Saturday, November 21st, 2020

Alicia Escott is interested in how we each negotiate our day-to-day realities and responsibilities amid an awareness of the overarching specter of climate emergency, mass-extinction, the subsequent (individual and collective) experience of loss, heartbreak and longing— and the related social and political unrest they produce. Escott has had residencies at The Growlery, Recology SF, Djerassi, Anderson Ranch, the JB Blunk Residency, and Irving Street Projects. Her work has been shown widely, including Headlands Center for the Arts, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Santa Barbara Museum of Contemporary Art and Berkeley Art Museum, The Economist, and The New Yorker.

Yuliya Lanina is a Russian-born multimedia artist, whose works exist at the intersection of visual, performing arts, and technological innovation, and explore social issues like gender perception, sexuality, loss, and motherhood. Lanina has exhibited and performed extensively both nationally and internationally, including SXSW Interactive (TX), Seoul Art Museum (Korea), SIGGRAPH Asia (Japan), 798 Beijing Biennial (China), Cleveland Institute of Art (OH), Museum Ludwig (Germany), Creative Tech Week (NYC), Teatro Santa Ana (Mexico), Blanton Museum of Art (TX), and Moscow Museum of Modern Art (Russia). Lanina's honors include Fulbright (Vienna, Austria), Headlands Art Center (CA), and Yaddo (NY). Lanina is an Assistant Professor of Practice at the Department of Arts and Entertainment Technologies at The University of Texas at Austin.

Ranu Mukherjee (Orphan Drift) makes hybrid work in moving image, painting and installation to build new imaginative capacities. She draws inspiration from the histories of collage, black feminist science fiction and Indian mythological prints of the late 19th century. Solo projects and exhibitions have been presented by The Asian Art Museum, De Young Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Pennsylvania College of Art and Design, San Jose Museum of Art, Tarble Art Center, Galerie, Barbara Thumm and her representing Gallery, Wendi Norris. Mukherjee is currently a Lucas Arts Fellow (2019-2022) and the recipient of a Krasner Pollock Award (2020).

Lynn Marie Kirby works in a variety of time-based forms, including film, public installations and performance, engaging our relationship to place, often with text, often with collaborators. Lately Lynn has performed site interventions outside and alongside established art systems enlarging the idea of the exhibition and its relation to the public.

Darrin Martin creates video, sculpture, and print-based installations that engage the synesthetic qualities of perception as mediated by both old and new technologies. His videos have screened internationally at festivals and museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, Pacific Film Archive, Impakt Festival, and European Media Art Festival. His installations have exhibited at venues including The Kitchen, Moscow State Vadim Sidur Museum, University of Toronto, Aggregate Space Gallery, Grand Central Art Center and and, most recently, at SOMArts. He is a Professor of Art at University of California, Davis.

Laura Gillmore is a San Francisco based artist and product designer. She recently received an MFA in Fine Arts at the California College of the Arts in 2018. She typically makes videos and sculptures that engage with topics of social media, consumerism, and their engagements with one another. Fascinated with the construction of identity, she uses a persona in her work to reflect the anxiety and self-obsession experienced within online consumerspace.

Bayeté Ross Smith: “Who controls the images and stories that define the people and cultures of the world?

I use the concepts of identity and community as a way to study and deconstruct, ideas of beauty, value, and reciprocity. Additionally I examine how identity and community form the basis of human interactions and social systems. I scrutinize preconceived notions and stereotypes, and when if ever, they are valid. A key point of reflection is examining how identity is both a performance as well as a set of characteristics. This analysis extends to examining who controls the images and media that define people and cultures globally, in a time that is defined by ease of access to information and user generated and disseminated media. Social and community engagement is therein a crucial element of my work. Both artistic and anthropological research further informs my creative process.

My work is interdisciplinary, using the medium and platform, best suited for each idea. I create photographs, videos, sculptures, performances, and multi-media works, all of which intend to highlight our personal investment in the identities we create for ourselves, and others. I am invested in how those identities impact our understanding and engagement with other people interpersonally and on a societal level, as well as in humanity’s past, present and future.”

Susan Silas is a visual artist working primarily in digital photography, video and sculpture. She received her Masters in Fine Arts from California Institute of the Arts. Her work was recently included in exhibitions at Stadgalerie Saarbrücken, in Germany, at Haus N Athen, in Greece and at bitforms gallery, in New York City. Her multi-screen video Leda and the Swan will premiere at Festival Instants Vidéo Numériques et Poétiques in Marseille, France in November of 2020. Silas’s work has been featured in AntiUtopias, CameraAustria, Fotómúvészet and Artnet Magazine. She has been interviewed by the Yale University Radio, Rabble magazine, the BBC, ArtonAir, Adult Magazine and Digital Dying. Reviews of her work have appeared in Artforum, Art in America, the Village Voice, The New Yorker and Hyperallergic. She has been awarded fellowships at Everglades National Park, New Space Arts Foundation in Hue, Vietnam, The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Ucross Foundation. Susan Silas is a dual Hungarian and American national living and working in Brooklyn, New York.