the past five years\, under the leadership of Chair of Contemporary Art and Distinguished  Curator in Residence\, Dr. Leonie Bradbury\, Emerson Contemporary has developed a “teaching gallery” with an emphasis on presenting mid-career artists with time-based media practices\, including video and performance and those that explore emerging technologies such as augmented\, virtual\, and extended reality (AR/VR/XR)\, the only of its kind in New England.  \n\n\n\nEmerson Contemporary amplifies the voices of living artists who broaden how we understand our present moment and help us reimagine what is possible. We encourage experimentation\, commission new works\, and support artistic research through technological support and mentorship. In support of this mission\, they actively seek to create opportunities for working artists to engage with new technologies\, software tools\, creative technologists\, and the faculty expertise on our campus that are otherwise not accessible. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIn accordance with Andy Warhol’s will\, the mission of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts is the advancement of the visual arts. The foundation manages a dynamic grants program while also preserving Warhol’s legacy through creative and responsible licensing policies and extensive scholarly research for ongoing catalogue raisonné projects. To date\, the foundation has given nearly $300 million in cash grants to over 1\,000 arts organizations across the country and abroad and has donated 52\,786 works of art to 322 institutions worldwide. \n\n\n\nThis grant will enable us to bring a range of exhibitions featuring both emerging and established artists\, foster critical dialogue through public programming\, and provide valuable educational opportunities for our audience. Says Bradbury\, “The Foundation puts visual art and artists at the center of their work. Their commitment to the arts is inspiring\, and we are honored to be among the recipients of their support. We look forward to the exciting and impactful work made possible by this grant.” 
URL:https://emersoncontemporary.org/event/emerson-contemporary-awarded-80000-grant-from-the-andy-warhol-foundation/
LOCATION:Media Art Gallery\, 25 Avery Street\, Boston\, Massachusetts\, 02111
CATEGORIES:News
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20240501T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20240630T190000
DTSTAMP:20260429T061130
CREATED:20240527T171024Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240527T184352Z
UID:8572-1714564800-1719774000@emersoncontemporary.org
SUMMARY:Transforming Boston: Art and Technology Incubator
DESCRIPTION:A workshop series conducted by Michael Lewy  \n\n\n\n\n\nTransforming Boston: Art and Technology Incubator is our public-facing artist training and mentorship initiative\, which offers access to new media technology for artists to either translate previous work or create new work. The incubator serves practicing artists who have faced obstacles due to the high start-up costs of these design tools and the cultural barriers within the new media art field. Ten artists from the Boston area have been invited to participate in this year’s program focused on Augmented Reality and develop their skills while designing a project. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThis weekly confluence of ideas & creative exploration features guest lectures by Nicolas Robbe\, Lauren Moffett\, and Liz Nofziger. The goal of the 2024 incubator is to offer training opportunities and access to technology for artists to either translate previous work or create new work in the medium of augmented reality (AR). The program provides assistance with the production process\, technology exploration and mentorship.  \n\n\n\nThe 2025 cohort will focus on projection mapping.
URL:https://emersoncontemporary.org/event/transforming-boston-art-and-technology-incubator/
LOCATION:Media Art Gallery\, 25 Avery Street\, Boston\, Massachusetts\, 02111
CATEGORIES:Artist Talk,Gallery Talk,News,Regarding Monuments: Visualizing Hidden Histories
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END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20240330T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20240416T170000
DTSTAMP:20260429T061130
CREATED:20240401T193100Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240722T152248Z
UID:8468-1711800000-1713286800@emersoncontemporary.org
SUMMARY:Un-monument Call to Work: Augmented Reality Artist Workshop
DESCRIPTION:Image credit: Elisa Hamilton\, sketching using the Hoverlay app. during the pilot workshop in 2021\n\n\n\n\n\nEmerson Contemporary\, is announcing an augmented reality artist workshop designed to support artists in gaining access to the skills and technology needed to either translate previous work\, or create new work\, in the medium of augmented reality (AR).  \n\n\n\nThe workshop takes place 10 a.m. – 2:30pm\, on five Saturdays: May 4- June 15\, 2024. *no workshop on Memorial Day weekend. \n\n\n\nThe goal of the incubator is to provide training opportunities for artists who have traditionally faced an “access gap” due to the high start-up costs of these design tools and the cultural barriers within the new media art field\, primarily affecting women\, LGBTQ artists\, Latinx\, and BIPOC artists. The program provides a stipend\, assistance with the production process\, technology exploration and mentorship. In turn\, by providing support and access\, we aim to expand the demographics of artists working in AR.  \n\n\n\nTen artists from the greater Boston area will be invited to participate in this program. Each artist received a stipend of $750 to participate and to compensate for their time and energy and offset costs for transportation\, child care\, or lost work to remove an additional potential barrier to this resource.  \n\n\n\nThose interested can attend virtual Q&A sessions on April 2 at 6 p.m. or April 3 at 12 p.m. on Zoom. \n\n\n\nThe written question deadline is Tuesday\, April 9 at 5 p.m. and the application closes April 16 at 5 p.m. \n\n\n\nInformation for the Q&A sessions and application can be found here. \n\n\n\nThis program is funded by an Un-monument: Transformative Public Art Grant from the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture. This opportunity is open to all professional artists\, including individuals\, and artists who operate as for-profit businesses and nonprofits.
URL:https://emersoncontemporary.org/event/un-monument-call-to-work-augmented-reality-artist-workshop/
CATEGORIES:News,Public Program
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20231215T080000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20231216T170000
DTSTAMP:20260429T061130
CREATED:20240214T150326Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240214T151004Z
UID:8322-1702627200-1702746000@emersoncontemporary.org
SUMMARY:Musician Julian Saporiti approaches refugee storytelling with compassion
DESCRIPTION:By Maddie Browning \n\n\n\nBerklee alum Julian Saporiti releases music inspired by his fieldwork and research on Asian American history under the pseudonym No-No Boy – a reference to John Okada’s novel of the same name.  \n\n\n\nA selection of his songs and music videos are a part of Emerson Contemporary’s “One Day We’ll Go Home” exhibition on display through December 16.  \n\n\n\nEmerson Contemporary chatted with Saporiti on Zoom about his favorite musical artists\, collaborating on artistic projects with his wife\, and checking his privilege with the monks at Blue Cliff Monastery. \n\n\n\nEC: What artists are you inspired by? \n\n\n\nSaporiti: There’s a painting in the MFA in Boston called “Slave Ship” by [Joseph Mallord William] Turner\, and when I was in school at Berklee\, I would go see that painting a lot. It’s a really horrible subject matter\, it’s this wrecked slave ship\, so it’s all these bodies in the ocean but it’s full of [these] beautiful sunset or sunrise colors – oranges and pinks – mixed with the turbulence of the ocean. So that was always super striking\, and very similar to a lot of the work that I do\, which is dealing with stories of people crossing oceans under not so good circumstances. But that painting\, I was always entranced by that when I lived in Boston\, and I would go see that all the time.  \n\n\n\nEC: What are some of your favorite musicians? \n\n\n\nSaporiti: When I was in Boston\, as a [college student]\, I used to go to the symphony every week and the BSO because they had a student card\, so you go every Thursday for like 25 bucks a semester. I remember I saw this piece\, Hector Berlioz is the composer\, and he wrote a piece called “The Damnation of Faust\,” which is this overwhelming three choruses based on the Faust mythology\, and that’s one of my favorite pieces of music of all time. And then I also love the rock and roll or hard rock I grew up with like Rage Against the Machine and Weezer and Nirvana and all that grunge stuff. And then my dad’s record collection\, The Beatles\, Beach Boys\, Joni Mitchell\, Neil Young\, Bob Dylan.  \n\n\n\nI like all that very entrenched\, canonized stuff\, but my favorite experiences are just hearing someone in front of me play an instrument. It doesn’t even have to be a particular piece of music. It’s just like\, if there’s a clarinet player in an Italian restaurant\, I’m always drifting out of whatever conversation I’m in to hear just the sound of their instrument. I’m really appreciative of live music because there’s just something so captivating and infinite in that very small experience that you can’t get with recorded music.  \n\n\n\nEC: Your music is rooted in storytelling. How do you use different sounds to tell those stories? \n\n\n\nSaporiti: A lot of different ways. Sometimes it’s just textures of different instruments [that] might fit a lyric\, you know\, the difference between a plucked guitar with your fingers to a nice ethereal keyboard pad or something. I use a lot of samples\, and I tell a lot of stories that are based on my historic research as an academic – these histories of Asian American folks and refugees and immigrants mostly. I sample from my field research sites\, so if I go to an old refugee camp or something\, I’ll knock on the barbed wire or the wood\, and then I’ll turn that into a drum kit. So that’s what you hear on my recorded music to try to use the textures and real audible sounds of history inside the records themselves.  \n\n\n\nEmpire Electric by No-No Boy\, album cover. \n\n\n\nEC: What has your experience been like collaborating with your wife\, Emilia\, who directs and does lettering for your music videos featured in “One Day We’ll Go Home”? \n\n\n\nSaporiti: Awesome because we want to be around each other as much as possible. That’s why we got married. I have found someone who I just love sharing my life with\, and my life is so artistically driven\, it would kind of be impossible for me to be in a full time relationship with someone if they didn’t share in that and vice versa. Like right now you’ve caught me in the middle of her law school exam final week\, so I’m basically chauffeur and making all the meals and helping her study with flashcards and making sure the sleep schedule is good. So we look at everything we do as a team. And she’s a wonderful artist in her own right – a visual artist. She helps me produce the songs that I make as well. She sings when we perform live. She also has sewn this incredible stage jacket I wear in one of the videos which has hand embroidered little stories from my Vietnamese American childhood on it. \n\n\n\nEC: Tell me a little bit more about the songs you included in “One Day We’ll Go Home” and what stories you are telling. \n\n\n\nSaporiti: “Boat People” is in there and that is very central to the Vietnamese American story because I think most refugees or a good deal of us can trace their families where they directly came over as boat people. These folks who had to escape South Vietnam on these rickety little fishing boats. That song is taken directly from an archival interview of this guy who was a boat person who went to Canada. The lyrics basically tell this really cinematic story of this guy\, Dr. Tran\, who eventually made it to Montreal but he had to escape Vietnam\, got into this little fishing\, boat pirates attacked them\, eventually made it to Pulau Bidong – this refugee camp off the coast of Malaysia. It’s harrowing\, and I think that it’s really important to tell one story at a time as a teacher and also as a songwriter because it’s really hard for students or for listeners to take in a million people. You can’t understand that number\, so boiling it down to telling these personal stories detail by detail\, and then setting it to music\, I think that’s a very emotional way to speak to this larger humanity issue of refugees and immigrants and movements of people – things that are happening right now in the Middle East\, right now in Asia and Central America. This is just one person\, but if you can empathize with that one person\, then maybe you can empathize more deeply with the global issue of refugees and displacement. \n\n\n\nEC: In conducting your field work\, how do you go about talking to refugees when you’re working on new music? \n\n\n\nSaporiti: I never talk to anyone with a goal of anything. I just explore and hang out and talk to people like people\, and then if it comes up that they have an interesting story\, and they share that with me\, I might ask questions I’d ask anyone. If we’re having a drink at a bar\, I would talk to everyone the same way\, you know\, just be a good hang. That’s something they should lead off with [in] anthropology classes\, just be a good hang\, don’t needle people to relive their trauma. It’ll come out if it comes out. And if it doesn’t\, it doesn’t\, and that’s all right. That’s something I had to learn when I first started interviewing people for my No-No Boy project. I was talking to a lot of people who used to live in a Japanese internment camp in Wyoming during World War II\, and I would kind of right off the bat be like\, “Tell me about the worst three years of your life\,” which is a [expletive] up thing. Because\, as someone who comes from some really harsh family history\, you don’t want to define people by the worst parts of their life.  \n\n\n\nI’ve gone down and hung out in the Mexican camps across the border just to\, especially as a son of a refugee\, see what’s happening now and speak against it\, tell people what I’ve seen\, help out if I can. And it’s kind of up to [the refugees] what they want to share and just try to go in with a sense of reciprocity\, giving something first before you take something away from them\, which is their story.  \n\n\n\nI always bring down those Instax Polaroid cameras and just take pictures for people who have lost everything and having a picture of their kid means a lot to carry with them and then giving them the camera and a ton of film so they can take pictures of their friends. That little stuff\, that can mean a lot\, and then maybe you get some cool conversations and maybe that turns into art or songs\, but that’s really secondary.  \n\n\n\nEC: Your song “Little Monk” on [your third album] Empire Electric is inspired by your experience at Blue Cliff [Monastery]. How does that experience influence your music going forward? \n\n\n\nSaporiti: Pretty completely. My wife and I weren’t married at the time but we had started dating at Brown University. She had graduated with a sociology degree\, and I could leave campus because I was a PhD student\, and I had all my coursework done. And we just wanted to get out of there. When you’re 18 to 22\, you’re never more aware. You don’t have mortgages to pay yet or kids to worry about\, so that’s when the world really is spitting in your face the most\, and you notice it\, and you still have energy. Brown is a particularly liberal\, progressive\, activisty place\, and it was so scary to be there at that point in time\, because there were a lot of people just yelling about everything constantly and not really necessarily being informed about what they were yelling about. They were protesting everything but how rich those kids were\, never protests about economic class but everything else\, but with no substance behind it. I wanted calm in my life. I wanted the world to change. That’s why I went down to the Mexican border during a spring break to see these refugee camps for myself\, instead of just yelling about what people were yelling about on Facebook. I wanted to actually go see for myself and see if I could actually help out. \n\n\n\nThe monks will sort you out because they just don’t buy into that because there’s greater truths for them. That’s not to say they don’t acknowledge there’s pain and suffering in the world. That’s what Buddhism is about. It’s acknowledging suffering and trying to overcome it in your life. I felt like I was just angry and I felt a poison in me from all the politics in the world\, and all the suffering and [the monks] gave me tools to deal with that whether that was meditation or mindfulness stuff\, just walking around. And yeah\, that has sort of dictated my path. I don’t really use social media anymore. I’ll read the newspaper once a week instead of doom scroll constantly to see all the hell that’s happening because it’s not going to change in a week’s time. If I read one good article about the war over in the Middle East that’s going to be pretty thorough\, and I’ll catch up on what’s happened that week.  \n\n\n\nI think what I learned is to tend to your own garden. I don’t want to yell about what’s happening at a southern border if I’m being an [expletive] to my friend that week. That’s something I can help. I can help being present and helping someone else that I know and love instead of abstractly spinning out because the world is on fire. And also checking my own privilege\, right? I’m someone who has a PhD\, and makes a living doing art. I have a beautiful wife\, I have a roof over my head\, which has not always been the case in my life and\, talking about refugees\, is not the case for a lot of people now. The monks really helped me check my privilege and get out of that elite campus protester culture. They let me empty out and see that life is still wonderful for some people. For some people it’s not\, but for me\, it is\, and let me acknowledge that first and take solace and strength in that and then see how I can help the people in my community or if I do go somewhere where I can help. \n\n\n\nThis interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. 
URL:https://emersoncontemporary.org/event/musician-julian-saporiti-approaches-refugee-storytelling-with-compassion/
CATEGORIES:Artist Spotlight,Artist Talk,Gallery Talk,News
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20231212T080000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20231212T170000
DTSTAMP:20260429T061130
CREATED:20231212T214412Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240214T151157Z
UID:8317-1702368000-1702400400@emersoncontemporary.org
SUMMARY:Patricia Nguyễn discusses moving through memory in performance art
DESCRIPTION:Patricia Nguyễn performs “Passage” at the Media Art Gallery.\n\n\n\nBy Maddie Browning \n\n\n\nPatricia Nguyễn is an artist\, scholar\, and educator with work surrounding the aftermath of the Vietnam War and memory\, loss\, and healing. She utilizes performance art to understand how the feeling of water and land on her body reflect the emotions and experiences of Vietnamese refugees.  \n\n\n\nHer work is a part of Emerson Contemporary’s “One Day We’ll Go Home” exhibition running through December 16. \n\n\n\nEmerson Contemporary connected with Nguyễn via Zoom to discuss her journey developing performance art\, her conversations with refugees and their families\, and what she hopes people learn from her art.  \n\n\n\nEC: When did you start developing performance art? \n\n\n\nNguyễn: I was trained in devised theater throughout elementary school\, and then in high school\, I did performance poetry and spoken word. It wasn’t until I went to Vietnam in 2010\, and I encountered state surveillance and censorship [that] it transformed my work in performance poetry and theater into performance art to think about the power of how the body can help tell the story and what the body remembers.  \n\n\n\nEC: What artists are you inspired by? \n\n\n\nNguyễn: [Okwui Okpokwasili]. She did this amazing piece called “Bronx Gothic.” A lot of the people that inspired my work are Black feminists and women of color\, feminists\, artists\, poets\, theater makers.  \n\n\n\nThe person that trained me is the first woman performance artist in Vietnam\, and her name is Ly Hoàng Ly\, who I have this lifetime performance with called “Memory vs. Memory.” She really helped me understand what performance art is and what it can do through collaborating with her. “Memory vs. Memory” began because both of our fathers were located on opposing sides of the Vietnam War. We’re their children\, their daughters\, and we inherit the memories that they’ve had to go through in particular because they’re the same age on opposing sides of the war and were both incarcerated after the end of the war – her father in an old French colonial prison\, my father in the jungles near the border of Vietnam and Cambodia. So\, for us\, delving into performance art\, delving into the cultural memory of specific objects like water or soil or metal\, conjures these memories that are linked to our own fathers’ histories of revolution and war and incarceration.  \n\n\n\nEC: You say in your artist statement that land and water are crucial to your process. I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit more about that.  \n\n\n\nNguyễn: So the word for homeland\, country\, and nation in Vietnamese is “Đất nước\,” which respectively means land and water\, but in the diaspora land drops off\, so the shorthand for saying homeland or country is “nước” or just water. So a lot of my work delves into the materiality of water itself\, like\, how does water soak into my body? How do I understand the porousness of my own skin? And how do we tap into both the internal waters that we already have and the external waters that I play with in performance when I drown myself in water\, soak my myself with drenched fabric. How does that evoke the memory both within and external to me about whatever question I’m meditating on in relationship to the aftermath of the Vietnam War?  \n\n\n\nA lot of Vietnamese were forced to migrate by boat and over water\, so a lot of them are known as boat refugees. I think about the materiality of water not just as a landscape of where forced migration happens\, but as this place of life and death. I’ve interviewed so many different Vietnamese refugees\, and all of them have said\, “I was so thirsty on that boat\, and there was water all around me and I couldn’t drink any of it.” The ocean is made up of saltwater\, and saltwater could help you if you have a sore throat – you can gargle it – but if the ratio of saltwater is too much\, it becomes toxic. So what is this line between what is healing and what is toxic? So really thinking about water\, not only as a metaphor\, but literally what does it do to the body?  \n\n\n\nAnd then land\, so my father was incarcerated on former US military bases that had landmines in them. So land was literally weaponized against the Vietnamese people\, both by the US government\, and also in the aftermath of war as people who were drafted in the south of Vietnam that were aligned with the US also were incarcerated on these very lands. The precarity of life and death is contingent on if the bomb will explode.  \n\n\n\nEC: Going back to you talking about how you have interviewed a lot of refugees\, how do you approach people that are hurting and tell their stories? \n\n\n\nNguyễn: So for refugees\, they have to prove what they’ve been through to even gain refugee status. So the process of conducting oral histories is hopefully more of a reparative act\, where it’s not just like\, “Let me extract your story to see if you qualify for this paperwork or the status for particular rights and privileges.” It’s like\, “Let me actually listen and ask you your story.” The way that I conduct oral histories\, it’s based off of a relationship that I’ve already had with people\, so either I’ve known them for quite some time\, so they can trust me with their stories\, or I’m introduced to them by someone who they already trust and that person is either in the room with me or has done a lot of the prep work to help support that person. So it’s always based in rapport and consent.  \n\n\n\nIt’s really just being as present as possible and doing deep listening and gauging what people are comfortable with and what people are not comfortable with. At the end of the interview\, I always check in with them\, making sure that they’re okay\, asking them if there’s anything else they want to share. And I ask I leave them with a hopeful question like\, “What do you hope for yourself or your children or future generations?” or “What do you want to leave us with and what do you want us to learn?” so that it’s not a line of questions that focus on trauma or pain. It’s more of a line of questions and invitations to share and understand these histories with one another. I try to help those that I’m interviewing feel empowered after the interview that their story is important and what they went through was significant and that they’re not alone. \n\n\n\nEC: You received a Fulbright Fellowship in 2010 to work in Vietnam and co-founded Cây\, “the first life skills and art therapy reintegration program for human trafficking survivors along the border regions of Vietnam\,” according to your website. Tell me more about the program and why you created it. \n\n\n\nNguyễn: So originally\, I was supposed to go to Vietnam or Cambodia to work with survivors of sex trafficking and human trafficking. But the Vietnamese and Cambodian government shut down the organization that I was going to work with a week before my application was due. Luckily\, my friend worked in Vietnam and works with an anti-human trafficking organization and brought me on to it.  \n\n\n\nI had a lot of pushback going back to Vietnam from my own family. They were like\, “We escaped from there. Why would you go back?” For me\, it was really important to see the other side of war and to see those that are still impacted by its aftermath\, even if not in the way that we understand how people are directly impacted\, but just in terms of the new neoliberal development policies and how that impacts indigenous folks who are also known as ethnic minorities. I wanted to see how development is impacting those who live in poor and rural areas\, and who are being heard and neglected by the government and to work on young women’s empowerment through the arts. So I co-founded that program with my friend who was also interested in arts education\, and we were interested in exploring how arts can be this tool to support people to express themselves and make sense of the conditions that they’re living in and feel like they can build community around that because art is the first thing that was used for the war in terms of propaganda and gaining public support\, but it’s also the thing that is most censored and most surveilled.  \n\n\n\nEC: At Emerson\, you performed “Passage” on November 14. What story were you telling through that performance? \n\n\n\nNguyễn: There was this beautiful photo that I had seen of a Vietnamese woman with her conical hat\, and she was surrounded by all these beautiful green fishing nets\, and she just loved her\, so that’s what inspired the material that I worked with. I worked with different color tulle that evoked the water itself\, and the water at different depths. I played with different colors of tulle to show the different dimensions and layers of water. In thinking about the creation of “Passage\,” when you walk through the gallery space\, you first walk into Tiffany Chung’s piece\, and her piece is really about the forced migration right after the war. And then in the middle\, you have Tuấn Andrew Nguyễn’s installation video\, “[The] Boat People” where they land on this refugee camp\, so it’s from the journey of leaving to the refugee camp\, and then my three channel installation is at the far end of the gallery\, and it’s really challenging the notion of refugee resettlement. So it’s kind of like if you move through the gallery\, that’s the story that I saw\, from departure to this liminal space of the refugee camp\, to this place of resettlement.  \n\n\n\nSo in the middle of the gallery space\, I wanted to imagine that it was all water\, and the tulle evoked that sense of water. So I started the performance in the middle of Tiffany’s installation. And part of what I did was\, I sunk into all this tulle that was surrounding me to be with the material\, meditate with her piece\, and have it be infused into my performance work. And then I carry the tulle into the main gallery space\, and part of carrying the tulle is imagining\, “What does it mean to literally try to carry water?” And it’s spilling over\, it cannot be contained in any way. Then I dive into the tulle\, and I’m wrestling in the midst of it\, trying to explore my breath\, trying to explore tension\, trying to explore moments of feeling like I’m swimming or floating or drowning or shifting and just thinking about what the space could be. And meanwhile what’s being projected onto me from the projector above are these incremental numbers that are going up and down in different ways to symbolize the number of growing refugees that are left to die at sea or abandoned by nation states or government.  \n\n\n\nSo that’s being projected on my body as I’m moving under and with and through the tulle and exploring expansion and contraction and breath and thinking about the bodies that were forced to migrate by sea and those that drowned or were thrown overboard or couldn’t make it. What does it mean to dive deep into the ocean where these bodies have landed? So then I struggle to get out of the tulle and go back in because the answer isn’t resettlement. The answer isn’t\, “Let me arrive at some place\, and it’ll save me. Let me get out of the water.” It was really thinking about\, “Let’s return to the water\,” and “What can the water teach us\, and how can we build other worlds and imaginaries through the water?” And then I worked with Fiona Fiona Ngô who created a really beautiful experimental sound piece that really framed the performance and was a call in response to the piece. \n\n\n\nEC: Your Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow for New Americans bio states that growing up your parents told you stories about their experience escaping Vietnam during the war as boat refugees to Malaysia and Indonesia and resettling in the United States in the ‘80s. How do those stories inform your work? \n\n\n\nNguyễn: They deeply inform my work in that they are the ones that I’m theorizing with. They helped me understand the political stakes of war in how they’ve survived and how they don’t want that to happen to anyone else in any capacity. So I draw on their stories to create my performance gestures\, and I draw on their stories and their legacies to think about\, “What is the purpose of this work?” and really thinking about how it’s to connect with audiences to share these histories and these stories. That’s how they want their stories to be passed on. \n\n\n\nEC: What do you hope people learn from experience in your art? \n\n\n\nNguyễn: I hope it offers a space for people to grieve and to mourn\, especially as we’re witnessing different levels of violence all the time. I want people to understand that war and the process of nation building always results in forced migration\, always results in the predetermination of who gets to live and who gets to die or who has to die for someone else to live. I want people to learn the human stakes of what it means to delve into these histories\, not only just as something that’s happened in the past\, but as a lens to think about the future\, as a way to think about how we can build a better world by not forgetting and erasing the violences and the ugly histories and the heartbreaks of the past. How do we acknowledge them and also transform them so that we can build a better world\, a better future for all of us and other generations to come? \n\n\n\nThis interview was edited and condensed for clarity.
URL:https://emersoncontemporary.org/event/patricia-nguyen-discusses-moving-through-memory-in-performance-art/
CATEGORIES:Artist Spotlight,Artist Talk,News
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