ConSortiUm: Platform Speaker Series
An event series of socially engaged artists, collectives, and curators in conversation presented by ConSortiUm, a collaborative project of California State University Art Galleries and Museums
Spring 2021 Events
Visiting artist Shaun Leonardo will discuss his multi-disciplinary work, which interrogates societal expectations of masculinity, namely definitions surrounding black and brown masculinities. Speaking to his most recent body of work in The Breath of Empty Space, he will describe the physical and psychosocial negative space that is activated when viewers fill in the blanks, reframe details, and remix narratives based on both personal experience and perceptions ingrained by media and cultural biases. The artist will also describe his investment in performance as a process of embodiment—exploring the ways in which memory and trauma are lodged within our bodies.
Born in Philadelphia in 1943, Howardena Pindell studied painting at Boston University and Yale University. Pindell often employs lengthy, metaphorical processes of destruction/reconstruction. She cuts canvases in strips and sews them back together, building up surfaces in elaborate stages. Valerie Cassel Oliver is the Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Prior to her position at the VMFA, she was Senior Curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston where worked from 2000 - 2017.
People's Kitchen Collective (PKC) works at the intersection of art and activism as a food-centered political education project. Based in Oakland, California, our creative practices reflect the diverse histories and backgrounds of co-founders Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik, Jocelyn Jackson, and Saqib Keval. Written in our families' recipes are the maps of our migrations and the stories of our resilience. It is from this foundation that we create immersive experiences that honor the shared struggles of our people. We believe in radical hospitality as a strategy to address the urgent social issues of our time.
Fall 2020 Events
Thursday, September 24, 5:30pm The inaugural event in the PLATFORM Speaker Series brings together artist Beatriz Cortez in conversation with curator Erin Christovale.
Thursday, October 22, 5:30pm Postcommodity is an interdisciplinary arts collective.
Thursday, November 12, 12pm Forensic Architecture (FA) is a research agency, based at Goldsmiths, University of London. Eyal Weizman is the founding director of Forensic Architecture and Professor of Spatial and Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London, where he founded the Centre for Research Architecture in 2005.
