On Wednesday, October 19, 2022 the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art was proud to present a panel discussion organized by the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at the College of Charleston around themes explored in the exhibition Kirsten Stolle: Only You Can Prevent A Forest.
The panel was be comprised of
Dr. Kris de Welde, Director, Women’s and Gender Studies
Dr. Emily Rosko, Department of English Dr. Jen Wright, Department of Psychology
Dr. Marian Mazzone, Department of Art and Architectural History
Using appropriation, wordplay, and humor, Kirsten Stolle co-opts advertising strategies used by agrichemical corporations to resurface and critique company history. For her exhibition, Only You Can Prevent A Forest, Stolle will create photo-based collages, visual poetry interventions, text-based sound animation, a neon wall piece, and her first site-responsive sculptural installation. Building upon her decade-long research into companies like Bayer/Monsanto and Dow Chemical, the work will forefront historical ties to chemical warfare and reveal persistent greenwashing. Stolle’s work interrogates the global influence of chemical companies on our food supply and their consistent efforts to downplay effects of their toxic products on our health and environment.
The Halsey Institute will debut Peruvian American artist Kukuli Velarde’s CORPUS project in its entirety for the first time. CORPUS is comprised of ceramic and fabric works that encourage reflection on the meaning of survival in the face of colonialism. Fifteen ceramic sculptures, each with matching tapestries, will be presented in a symbolic representation of the annual Corpus Christi festival in Cusco, Perú. The sculptures reference indigenous pre-Columbian forms and iconographies in a visual representation of syncretic aesthetic, cultural, and religious traditions. CORPUS engages with and confronts Perú’s Spanish colonial past, asserting that pre-Columbian sacred entities and the worldview they inhabit were not vanquished by Spanish conquerors, but instead cleverly blended with their Catholic counterparts, ensuring their survival. So too, have the diverse peoples of Perú and greater Latin America formed and reformed political, religious, and cultural identity in the shadow of centuries-long oppression. Velarde’s CORPUS asks viewers to consider this resilience via her stunningly detailed and humorously thought-provoking work.
The Halsey Institute will present works from Colombian American artist Nancy Friedemann-Sánchez’s Casta Paintings series. Friedemann-Sánchez’s paintings reference casta painting, a genre popularized in eighteenth-century Spanish Colonial Central and South America that purported to depict a racial and social taxonomy of children born of racially mixed couplings. Friedemann-Sánchez’s contemporary casta paintings take inspiration from this problematic genre to reflect on the legacy of colonialism that lingers in the racial and social discrimination and marginalization present in her home country of Colombia and here in the United States. The paintings feature life-size tracings of female bodies adorned with floral imagery lifted from both the indigenous resin technique of mopa mopa and Spanish colonial iconography. Masks from across Latin America and the Caribbean are included to represent stereotypes born of colonial-era mixed-race classifications that continue to perpetuate today.
Now in its 37th year, the Halsey Institute and the College of Charleston Studio Art Department are proud to present Young Contemporaries 2022. The annual exhibition is a celebration of talented artists at the College of Charleston. With works selected by a nationally renowned juror, the exhibition reflects the strength and diversity of practice in the School of the Arts’ rigorous programs. Featuring a wide range of media, including paintings, sculpture, photography, and prints, the exhibition showcases the efforts of the student body at the College.
Ron Bechet is the Victor H. Labat Professor of Art in the Department of Art at Xavier University of Louisiana. Mr. Bechet also serves as Department Head for the Department of Art. He is a painter, and has exhibited his work nationally and internationally. He has been teaching for 20 years at the college level. He holds a BA degree in Fine Arts from the University of New Orleans, and an MFA in Painting and Drawing from the Yale School of Art, Yale University. In addition to serving on the Board of the Joan Mitchell Foundation, Bechet has served on other boards and commissions, such as Imagining America’s National Advisory Board. He has served as the first director of Xavier Art Department’s Community Arts Partnership Program as well as in many arts and youth programs in the New Orleans area both as an advisor and a practitioner. He was the recipient of the New Orleans Mayor’s Arts award in 2006.
Dyani White Hawk’s work illuminates the lived experiences of Native Peoples. With her video, photography, and works in other media, she aims to use the language of visual art to bring light to the deep chasm between our understanding of history and the truth. Her work weaves together forms from the canon of Western art along with the visual languages and traditions of Native people. In doing so, her work spotlights Native women, whose strength and fortitude through centuries of colonization have helped their peoples’ languages and cultures to survive.
On view in Hear Her, White Hawk’s video installation LISTEN presents a series of Native women speaking the language of their people. Each film takes place on the land of each participant’s nation, and viewers hear the respective languages without translation. As such, White Hawk puts a focus not only on the resonance of each speaker, but she also reveals society’s collective ignorance of the people, culture, and language of those native to the land on which we live. Chapter 1 of LISTEN features eight videos and White Hawk plans to continue the series to include 24 videos. The Halsey Institute commissioned White Hawk to create a video to honor the Catawba Nation, located in South Carolina.
White Hawk’s photography installation I Am Your Relative confronts the gross stereotypes and distorted caricatures that dehumanize and commodify Native women. This installation, along with LISTEN, helps White Hawk shine a light on the misrepresentation of Native Peoples while reinforcing the fact that we are all connected as human beings.
Dyani White Hawk: Hear Her is sponsored in part by South Carolina Humanities, a not-for-profit organization; inspiring, engaging and enriching South Carolinians with programs on literature, history, culture and heritage. This exhibition is also supported by the Center for Sustainable Development at the College of Charleston, which provides students with the opportunities and resources to engage in our community sustainably.
Join us in conversation with the Women’s and Gender Studies program’s affiliated faculty, disciplines ranging from Art History to Political Science and African American Studies, as we engage with and respond to Namsa Leuba’s work in Crossed Looks, currently on view at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art. This panel is part of ongoing collaborations between the Halsey Institute and the Women’s and Gender Studies program over the 2021/2022 academic year that will consider intersections between art, performativity, gender, sexuality, race, (post-) colonialism, and power.
The panel was comprised of Dr. Kris De Welde, Director and Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies, Professor of Sociology
Dr. Hollis France, Associate Professor and Chair of Political Science
Dr. Kameelah Martin, Professor of African American Studies and English, and Dean of the Graduate School
Dr. Mary Trent, Assistant Professor of Art History
Watch the artist talk for Namsa Leuba: Crossed Looks.
The Halsey Institute is pleased to present Crossed Looks, the first solo exhibition of Swiss-Guinean artist Namsa Leuba in the United States. The show will feature over 90 works from the photographer’s projects in Guinea, South Africa, Nigeria, and Benin, and it will premiere new work created in Tahiti.
As a photographer working across documentary, fashion, and performance, Namsa Leuba’s images explore the fluid visual identity of the African diaspora. With a dual heritage between Guinea and Switzerland, Leuba draws inspiration from her own experience growing up between two different cultural traditions.
This event took place on Saturday, August 28, 2021.
Watch the artist talk for Jibade-Khalil Huffman: You Are Here.
Jibade-Khalil Huffman is a collector of visual culture, layering images familiar and unknown to build new meaning. Using unrelenting movement, Huffman’s work draws on all senses, utilizing video, audio, text, and the ultimate tool: the viewer’s own experience. In his new work featured at the Halsey Institute, Huffman considers the concepts of reality and embodiment. This is explored through visual elements we would expect to find in a video game, which typically rely on first or third person perspectives, while Huffman seeks to explore the second person. The concept of embodiment renders the human body both subject and object, depending on the perspective employed. You Are Here asks us to question the nature of our own realities and the modes through which we understand them.
This event took place on Tuesday, May 25, 2021.
Watch the artist talk for Dan Estabrook: Wunderkammer.
The work of Dan Estabrook oscillates between image and object and back again. Using antiquated forms of photography, such as salt prints and tintypes, Estabrook examines the objecthood of photography and its ability to represent the truth. He often combines multiple tintypes or adds metal to his images, further commenting on photography’s connection to reality. His sculptural works become recreations of his photos, further blurring the line between image and object. Interested in the studio as a site for fabrication, Estabrook’s sleight of hand in creating still life tableaus asks viewers to reconsider why things appear as they seem.
This event took place on Tuesday, May 18, 2021.
This video was produced for the exhibition Dan Estabrook: Wunderkammer at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art at the College of Charleston, May 14 – July 17, 2021. The work of Dan Estabrook oscillates between image and object and back again. Using antiquated forms of photography, such as salt prints and tintypes, Estabrook examines the objecthood of photography and its ability to represent the truth. He often combines multiple tintypes or adds metal to his images, further commenting on photography’s connection to reality. His sculptural works become recreations of his photos, further blurring the line between image and object. Interested in the studio as a site for fabrication, Estabrook’s sleight of hand in creating still life tableaus asks viewers to reconsider why things appear as they seem. Learn more here: https://halsey.cofc.edu/main-exhibitions/wunderkammer/
<br> is a selection of poetry named after the HTML element that produces line breaks. The project is organized by Isabel Prioleau. In response to our current exhibition, Larson Shindelman: Geolocation, <br> explores public-private overlaps, the digitalization of human experience, and the relationship between text and image, commenting on the place of poetry in our digital world.
Readers include by:
Kirsten Ihns
Cortney Lamar Charleston
Maryam Monalisa Gharavi (read by Joshua Garcia)
Toby Altman
This event took place virtually on Tuesday, March 2 at 7:00 PM EST.