Graduate Research + Exhibition: Natalie Zelt on LaToya Ruby Frazier
Today, the first of two Austin-area exhibitions, both featuring the work of photographer LaToya Ruby Frazier and curated by the INGZ curatorial collective, opens at the UT Visual Arts Center, located in the ART building. INGZ's Z is AMS grad student Natalie Zelt, who wrote her master's report on Frazier. She elaborates on the project:
I had been familiar with Frazier's work for a while, but I have this problem where I tend to be extra skeptical of photographers working in the rustbelt who deal with deindustialization. It wasn't until I got to spend time in Contemporary Arts Museum Houston's exhibition "Witness" that I really got a sense of how her photographs work as both object and images on so many different registers. Seeing a solo exhibition really brings out the ways that she is conceptually using the history of photography as a tool in here work. That is part of why INGZ is bringing two exhibitions to Austin, both under the title "LaToya Ruby Frazier: Riveted."The black and white gelatin silver prints, the documentary style, her use of mostly analogue process and commitment to photography as an activist medium all harken to a history of photography that has been criticized for being aloof, marginalizing, and voyeuristic. Frazier is using this history and its criticisms when she makes these intensely personal and political images.But the study and engagement with her work begs to move beyond a masters project. Thats part of why the INGZ collective decided to bring two exhibitions to Austin. At a moment when the very city around us is experience industry driven growth, not all that unlike the boom in Braddock in the 1950s, it is important for people to bear witness to LaToya's experience.
The first exhibition is open at UTVAC until December 6th. Reservations for tours with the curators are available for classes and interested groups, please email info@ingzcollective.org for scheduling information. The second exhibition runs from January 15, 2015 to May 6, 2015 at ISESE Gallery in the John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies (Jester A232A).
Announcement: Reading Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath"
On Wednesday, October 29, AMS core faculty Dr. Nicole M. Guidotti-Hernandez and Dr. Mark Smith are participating in a round table of historians and literary scholars celebrating the 75th anniversary of The Grapes of Wrath by reflecting "on the context and controversies surrounding the book’s representation of poverty and dispossession in the United States during the Dust Bowl Era." The event is at 3:30 PM in Garfield 4.100. We hope to see you there.
Announcement: Screening Blackness series continues next week
One of our favorite things to do here at AMS :: ATX is to draw your attention to some of the great events happening around UT. This week was the first installment of the Screening Blackness series called "The Black Leading Lady: Olivia Pope and ABC’s Scandal." Nicole Martin, PhD candidate in the Department of Theater and Dance, will be screening episodes of the hit ABC series Scandal and leading a discussion about key topics from each episode, including race, gender, and sexuality. Nicole sent along the following description of the event, which continues next Monday, October 20 at 12:00pm in the ISESE Gallery at the Warfield Center:
When Scandal premiered in April 2012, ABC became the first major network to feature a Black woman protagonist in a primetime drama in nearly forty years. The show follows Olivia Pope who, with her team of associates, manages the public relations crises of Washington D.C.’s elite while hiding her own illicit interracial affair with the President of the United States. Created by Shonda Rhimes (Grey’s Anatomy, Private Practice), Scandal is one of the highest rated dramas currently on television making Olivia Pope, arguably, one of the most influential figures for contemporary Black female representation.
Week one of the series, “Desirability and Sexuality: Scripting the Black Leading Lady” focused on the construction of Olivia Pope as a black woman protagonist through the lens of sexuality. Discussion centered on the visual and embodied markers of Olivia Pope’s subject position vis-à-vis elements of costuming, character interaction and narrative structure. Attending to the scriptive moments of the show revealed the series’ strategic navigation of race, gender, and sexuality. In particular, audiences addressed the “double-reading” that occurs when observing Olivia Pope’s relationship with the President. This “doubleness” simultaneously activates a long history of sexual violence against black women’s bodies while also challenging the tropes of black womanhood that continue to dominate mainstream television.
Week 2, October 20, 2014“Navigating Patriarchy: Black Masculinity, White Masculinity and Black Womanhood.” Watch: “A Door Marked Exit” (Season 3, Episode 10). This week will interrogate the assertion of power through character navigation of patriarchy.Week 3, October 27, 2014“Toward Freedom: Black Feminisms and Black Female Representation.” Watch: “The Price of a Free and Fair Election” (Season 3, Episode 18). This week will consider how to write and read for resistance in representations of black female subjectivity.The event is sponsored by the John L. Warfield Center For African and African American Studies. Hope to see you there!
Announcement: Talk by "bad feminist" Roxane Gay
On Monday, October 6 at 2:00pm in CAL 100, fiction writer, blogger and essayist Roxane Gay will show us just how empowering being a "bad feminist" can be.
Showing humility, humor, anger, love, eloquence, and plenty of wisdom, this daughter of Haitian immigrants, proud Midwesterner and Scrabble-playing Hunger-Games fanatic, is a badass critic redefining what it means to be a feminist for the messy, diverse world we live in.
Hope to see you there!