Kerry Tribe: Onomatopoeia
2022-01-26 08:00 - 2022-03-27 17:00 (America/New_York)
Emerson Contemporary proudly presents Kerry Tribe: Onomatopoeia, a solo exhibition by the Los Angeles-based artist and filmmaker, on view in the Media Art Gallery at 25 Avery Street, from January 26 – March 27, 2022. Free and open to the public, the gallery is open Wednesday – Sunday from 12-7pm.

Created between 2010 and 2021, the works selected for Onomatopoeia reflect the artist’s longstanding interest in consciousness, memory and the limits of linguistic communication. Rigorous and thoughtful, Tribe’s practice synthesizes cinematic, journalistic and conceptual approaches in probing and affective works of art that privilege the viewer’s embodied experience in the gallery.
The exhibition is anchored by two quasi-documentary videos. The Last Soviet (2010), revolves around a storied Russian cosmonaut stranded in orbit as the Soviet Union collapsed beneath him. Speaking in English and Russian, with subtitles in both languages, the work’s two narrators offer divergent perspectives on the fate and feelings of the lost cosmonaut and those awaiting his return. The narrative gains new resonance as Americans grapple with the toxic effects of state-sponsored disinformation. The second, Afasia (2017), in subtitled English and Spanish, pairs the musings of a photographer whose ability to communicate was radically altered after a left-hemisphere stroke with Tribe’s own faltering description of her efforts to re-learn a foreign language. The effect is one of empathic understanding and mutual curiosity about life at the limits of language.
A selection of Tribe’s lesser-known works on paper extend the inquiry in two dimensions. Silkscreens based on a cognitive test used to assess one’s ability to inhibit cognitive interference, along with two new “scratch drawings” that reproduce philosophers’ attempts to diagram our perception of time, encourage viewers to reflect on the unfolding of their own conscious experience. Two photographic prints from 2017, Black Tourmaline (front) and Black Tourmaline (back), will be shown in the U.S. for the first time.
In Forest for the Trees (2015), a monitor nestled among potted plants and apple boxes silently flashes one word after another in a string of aphorisms suggesting a subject in search of agency and understanding. In contrast, Fantastic Voyage (2020) has no set place in the gallery and provides no visuals; visitors are invited to listen to the recording on their personal devices as they take a walk in the gallery, the neighborhood or their home.
Born and raised in the Boston area, Onomatopoeia is Tribe’s first major exhibition in her hometown, and viewers’ first opportunity to experience these particular works together. In tandem with the exhibition, the artist will present a lecture and screening of her early autobiographical videos in March, 2022.
About the Artist

Kerry Tribe is an artist and filmmaker based in Los Angeles. Her work has been the subject of solo presentations at SFMOMA; The High Line and Anthology Film Archives, New York; The Power Plant, Toronto; Modern Art Oxford and Camden Arts Centre, London. Tribe was the recipient of the Presidential Residency at Stanford University, the Herb Alpert Award, the Creative Capital Award, the USA Artists Award, and she was the Guna S. Mundheim Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin.
Tribe’s work is in the public collections of MoMA, SFMOMA, the Whitney, the Hammer Museum, Yuz Museum in Shanghai, LACMA, SMAK Ghent and the Generali Foundation, among other institutions. She has served as a visiting faculty member at Stanford University, UCLA, CalArts, Harvard University, and ArtCenter in Pasadena. Tribe received her MFA from UCLA, attended the Whitney Independent Study Program, and received a BA, magna cum laude, from Brown University.

GlitchKraft v.2 Allison Tanenhaus and Friends
2022-03-07 08:00 - 2022-05-06 17:00
GlitchKraft v.2. Allison Tanenhaus + Friends Alex Kittle, Ben K. Foley, Property Materials, Lauren Klotzman, and stickipictures
On view at Southern New Hampshire University’s McIninch Gallery, March 7- April 30, 2022.
GlitchKraft is a multimedia exhibition of glitch art, the creative practice of interfering with or intentionally altering digital image files for aesthetic purposes. The exhibition showcased glitch art by Allison Tanenhaus and others with the art taking many forms, digitally projected onto the gallery walls, windows, and displayed on monitors.
“GlitchKraft is a celebratory display of digital errors, an ode to the interrupted image. Images that are usually limited to be viewed on a screen – mobile or otherwise – here are projected larger than life onto every surface of the gallery to create a technicolor ‘glitch-world’ that will surround visitors and allow them to be fully immersed in light and sound.” -Dr. Leonie Bradbury, Curator
For the GlitchKraft exhibit, Allison Tanenhaus collaborated with color-bending, mind-scrambling, new-media friends and local artist collaborators, including Alex Kittle, Ben K. Foley, Property Materials, Lauren Klotzman, and stickipictures. Together, they embrace electronic error, circumvent computational constraint and transcend technological overstimulation — culminating in an immersive, ephemeral glitchscape made to overload the senses.
Reviews:
Boston Globe

Will Pappenheimer: Artist Talk and Demo
2022-03-25 12:00 - 14:30
Will Pappenheimer (webinar)
Friday, March 25, 1:30-3pm
Will Pappenheimer is a Brooklyn based artist working in new media, performance and installation with an interest in spatial intervention and the altered experiences of the artwork as site. His current work explores the collage of the virtual and physical worlds in the recent medium of “mixed reality.”
He is a pioneer of augmented reality (AR) art and a founding member of the AR collective, Manifest.AR formed in 2011
This event is co-presented by Boston CyberArts
FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

Emilio Rojas: tracing a wound through my body
2022-09-21 08:00 - 2022-11-06 17:00
Image above: Emilio Rojas, Heridas Abiertas, 2013–ongoing. Performance, dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist.

The U.S-Mexican border es una herida abierta where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds.
—Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, 1987
tracing a wound through my body is the first traveling survey of the contemporary and multidisciplinary practice of artist Emilio Rojas (b. 1985 Mexico City), on view September 21–November 6, 2022 at Emerson Contemporary. The exhibition brings together works spanning the past decade including live performances and interventions, documents of performance sustained in video and ephemera, photography, sculpture, installation, and poetry. Recognizing the act of tracing dualistically, tracing a wound through my body both reexamines the artist’s corpus and reckons with the legacies of colonial and border traumas. For Rojas, such reckoning renders palpable visible and invisible wounds through the radically political instrumentalization of his body.
The included works relate to Rojas’ migratory experience and his rigorous research-based practice. Drawing upon queer and decolonized methodologies, his performative works interrogate extant structures of colonialism and border politics. The exhibition takes place in a moment in which nativist rhetoric and xenophobic immigration legislation in the United States and beyond deepens wounds already open. Rojas’ works not only confront the historical precedents for such trauma, but also speculate upon Chicana cultural theorist Gloria E. Anzaldúa’s proposition of the wound transforming into a pathway for healing.
tracing a wound through my body will be on display at the Media Art Gallery with works installed throughout Emerson College’s campus, including the Huret and Spector galleries, Tufte Stairwell, 2 Boylston Place, Little Building Lobby, and The Iwasaki Library.
The exhibition is accompanied by a public programming series and an exhibition catalog featuring new scholarship from Ethan Madarieta, Laurel V. McLaughlin, Mechtild Widrich with Andrei Pop, and Rebecca Schneider; an interview with Ernesto Pujol; a creative writing contribution from Valeria Luiselli; and new poetry from Pamela Sneed and Emilio Rojas. Emilio Rojas: tracing a wound through my body is curated by Laurel V. McLaughlin and organized by Lafayette College Art Galleries, Easton, PA with travel administered by Artspace New Haven.
Emilio Rojas is a multidisciplinary artist working primarily with the body in performance, using video, photography, installation, public interventions, and sculpture. He holds an MFA in Performance from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BFA in Film from Emily Carr University in Vancouver, Canada.
As a queer Latinx immigrant with indigenous heritage, it is essential to his practice to engage in the postcolonial ethical imperative to uncover, investigate, and make visible and audible undervalued or disparaged sites of knowledge, narratives, and individuals. He utilizes his body in a political and critical way, as an instrument to unearth removed traumas, embodied forms of decolonization, migration, and poetics of space.
His research-based practice is heavily influenced by queer and feminist archives, border politics, botanical colonialism, and defaced monuments. Besides his artistic practice, he is also a translator, community activist, yoga teacher, and anti-oppression facilitator with queer, migrant, and refugee youth.

Public Programming
Thursday, September 22, 5–7:30 PM. Artist Reception. Location: Media Art Gallery, 25 Avery St. Boston, Ma 02111
Friday, September 23, 2-4 PM. Performance of A Vague and Undetermined Place (a Gloria), 2019. Location: Boylston Place Alley. 10 Boylston Place, Boston, MA 02116
Saturday, September 24, 2-4 PM. Performance, A Vague and Undetermined Place (a Gloria), 2019. Location: Boylston Place Alley. 10 Boylston Place, Boston, MA 02116
Friday, October 14, 12–1 PM. “Go Back To Where You Came From” A Performance-lecture by Emilio Rojas. Location: Media Art Gallery, 25 Avery Street, Boston, MA 02111
Friday, October 14, 4-8 PM. One-on-one performance, A Manual to Be (to Kill) or To Forgive My Own Father, 2015–ongoing. Location: The Iwasaki Library, 3rd floor, Walker Building, 120 Boylston Street, Boston, MA
Saturday, October 15, 12-4 PM. One-on-one performance, A Manual to Be (to Kill) or To Forgive My Own Father, 2015–ongoing. Location: The Iwasaki Library, 3rd floor, Walker Building, 120 Boylston Street, Boston, MA
Sunday, October 16, 12-4 PM. One-on-one performance, A Manual to Be (to Kill) or To Forgive My Own Father, 2015–ongoing. Location: The Iwasaki Library, 3rd floor, Walker Building, 120 Boylston Street, Boston, MA

Live Performance by Emilio Rojas "A VAGUE AND UNDETERMINED PLACE (A GLORIA)"
2022-09-23 12:00 - 16:00
Emilio Rojas performs A VAGUE AND UNDETERMINED PLACE (A GLORIA)

Boylston Place Courtyard
September 23, 2022, 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.

This performance and installation examines what artist Emilio Rojas terms “border pedagogies,” or teaching opportunities to question and reimagine national borders. Rojas will be inviting participants to draw the U.S.-Mexican border on transparent paper, which he then layers and projects on a light box to reveal its variations in the imagination.

While the border has become an increasingly urgent topic for national immigration, ecological, and human rights legislation, people can rarely recall the shape of the border—its curves, twists, and turns. It is as Gloria E. Anzaldúa theorized, a “vague and undetermined place.” In exchange for their drawings, he will offer visitors a paleta, or a Mexican popsicle, made with fruit that crosses this border, reminding us of the immense personal, political, and economic complexities embedded within borderlands.

Live Performance by Emilio Rojas "A VAGUE AND UNDETERMINED PLACE (A GLORIA)"
2022-09-24 14:00 - 16:00
Emilio Rojas performs A VAGUE AND UNDETERMINED PLACE (A GLORIA)

Boylston Place Courtyard
Saturday, September 24, 2022, 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.

This performance and installation examines what artist Emilio Rojas terms “border pedagogies,” or teaching opportunities to question and reimagine national borders. Rojas will be inviting participants to draw the U.S.-Mexican border on transparent paper, which he then layers and projects on a light box to reveal its variations in the imagination.

While the border has become an increasingly urgent topic for national immigration, ecological, and human rights legislation, people can rarely recall the shape of the border—its curves, twists, and turns. It is as Gloria E. Anzaldúa theorized, a “vague and undetermined place.” In exchange for their drawings, he will offer visitors a paleta, or a Mexican popsicle, made with fruit that crosses this border, reminding us of the immense personal, political, and economic complexities embedded within borderlands.

Emilio Rojas Performance "A Manual to Be (to Kill) or To Forgive My Own Father"
2022-10-13 08:00 - 2022-10-16 17:00
A Manual to Be (to Kill) or To Forgive My Own Father
The Iwasaki Library
RSVP required leonie_bradbury@emerson.edu
The live performance and installation, A Manual to Be (to Kill) or To Forgive My Own Father, presents Rojas’ deconstructions of the popular novel, Pequeño Hombre, one of many written by his estranged father, who bears his name. In a gesture of rejection and simultaneous creation, Rojas cuts out the texts from the English translation and uses the remnants to create new poems within a domestic setting with a desk, rug, and lamp.
The performances with the texts range from the use of an X-Acto blade in the artist’s mouth to collaborations with the artist’s mother and intimate conversations with viewers. Collectively, they attempt to rewrite the book, with the exact same words, but with a completely different narrative, always centering the dialectic of presence and absence of his own father. Rojas invites viewers who have conflicted relations with their fathers (“daddy issues”) to partake in a one-on-one performance to write poetry with him.

Artist Performance + Talk GO BACK TO WHERE YOU CAME FROM!
2022-10-14 12:00 - 13:30
GO BACK TO WHERE YOU CAME FROM!

Artist Performance + Talk by Emilio Rojas

Media Art Gallery
October 14, 2022
12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m.

GO BACK TO WHERE YOU CAME FROM! is a lecture/performance by artist Emilio Rojas. It moves away from this xenophobic phrase and investigates the history of colonialism and border trauma. This lecture considers his practice in relation to decolonization, de-linking, archives, queerness, and contaminations into public space. It is not an attempt to re-write history but rather to view it from a different lens, in a non-linear way which opens spaces of transition and possibility, remembrance and healing. It urges us to ask ourselves: How are we complicit with the past we inherited? How are we accomplices of the history being created in the present?

Emilio Rojas Performance "A Manual to Be (to Kill) or To Forgive My Own Father"
2022-10-15 08:00 - 2022-10-16 17:00
A Manual to Be (to Kill) or To Forgive My Own Father
The Iwasaki Library
October 15-16, 2022 12:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. RSVP required leonie_bradbury@emerson.edu
The live performance and installation, A Manual to Be (to Kill) or To Forgive My Own Father, presents Rojas’ deconstructions of the popular novel, Pequeño Hombre, one of many written by his estranged father, who bears his name. In a gesture of rejection and simultaneous creation, Rojas cuts out the texts from the English translation and uses the remnants to create new poems within a domestic setting with a desk, rug, and lamp.
The performances with the texts range from the use of an X-Acto blade in the artist’s mouth to collaborations with the artist’s mother and intimate conversations with viewers. Collectively, they attempt to rewrite the book, with the exact same words, but with a completely different narrative, always centering the dialectic of presence and absence of his own father. Rojas invites viewers who have conflicted relations with their fathers (“daddy issues”) to partake in a one-on-one performance to write poetry with him.

Border Pedagogies, Queer Kinships, and Archival Resonances: Tania Bruguera and Emilio Rojas
2022-11-05 18:00 - 20:00
Border Pedagogies, Queer Kinships, and Archival Resonances: Tania Bruguera and Emilio Rojas in Conversation.
Moderated by Laurel V. McLaughlin.
Saturday, November 5th, 7-8:30p.m. (Doors open at 6:30p.m.)
Dessert Reception to follow. RSVP required EVENTBRITE
Location: Bill Bordy Theater, 216 Tremont St, Boston, MA 02116
Join Emerson Contemporary for a conversation between artists Tania Bruguera and Emilio Rojas, moderated by Artspace New Haven Director of Curatorial Affairs and Emerson guest curator Laurel V. McLaughlin, on the occasion of the book launch for Emilio Rojas: tracing a wound through my body (Emerson Contemporary, 2022). Rojas and Bruguera will discuss the numerous research threads that intertwine in Emilio’s practice, survey, and the catalog structure. Departing from the atemporal and overlapping sections that compose the exhibition and catalog—the cut, the line, the scar, and the corpus, Bruguera, Rojas, and McLaughlin trace the intersections of border pedagogies, queer kinships, and archival resonances.
Emilio Rojas: tracing a wound through my body (Emerson Contemporary, 2022) is available in print-on-demand through Blurb, or through an open-source link on the Emerson website. The bilingual exhibition catalog features an introduction by Michiko Okaya and Néstor Armando Gil Carmona, new poetry by Emilio Rojas and Pamela Sneed, an interview with Ernesto Pujol, and essays by Valeria Luiselli, Ethan Madarieta, Laurel V. McLaughlin, Rebecca Schneider, and Mechtild Widrich with Andrei Pop.

EL Putnam: PseudoRandom
2023-01-25 12:00 - 2023-03-26 18:00
Emerson Contemporary proudly presents EL Putnam: PseudoRandom, a solo exhibition featuring recent works by the Ireland-based video and performance artist on view in the Media Art Gallery at 25 Avery Street, January 25 – March 26, 2022. Free and open to the public, hours Wednesday – Sunday from 12-7pm.
The exhibition explores aesthetic encounters through digital performance by implicating the artist, technology, and the viewer. On display will be performative videos, a large scale projection, digital landscape “paintings” and an exploratory series of generative digital animations. Putnam examines performance art beyond lens based media, while questioning the ways time and space collapsed during the pandemic.
The exhibition is anchored by a large-scale projection All Kinds of Disintegration (2020). Shot in the summer of 2020 using a smartphone, the piece presents a layered collection of short vignettes captured during the first period of COVID-19 lockdown. The maternal is re-imagined in unfamiliar ways though a co-created transformative landscape using performed actions, moving image, and sound. A new video series Foundations (2022-23), is presented on three individual, yet connected monitors to form a color saturated triptych. Putnam uses datamoshing, a form of intentional image glitching, to create the dramatic dreamy visual effects. She thinks of the series as a type of digital watercolor painting.
Two performative video works Context Collapse (2020) and Interlooping (2021) explore new virtual performance modalities as all in-person performance opportunities were canceled during the pandemic. Both performances were instead livestreamed for online audiences. Context Collapse was created in response to the many pandemic public health restrictions which caused the closure of schools, workplaces, and other public spaces as people were encouraged to “stay home.” This compression of one’s personal, professional, and family spheres introduced a new type of context collapse. By contrast, Interlooping addresses the relationship of the performing human with technology, the non-human, and our collective being. EL Incorporates wool refuse accumulated during the disruption of the international wool trade in Ireland as a result of COVID-19.
Emergent (2020-2022) is a new series of generative animations developed through Putnam’s daily digital sketching practice of creating generative animations through p5.js. Emergent is a portrait of the artist’s experience of the COVID-19 pandemic as it visualizes the data tracked through a fitbit. Instead of focusing on the intended use of the fitness tracker as an accurate record keeper of physical activity, Putnam draws attention to the gaps in data collection, the goals not met, and the capacity of physical activity to exceed sensory quantification.
Additionally, Putnam will create and perform two new, live performance works Ghost Work and Friction as part of the exhibition programming. Putnam uses wearable electronics as part of her performances to explore our gestural relationship to digital technologies. Mary Gray and Siddharth Suri define “ghost work” as the hidden human labor that powers our digital systems. In the performance of this title, Putnam acts as the human mediator between two generative animation systems, making visible the labor that responds to and produces data, as her body acts as the database of lived experience. A collaborative performance, Friction, created and performed with German sound artist David Stalling will debut in March.

EVENTS

Artist Reception: Wednesday, January 25, 5-7:30PM. RSVP required on Eventbrite.
Ghost Work, Live Performance by EL Putnam, Wednesday January 25, 6PM.

Media Art Gallery

Ghost Work, Live Performance EL Putnam: Friday, January 27, 12-1PM.

Media Art Gallery

Friction, Live Performance by EL Putnam and sound artist David Stalling, Thursday, March 23, 6PM.

Media Art Gallery

El Putnam, Artist Talk, Friday, March 24, 12PM

ABOUT THE ARTIST
EL Putnam is an artist-philosopher working in performance art, video, sound, and digital media. Her practice focuses on borders and entanglements, particularly the interplay of the corporeal with the machinic. Through her artistic practice, she is interested in exploring hidden histories and emotional experiences, testing the limits of their un-representability as she takes the familiar and makes it strange. In particular, she probes our gestural relationship to digital technology using wearable electronics in live performance, through the creation of responsive multimedia installations, and the crafting of short moving image and sound pieces.
Treating art as inherently participatory, her work opens intersubjective spaces that offer multiple conceptual and aesthetic points of entry for the audience through alchemical diffractions of experience, cultivating new modes of embodiment. In addition to creating works that are rich in cultural and political meaning, including the biopolitics of motherhood in Ireland, she is interested in how aesthetic pleasure can be used as a critical strategy, or as a means of captivating audiences in order to expose them to provocative ideas.
EL actively presents artworks and performances in the United States, Europe, and beyond, and has been a member of the Boston-based Mobius Artists Group since 2009. Originally from the United States, she is Assistant Professor in Digital Media at Maynooth University, Ireland and lives in Co. Westmeath, Ireland.

EL Putnam: Artist Reception and Performance
2023-01-25 18:00 - 20:30
Join us for a celebration and unveiling of the new spring exhibition EL Putnam: PseudoRandom. Artist will perform a newly created piece “Ghost Work” live at 6PM. Mary Gray and Siddharth Suri define ghost work as the hidden human labor that powers our digital systems. In the performance of this title, Putnam acts as the human mediator between two generative animation systems, making visible the labor that responds to and produces data, as her body acts as the database of lived experience. Please RSVP to be placed on the guest list.
EL Putnam is an artist-philosopher working in performance art, video, sound, and digital media. Her practice focuses on borders and entanglements, particularly the interplay of the corporeal with the machinic. Through her artistic practice, she is interested in exploring hidden histories and emotional experiences, testing the limits of their un-representability as she takes the familiar and makes it strange. In particular, she probes our gestural relationship to digital technology using wearable electronics in live performance, through the creation of responsive multimedia installations, and the crafting of short moving image and sound pieces.
Treating art as inherently participatory, her work opens intersubjective spaces that offer multiple conceptual and aesthetic points of entry for the audience through alchemical diffractions of experience, cultivating new modes of embodiment. In addition to creating works that are rich in cultural and political meaning, including the biopolitics of motherhood in Ireland, she is interested in how aesthetic pleasure can be used as a critical strategy, or as a means of captivating audiences in order to expose them to provocative ideas.
EL actively presents artworks and performances in the United States, Europe, and beyond, and has been a member of the Boston-based Mobius Artists Group since 2009. Originally from the United States, she is Assistant Professor in Digital Media at Maynooth University, Ireland and lives in Co. Westmeath, Ireland.

Live Performance: "Friction" by EL Putnam and David Stalling
2023-03-23 18:00 - 19:30
Putnam acts as the human mediator between two generative animation systems, making visible the labor that responds to and produces data, as her body acts as the database of lived experience. A collaborative performance, Friction, created and performed with German sound artist David Stalling will debut in March.

EL Putnam Artist Talk
2023-03-24 12:00 - 13:30
Friday, March 24, 2023
Join us for a audio-visual presentation on EL Putnam’s artist practice. Putnam will discuss recent performance and video works.
Location: Media Art Gallery, 25 Avery Street

Digital Art and/as Performance: A Conversation with Dr. Leonie Bradbury and Dr. EL Putnam
2023-03-24 15:00 - 17:00
Digital Art and/as Performance: A Conversation with Dr. Leonie Bradbury and Dr. EL Putnam

Cabot Science Library
Harvard University
CORRECTION: Friday, March 24, 2023
3:00 p.m.

Join contemporary art curator Leonie Bradbury and performance artist EL Putnam discuss their collaborative work on the recent exhibition PseudoRandom at Emerson Contemporary, considering the challenges and possibilities of creating and presenting digital art.

This talk is held as part of ArtTechPsyche, a symposium at the intersection of art and technology that offers a day of immersive digital experiences, art exhibitions, technology demos, and visionary speakers. Discover the ways in which technology shapes us, and conversely, how the artist continually challenges and informs technological development.

Reserve your spot. This event is free and open to the public

MFA Thesis Projects
2023-04-19 12:00 - 2023-05-14 19:00
Abigail Hendrix, Nimueh, 2023 (still, 16 mm HD video, color, stereo, 3-channel, synchronous loop).
Media Art Gallery
April 19- May 14, 2023.
Reception, April 19, 5-7pm
A two person exhibition, this year’s MFA thesis showcase features multi channel moving image works by Elise Cohen and Abigail Hendrix.
Elise Cohen, Call Home, 16 mm film, 2023

Cohen’s 16mm film Call Home is a mixed-media installation work. The project features home movies filmed on 8mm by the artist’s grandfather from the 50’s through the late 70’s during their time in Morocco and when they moved to France. More recent recordings of conversations between the artists and her grandmother are also included. The project explores themes of transmission, memories, and alienation.
Hendrix’s three channel installation Nimueh is made using digitally scanned 16mm film and a multi-layered soundscape. It explores the local folklore and mythology surrounding the death of Hallie Latham Illingworth, whose intact body was found floating in Washington state’s Lake Crescent in 1937 about four years after her death, eerily preserved (saponified) by the frigid water. Nimueh (named for the Arthurian Lady of the Lake) uses local imagery, voiceover, and text to engage with the landscape of and around Lake Crescent and with Hallie’s transformation: from human body to soap, from human being to myth.

Is This Too Much? Space, Place, Image, Sound (VM637)
2023-04-19 12:00 - 2023-05-14 19:00
Media Art Gallery, April 19- May 14, 2023.
Reception, April 19, 5-7pm
IS THIS TOO MUCH?

The works in this exhibition were created by artists from the MFA Film and Media Arts and MA Media Design programs.
This exhibition explores the complex relationships that entwine us and shape us as humans – mind-body, artificial and organic, public and private, how culture identity, nostalgia and history operate on us… wait — Is This Too Much? Featuring works by: Elise Cohen, Abigail Hendrix, Tomas Orrego, Greyson Acquaviva, Sean Blanchard, Tati Chavitage, Yuling Chen, Anny Dai, Nate Gardner, Emerson Holloway, Yue Hua, Yaqi Liu, Chunxiaoxue Lu, Paula Ochoa Tovar, Christina (Yijia) Ren, Valeria Rodriguez

New Standards
2023-07-12 08:00 - 2023-08-05 17:00
The Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice (JGJ) has partnered with the Office of the Arts at Emerson College to bring the multidisciplinary installation, New Standards, to the Emerson Contemporary Media Art Gallery. The multimedia exhibition continues the theme set forth in the book New Standards: 101 Lead Sheets by Women Composers by Grammy Award-winning artist Terri Lyne Carrington, and will be free and on display to the public beginning Wednesday, July 12 to Friday, August 4, 2023, with gallery hours from 12:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. (and by appointment), Wednesday through Saturday.
New Standards celebrates the work of women composers and performers who have been either under acknowledged or rendered invisible regarding the creation, perpetuation and overall representation of the art form. The installation will feature visual arts, film, panel discussions, music and information on classic and contemporary jazz composers, and is part of the Jazz Without Patriarchy Project (JWP), an ongoing series of initiatives, established by four-time Grammy Award-winning drummer, producer, and educator, Carrington and the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice, which aims to lead a massive cultural shift toward gender equity in the field of jazz.
“The idea for the book New Standards came out of necessity when I realized there were not enough women represented in the canon of jazz standards,” said Carrington, a multi-Grammy-winning artist, NEA Jazz Master, and the founder and artistic director of the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice. “It expanded to be an album project and also an exhibition at the Carr Center in Detroit. I am beyond happy to be able to share this multidimensional work at home, and grateful to the Office of the Arts at Emerson College, and New Commonwealth Fund for helping to make this dream come to fruition. The hope is that anyone who experiences the exhibition will walk away transformed and excited about different sonic possibilities, imagining what the music will sound like when gender equity with its creators is accomplished.”
Curated by Carrington, New Standards will showcase works created by multidisciplinary jazz artists Cécile McClorin Salvant, Carmen Lundy, and Jazzmeia Horn – along with works by award-winning visual artists Monica Haslip, Joe Diggs, Yvette Rock, and Ramsess – ranging from print and sculpture, to collage, textiles, and multimedia. The exhibit will also feature a stunning portrait collection of 30 influential women instrumentalists by Sherry Rubel, as well as a film installation by award-winning photographer and video-installation artist Carrie Mae Weems, a film capturing the collaborative work between Carrington and visual artist Mikalene Thomas, and a documentary on the book, New Standards: 101 Lead Sheets by Women Composers (Berklee Press, 2022).

New Standards related events
2023-07-20 08:00 - 2023-08-02 17:00
In celebration of the one-of-a-kind installation, the New Standards Boston Takeover will include public programs, such as panel discussions, curated artist talks, and afternoon and evening concerts that will take place at multiple venues across the City of Boston, curated by Carrington and the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice.
Opening Reception: Wednesday July 12, 6-7:30PM, RSVP required.
Additional events include performances by:
July 20, 7PM, Brandee Younger, Red Room at Cafe 939, 939 Boylston Street, Boston
July 26, 7PM, Landmarks Orchestra featuring Terri Lyne Carrington, Hatch Shell Boston, 47 David G. Mugar Way, Boston. Tickets: Free and open to the public. More information: landmarksorchestra.org
July 27, 7PM, Mary Halvorson and Tomas Fujiwara Duo. MassArt Art Museum (MAAM), located in the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, 621 Huntington Avenue, Boston.
July 30, 12:30PM, Kris Davis and Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice with special guest Marquis Hill. Cambridge Jazz Festival at Danehy Park, 99 Sherman Street, Cambridge
August 2, 7PM and 9PM, New Standards Jam Session, hosted by Lakecia Benjamin. Wally’s Jazz Club, 427 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston, Emerson College UnCommon Stage and Trillium Garden on the Common
July 15, 2-4pm – Enbious
July 22, 2-4pm – Devon Gates
July 29, 2-4pm Jacques Schwarz-Bart presents the Harlem Suite
August 2, 4-6pm – Zahili Gonzalez Zamora Trio
New Standards exhibit and New Standards Boston Takeover performance series is sponsored by The New Commonwealth Racial Equality and Social Justice Fund.
For more information on New Standards and its related events, please visit https://www.jazzandgenderjustice.com.

Truth Be Told: (Re)Considering Innovation, Transformation, and Genius through the Lens of Jazz, Gender, and Justice
2023-07-29 12:00 - 13:30
Grammy Award winning artist Terri Lyne Carrington recently conceived and curated the New Standards Exhibit, celebrating the work of women composers and performers who have been either under-acknowledged or rendered invisible regarding the overall representation of the art form. This multidisciplinary exhibit imagines the sound of jazz through the lens of gender justice and is now open in Boston.
Moderated by Danny Rivera, our panelists Terri Lyne Carrington, Somi, and Patricia Zarate Perez will lead a dynamic discussion considering the themes of gender, race, innovation, and transformation featured throughout the New Standards Exhibit.
Event is free and open to the public, please RSVP here.

Global Paris BFA Thesis Projects
2023-08-12 12:00 - 2023-08-16 18:00 | Huret and Spector Gallery
Image caption: Mars Tomasetti, 234A, Three channel animation video, acrylic, Gamecube consoles and controllers (2001), stereo sound, 2023
Emerson College’s second BFA thesis exhibition featuring graduates from the Global Paris BFA in Film Program. Featured Artists are: Joie Cousin, Miriam Yoboué, and Mars Tomasetti,
Joie Cousin’s Our Home: Book One “Our Home” is a film essay based on childhood nostalgia using therapeutic techniques involving segments of self-expression, interviews, and confessionals. These themes entangle together in order to express a grander story displaying the power of communication in all settings. Through aspects of video art, puppets, and animation, Cousin bridges the gap between fiction and fact, in order to display a wide range of what it means to know someone (/yourself).
Miriam Yoboué’s 9- channel film installation Static Stands Still, is a comprised of different sized CRTVS and flat-screen monitors that explores the different emotions, feelings, and experiences of a young black woman reeling from the traumatic event of a rape. The installation works as a semi-linear narrative that depicts the life of a fictional black woman who goes through the memories of her past and the moments of her present to try to contextualize this event.
Mars Tomasetti’s multimedia installation 234A, features a three-channel animation video game, although you can’t actually play the game, the installation is designed to make the game and the surrounding room feel yours. Tomasetti wants to call attention to the disconnectedness and isolation many people experience at the hands of capitalism and the American ideal of “individualism,” and they redirect them towards collectivism.
Gallery Hours 12-5pm, August 16 – 19, 2023
Artist Reception, Friday August 12, 5-7pm.

Location: The Huret and Spector Gallery is located on the 6th Floor of the Tufte Building. Please enter through the doors at 10 Boylston Place.

Please note: ID required for visitors without Emerson Badge

Artist Reception, GBFA, Friday August 12, 5-7pm.
2023-08-18 17:00 - 19:00 | Huret and Spector Gallery
Image Caption: Joie Cousin, Our Home: Book One, multi-media video installation, 2023
Emerson College’s BFA thesis exhibition featuring graduates from the Global Paris BFA in Film Program. Featured Artists are: Joie Cousin, Miriam Yoboué, and Mars Tomasetti,
Gallery Hours 12-5pm, August 16 – 19, 2023
Artist Reception, Friday August 12, 5-7pm. Join us for refreshments and conversation.

Location: The Huret and Spector Gallery is located on the 6th Floor of the Tufte Building. Please enter through the doors at 10 Boylston Place.

Please note: ID required for visitors without Emerson Badge

Rachel Rossin: works from THE MAW OF. September 7 - October 14, 2023
2023-09-06 12:00 - 2023-10-14 18:00 | Media Art Gallery
Rachel Rossin, THE MAW OF, Single channel video installation with sound, detail (2022- ongoing). The Maw Of is co-commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art and KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin. ©Rachel Rossin. Courtesy on the artist and Magenta Plains, New York.

Rachel Rossin: works from THE MAW OF, September 7 – October 14, 2023
Emerson Contemporary, Emerson College’s platform for visual art, proudly presents Rachel Rossin: works from THE MAW OF, a solo exhibition featuring recent works initially commissioned by KW Institute of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art by the New York-based painter and digital artist Rachel Rossin. On view in the Media Art Gallery at 25 Avery Street, September 7 – October 15, 2023. Free and open to the public, Tuesday – Saturday from 12-6pm.
Works from The Maw Of explores the coming together of flesh, machine, cognition, and code sparked by current research into brain-computer interfaces. Rossin’s work blends painting, sculpture, new media, and more to create digital landscapes, which she uses to address aspects of disorder, embodiment, the all-presence of technology, and its effect on human psychology.
The exhibition features a site-specific immersive installation, innovative new video works and recent paintings. Conceived as mixed-reality theater, Rossin’s ongoing project addresses the expanded limits of technology and the human body. The artist offers a new poetics and visual language for the next epoch in technology, offering a critical response on what painting is for and its enduring significance in our tech-dependent society.
Floating LED ‘portals’ continue Rossin’s investigation into human autonomy and brain-machine integration research. Originally presented at the KW Institute of Contemporary Art in Berlin and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, The Maw Of situates the innate human desire to continually “remake” ourselves as central to the cultural inflection point represented by the advent of artificial intelligence.
Rossin’s small Scry Glass video sculptures incorporate animation central to The Maw Of, and activate the characters and texture of the paintings. The Scry Glasses evoke two modes of looking: a form of divination and fortune-telling, as well as, a form of reflection using a Claude glass, a revolutionary tool used by 18th century landscape painters. For the artist however, these “black mirrors” are not for predicting end times, but instead leave clues for the viewer, allowing us to remain tethered to the present.
The artist’s recent paintings offer a visual counterpoint to the digital world proposed by The Maw Of. These images draw from the artist’s childhood drawings of biblical figures associated with the apocalypse, representing Rossin’s conception of “the end times.” For Rossin painting represents a marking of time on the canvas, a recording of the movement of the artist’s body. They continue to emphasize the relevance of painting as a practice and are a reminder of what endures the “annihilation of analog” represented by our increasingly tech-dependent culture.

Rachel Rossin, THE MAW OF, Single channel video installation with sound, detail (2022- ongoing).
The Maw Of is co-commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art and KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin.
©Rachel Rossin. Courtesy on the artist and Magenta Plains, New York

“Artists Defusing Barriers to Discovery” feat. Nicole L'Huillier and Nathan Miner
2023-10-05 18:30 - 20:00
Organized in partnership with the Long Now Boston Conversation Series, this artist talk will explore artistic research as a place of possibilities; an open-ended strategy of experimentation and failure that can lead to new modes of thinking and reframes knowledge conventions. This program presents two artists whose transdisciplinary practices dynamically intersect with technology, science, and philosophy, and creatively challenge preconceptions as they expand the role of art in society.
Tickets are $5.

One Day We’ll Go Home featuring Tiffany Chung, Brandon Tho Harris, Tuan Andrew Nguyen, Patricia Nguyen and Julian Saporiti.
2023-11-01 12:00 - 2023-12-16 18:00 | Media Art Gallery
Tuan Andrew Nguyen (Vietnamese, b. 1976), The Boat People, 2020, Single-channel video, 4k, Super 16mm transferred to digital, color, 5.1 surround sound, 20 mins, Edition of 5 plus 2 artist’s proofs, (JCG11340), © Tuan Andrew Nguyen 2021. Image courtesy the artist and James Cohan, New York

Emerson Contemporary, Emerson College’s platform for visual art, proudly presents One Day We’ll Go Home, a group exhibition featuring recent work by five Vietnamese American artists Tiffany Chung, Brandon Tho Harris, Tuấn Andrew Nguyễn, Patricia Nguyễn, and Julian Saporiti who each critique the established historical narratives of the wars in Vietnam, colonialism, dislocation, and their long-lasting aftermath.

On view in the Media Art Gallery at 25 Avery Street, November 1 – December 16, 2023. Free and open to the public, Tuesday – Saturday from 12-6pm. Opening Reception, Friday, November 3, 5-7:30PM.

The end of the Vietnam War and the sudden U.S. military evacuations in 1975 marked the beginning of large-scale exodus of citizens of Vietnam. The U.S. government evacuated approximately 125,000 Vietnamese that year, most of whom were likely to be persecuted by the new Socialist Republic of Vietnam government. Through video, archival footage, performance, song, and innovative storytelling, these five artists examine and expand recent histories, both personal and collective, as they address multigenerational trauma and loss. The exhibition highlights the complexities surrounding the concept of homeland for Vietnamese refugees and their children and the familiar feeling of liminality that many refugees experience across the globe.

View exhibition documentation.

“It is my hope that through the stories these artists tell, we gain a deeper understanding of what happened in Vietnam and how these events continue to impact millions of people to this day,” said Dr. Leonie Bradbury, Emerson College’s Distinguished Curator-in-Residence. “Although this exhibition is focused on the Vietnamese diaspora and the impact of the historic events of 1975 and beyond, sadly this topic has renewed relevance today as many refugee crises are happening concurrently across the globe.” The exhibition is curated by Dr. Leonie Bradbury, Distinguished Curator-in-Residence, with accompanying exhibition wall texts by Dr. Catherine H. Nguyen, Assistant Professor of Asian Diasporic Literatures. This exhibition and related programming is supported by the Department of Writing, Literature & Publishing, Emerson College School of the Arts, and the Harvard University Asia Center.

PUBLIC PROGRAMMING

WHAT: Music Video workshop with Julian Saporiti WHEN: Friday, November 3, 2023. 10:00-12:30PM WHERE: Emerson College, Ansin Building, Room 605, 180 Tremont Street, Boston, MA Free, but registration is required. RSVP here.

Artist Talk with Tuan Andrew Nguyen, Friday, November 3, 2023. doors open at 3:30PM, 4-5:00PM. Emerson College, Walker Building, Room 202, 120 Boylston Street, Boston, MA. Free, but registration is required. RSVP here. This program is supported in part by the Harvard University Asia Center

Opening Reception, One Day We’ll Go Home WHEN: Friday, November 3, 2023, 5-7:30PM WHERE: Media Art Gallery, 25 Avery Street, Boston, MA.

Live Concert with Julian Saporiti. Experience a multimedia musical performance from No-No Boy (singer Julian Saporiti) as part of the tour for his latest album Empire Electric. This newest release brings Asian American history to life through a uniquely inventive approach to storytelling. WHEN: Saturday, November 4, 2023, 6:00-7:30PM. WHERE: Pao Arts Center, 99 Albany Street, Boston, MA, 02111.This program is organized by the PAO Art Center and supported by Emerson Contemporary.

Live Performance, Passage (2023) by Patricia Nguyễn and Fiona. A work of experimental sound and movement, Passage explores how beauty and creativity emerge in the aftermath of war. The artists meditate upon the various thresholds and movements that happen for displaced peoples across the time and space of memory, everyday encounters of state violence, forced migration, and queer worldmaking. Tuesday, November 14, 2023, 5-6:30PM, Media Art Gallery

Vietnam and Diasporic Aesthetics: Two Meditations. A conversation with Dr. Howie J. Tam & Dr. Catherine H. Nguyen. The first event in the Writing, Literature & Publishing Scholar Series, this program is presented in conjunction with One Day We’ll Go Home and supported in part by the Harvard University Asia Center. Taking as a point of departure some works of Vietnamese American artistic production both in the gallery space and beyond, this two-part talk with Catherine H. Nguyen (Emerson College) and Howie Tam (Brandeis University) explores different approaches of receiving and encountering artworks and engages diasporic aesthetics that grapples with the legacy of the Vietnam War and its enduring questions about creation and memory. Wednesday, December 6, 2023, 5-6:30PM. Media Art Gallery, 25 Avery St. Boston, MAThis program is supported by Department of Writing, Literature & Publishing, Scholar Series, Southeast Asia Programs, Harvard University Asia Center and Emerson Contemporary

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History and Archives: A Music Video Workshop with Dr. Julian Saporiti
2023-11-03 10:30 - 12:00
EVENTBRITE Registration required, limited seats (15), free.

In this workshop, musician and scholar Dr. Julian Saporiti will discuss how to use your personal story, family archive, and history in your work. He has used the medium of music videos to transform his doctoral research on Asian American history into easily consumable public art pieces. Through his project No-No Boy (Smithsonian Folkways Records), Saporiti has been able to reach broad (non-academic) audiences by using visuals and songwriting instead of academic papers.

Breaking down several videos included in the One Day We’ll Go Home exhibition, Saporiti will discuss the process of turning academic research into public art and offer insight into the societal impact public-facing history can have. Participants will be led through the artist’s production process and learn how rigorous archival research and deeply exploring one’s cultural background can produce rich ground for any creative practice.

Artist Talk with filmmaker and sculptor Tuan Andrew Nguyễn.
2023-11-03 16:00 - 17:00
Please join us for a talk and Q&A with filmmaker and sculptor Tuan Andrew Nguyễn.

Walker 202, 120 Boylston St. Boston, MA. Doors open at 4pm. Free, but Registration Required via EventBrite.

Nguyễn lives and works Hồ Chí Minh City, Việt Nam.

Tuấn Andrew Nguyễn’s practice explores the power of memory and its potential to act as a form of political resistance. His practice is fueled by research and a commitment to communities that have faced traumas caused by colonialism, war, and displacement. Through his continuous attempts to engage with vanishing or vanquished historical memory, Nguyễn investigates the erasures that the colonial project has brought to bear on certain parts of the world. Through collaborative endeavors with various communities throughout the world, Nguyen sets out to cultivate and empower these strategies enacted and embodied by his collaborators. Through this collaborative practice, he explores memory as a form of resistance and empowerment, emphasizing the power of storytelling as a means for healing, empathy and solidarity.

Nguyễn, based primarily in Saigon, works between various mediums but devotes much of his attention towards producing moving-image works and sculpture. Nguyễn’s intrigued with the relationship between narrative and objects leads him to make projects that combine moving image and sculpture – oftentimes many of his films begin with an object, such as destroyed memorials built by former refugees, or the skeletal remains of the last rhino in Vietnam for instance, and its story. Approaching memory as a phenomenon that is intangible and abstract, Nguyễn often thinks beyond the restrictions of time (past, present, future) which also gives way to thinking about supernaturalisms (ghosts, specters, hauntings) as political tools.

No-No Boy: Live in Concert
2023-11-04 18:00 - 19:30 | Pao Arts Center, 99 Albany Street Boston, Massachusetts, 02111, United States
This event is sold out. Register here to join the waitlist.

Experience a multimedia musical performance from artist Julian Saporiti, known as No-No Boy, as part of the tour for his latest album Empire Electric. This newest release brings Asian American history to life through a uniquely inventive approach to storytelling. This program is organized by the PAO Art Center and supported by Emerson Contemporary.

Live Performance, Passage (2023) by Patricia Nguyễn and Fiona Ngô
2023-11-14 18:00 - 19:30 | Media Art Gallery, 25 Avery Street, Boston, Massachusetts, 02111
Still from “Collapse to Expand” by Patricia Nguyen

A work of experimental sound and movement, Passage explores how beauty and creativity emerge in the aftermath of war. The artists meditate upon the various thresholds and movements that happen for displaced peoples across the time and space of memory, everyday encounters of state violence, forced migration, and queer worldmaking.

This event is free and open to the public.

BECAUSE I COME FROM YOU
2023-12-04 08:00 - 2023-12-06 18:00
Maya Seri’s BFA thesis project BECAUSE I COME FROM YOU features photographs, video projection and sculptural installation, a project about home, identity and belonging. Seri’s perception of identity has changed through the making of this work. As she embarks in this period of transition as a 21-year-old, she realizes that she is no longer a girl. Feeling the departure from childhood, the artist can’t help but wonder, “Where is home?” She feels connected to Ohio, where the artist grew up, where she’s from. When in Boston, she feels a loss of identity and have to find herself over and over again. She asks: “Who am I? What am I? I am made of everything. I am made of the experiences I have had, the people I have met, and the places I have been.”

This project began as a journal entry to the artist’s younger self: “I just want to give you a hug. I want to see you smile and laugh. But that’s what I see in the mirror, isn’t it? I just don’t recognize it. You are me? I am you. I’m different, of course. I’m older. ‘Soiled’ by the world, as some would say. But I have you in me. I can be who I want to be because I come from you.”

About the ArtistMaya Seri’23 is a senior at Emerson College, is a passionate storyteller who uses the camera as a tool to connect with others and to understand herself and the world around her more thoroughly. Her work portrays themes of identity, girlhood, nostalgia, home, and connection.
