Faculty Spotlight: Fall 2021
The creative and scholarly contributions of the UCLA Arts community mine the complexities of the human condition, ask essential questions of our time, and expand the potential of creativity. Read more for a list of recent accolades and current and upcoming virtual and in-person exhibitions, performances, lectures, and events.
Hitoshi Abe, professor in the Department of Architecture and Urban Design, has received a commendation from the foreign minister of Japan. The foreign minister’s commendations are awarded to individuals and groups to acknowledge their contribution to the promotion of friendship between Japan and other countries. The commendation also aims to promote the understanding and support of the Japanese public for their activities. Abe, who has been the director of the Paul I. and Hisako Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies since 2010, was recognized by the Japanese government for his contributions to mutual understanding, friendship and goodwill between Japan and the United States through his support of Japanese studies and academic exchanges.
Inside the Bulgari Metamorphosis installation. Photo by Simone Fiorini.
Refik Anadol, a visiting researcher and lecturer in the Department of Design Media Arts, as well as an alumnus of the department, sold the intellectual property rights to eight video artwork installations from his Machine Hallucinations series of NFTs for more than $5 million, in an auction held by the Hong Kong branch of Sotheby’s. The series of AI-based immersive digital experiences was generated by training machine learning algorithms on pictures of space captured by satellites and spacecraft. The works are also exhibited at the Digital Art Fair in Hong Kong through October 17th, 2021.
Anadol has also partnered with Italian jeweler Bulgari in staging an immersive art installation in Milan, the multisensory AI data sculpture “Serpenti Metamorphosis,” inspired by the concept of metamorphosis and embodied by Bulgari’s signature snake emblem.
Bryonn Bain, associate professor in the Department of African American Studies and Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, will publish the book “Rebel Speak: A Justice Movement Mixtape” on March 29, 2022. This literary mixtape will offer “transformative dialogues on justice with a cast of visionary rebel activists, organizers, artists, culture workers, thought leaders, and movement builders.” Bain, a prison activist, artist, and scholar, interviews change-makers on the front lines of the prison abolition movement, such as Albert Woodfox, founder of the first Black Panther Party prison chapter; Susan Burton, founder of Los Angeles's A New Way of Life Reentry Project; a warden pushing beyond traditions at Sing Sing Correctional Facility; and includes an intimate exchange with his brother returning from prison.
One of the jellybean-shaped pods in BruinHub.
Dana Cuff, professor in the Department of Architecture and Urban Design, is also the founding director of cityLAB, a design research center focused on spatial justice. After years of planning, research, and activism by a unique team of UCLA students, staff, and faculty, cityLAB has unveiled BruinHub, a new space on the second floor of the John Wooden Center. Designed to serve UCLA students at the intersection of extreme commutes and housing insecurity, the BruinHub is a first-of-its-kind space for students to sleep, nap, study, store belongings, and build community.
Installation view of the exhibition, "This meeting is being recorded” by Andrea Fraser at the Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, 2021. Image courtesy the artist and Künstlerhaus Stuttgart. Photograph by Frank Kleinbach.
Andrea Fraser, professor in the Department of Art, is the subject of a solo exhibition at Künstlerhaus Stuttgart in Germany, titled “This meeting is being recorded.” The exhibition includes three performance-based video installations: Projection (2008), Men on the Line: Men Committed to Feminism, KPFK, 1972 (2012/2014), and her major new work, This meeting is being recorded (2021), a ninety-eight-minute video exploring the processes and formation of race, gender, and age within an intergenerational group of seven self-identified white women. Combining rigorous investigation and intimate self-exposure, Fraser explores how artistic, intellectual, and political positions are driven by emotional needs and how psychological forces both shape and are shaped by social and political structures. The exhibition runs through February 27, 2022.
David Gere, professor in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, is the founding director of the Art & Global Health Center, which continues to partner with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Discovery Center on the Seattle edition of Through Positive Eyes, a collaborative photo-storytelling project by more than 140 people living with HIV and AIDS in cities around the world. The Discovery Center remains closed on account of COVID-19, but the project successfully pivoted to digital delivery. Working with a dozen people living with HIV and AIDS in Seattle, the center has developed photo-stories for sharing via Zoom with schools and community groups.
In honor of the 40th anniversary of the AIDS pandemic this year, the Art & Global Health Center is collaborating with UNAIDS on a campaign featuring Through Positive Eyes long-term survivors. The campaign will launch in October and run through December 1, World AIDS Day, on Instagram and a new web platform currently under construction.
A virtual Zoom event commemorating World AIDS Day will take place on Wednesday, Dec 1, 2021 from 5-8 PM, wherein Seattle artivists (artist-activists) will present their photo-stories and invite attendees to banish the stigma surrounding HIV and AIDS.
In mid-September, with the help of director of communications Isaiah Baiseri, Gere presented Through Positive Eyes to India-based members of the Jodhpur School of Public Health community. Gere’s essay on Through Positive Eyes has been accepted for publication in a Routledge reader on arts activism.
Thomas Hines, professor emeritus of history and architecture, published the article “Picturing Modern Architecture: Photographer Willard Morgan and Richard Neutra’s Lovell House” in Getty Research Journal, No. 14. The article uncovers the relationship between Morgan and Neutra and foregrounds the significance of Morgan’s achievement in photographing one of Neutra’s – and modern architecture’s – seminal buildings: the famous Lovell Health House in Los Angeles for Philip and Leah Lovell, built in 1927–29.
Anna Sew Hoy, assistant professor in the Department of Art, will have work included in an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego called “Abstracted Vocabularies,” opening on October 16. Her piece Thrown Shade II (2019) will accompany nine other works from the past decade. The show is meant to complement the historical exhibition “Yolanda Lopez: Portrait of the Artist” and the video installation by Joan Jonas, “The Shape, the Scent, the Feel of Things,” which are also on view.
Erkki Huhtamo, a professor in the Department of Design Media Arts, together with two UC colleagues, professors Peter Bloom (UCSB) and Weihong Bao (UC Berkeley), won a competitive University of California Research Institute (UCHRI) virtual residency for the fall quarter of 2021. Titled "Distance and Proximity," it builds on the international working group and think tank Huhtamo, Bloom, and Bao started in March 2020 to combat the limitations of COVID-19 to research activities and intellectual exchanges. The working group has met dozens of times, inviting eminent guest speakers from different continents. The ultimate goal of the UCHRI virtual residency is to produce a book, which has the working title "Distance and Proximity in the Era of Remote Presence".
In collaboration with the Tadashi Yanai Initiative, hosted by the UCLA Department of Asian Languages & Cultures and Waseda University (Tokyo), and the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, Huhtamo is curating an exhibition by the Japanese artist Masaki Fujihata. By applying photogrammetry, volumetric capture and augmented reality, the exhibition "Be Here / 1942" searches for new ways to visualize and penetrate the experience of the incarceration of the Japanese-American population during World War II. The exhibition will open in May 2022.
Does Your House Have Lions, video still.
Vishal Jugdeo, assistant professor in the Department of Art, had an exhibition with the Delhi-based poet vqueeram at Commonwealth and Council in Los Angeles in August 2021 called “Does Your House Have Lions.” He will participate in the forthcoming TULCA Festival of Visual Arts in Galway, Ireland in November 2021.
Julia Koerner, assistant adjunct professor in the Department of Architecture and Urban Design and director of summer programs, designed the HY Clutch, a handbag that is 3D printed using solar power. It won the Red Dot Design Award 2021 and was on the longlist for the Dezeen Awards 2021. The Setae Jacket, which takes its cues from butterfly wings, won the 2021 BigSEE Fashion Design Award. She also received the 2021 Creative Project Award from the Vienna Business Agency.
Koerner’s work is included in two exhibitions now on view: “Designs Without Borders” at the Kiscelli Museum in Budapest, Hungary through November 29, 2021; and “P.LACE.S - Looking through Antwerp Lace” at MoMu in Antwerp, Belgium through February 1, 2022.
On October 14th, Koerner will deliver a talk called “Paving the way for positive change,” as part of a webinar series called “Making Next: Designing strategies for plausible futures,” organized by EINA University School of Design and Art of Barcelona, in collaboration with Barcelona Global, EADA Business School and McKinsey & Company.
Candice Lin, La Charada China (Tobacco Version), 2019, mixed media, Courtesy of the Artist and François Ghebaly Gallery, Photography by Ian Byer-Gamber
Candice Lin, assistant professor in the Department of Art, is the subject of the exhibition “Candice Lin: The Agnotology of Tigers” at the Louisiana State University Museum of Art through March 20, 2022. “Candice Lin: The Agnotology of Tigers” features recent works based on archival images from LSU alongside a new configuration of Lin’s tobacco version of La Charada China. Lin’s installation illuminates sublimated histories of social violence and a politics of forgetting that obscures the history of indentured Chinese labor and its dehumanizing effects still manifest in global policies and lingering stereotypes. Lin’s most recent works explore how these processes intersect with LSU football’s “Chinese-bandits” and cheerleaders who dressed as coolie laborers.
Lin’s work is also included in the Prospect.5 art festival in New Orleans, and that work will further explore her research into Louisiana’s history of indentured Chinese labor.
Jackie Lopez, lecturer in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, is the co-founder and co-artistic director of Versa-Style Dance Company, which has received a production grant from the New England Foundation for the Arts. The grant will assist with the development of “Freemind Freestyle,” which Lopez describes as “a riveting, visceral immersion into Hip Hop and street dance culture. The work embodies our timeless struggle to break free from the oppressive forces that conspire to restrict our movement and explores how we find freedom through the dance cultures that ground us. The full-length production centers the voices and stories of the Black and Brown communities we come from and brings culture to the concert stage in the form of cyphers, competitive exchange (known as battles), and raw freestyle movement. It explores the depths of a wide range of street dances such as Hip Hop, House, Whacking, Popping, and Krump as vehicles of expression.”
Greg Lynn, professor in the Department of Architecture and Urban Design, is the founder and owner of Greg Lynn FORM and the co-founder and CEO of the robotics company Piaggio Fast Forward.
Piaggio Fast Forward has officially launched the Moto Guzzi Factory complex in Mandello del Lario on Lake Como in Italy. Lynn will oversee design of the redeveloped industrial site where, for the past century, every Eagle motorcycle has been produced. The complex will feature public open spaces, community gathering places, conference facilities, a hotel, and a restaurant. Its design emphasizes energy efficiency and eco-sustainable materials. Work will commence by the end of 2021 and is slated to be completed in the first half of 2025.
Lynn also served as a juror for the Lexus Design Award 2021, a global platform to support and nurture the next generation of creators.
Lynn’s work was included in "The Architecture Machine" exhibition at the Pinakothek Der Moderne in Munich, Germany.
Rebeca Méndez, professor and chair of the Department of Design Media Arts, and director of the CounterForce Lab, received the 2021 CODAaward for public space for her design, with Chee Salette, of Tucson’s January 8th Memorial, titled “The Embrace.” A statement announcing the award states, “Visual artist Rebeca Méndez, architect and landscape designer Tina Chee, and project architect Marc Salette collaborated masterfully to answer the community’s call for a place to mourn and remember, with an architectural embrace and a universal symbolic language, to create a common ground that transcends political posturing on gun violence, and celebrates the shared value of life.”
Catherine Opie, department chair and professor in the Department of Art, has work in several current and upcoming exhibitions: “Masculinities: Liberation through Photography,” on view at FOMU – Fotomuseum Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium, October 21, 2021 – March 13, 2022; “Art of Sport,” on view at Copenhagen Contemporary, Copenhagen, Denmark through October 24, 2021; “Utopia Distopia: il mito del progresso partendo dal sud,” on view at Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Donnaregina, Naples, Italy through November 8, 2021; and “Black American Portraits,” on view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, November 7, 2021 - April 17, 2022.
Opie has been interviewed in a number of recent articles, including in The New York Times, Dazed, AnOther, Artnet News, Los Angeles Times, and Interview Magazine. She was also interviewed on the podcasts Design Matters and PhotoWork.
Opie published her first monograph “Catherine Opie” by Phaidon in June 2021. She was the 2021 Robert Mapplethorpe Resident in Photography at the American Academy in Rome. She photographed Maggie Nelson for New York Times Magazine. She was commissioned to show a new artwork on a structure called Sunset Spectacular in West Hollywood. She wrote a blurb for the catalog “Georgia O’Keeffe, Photographer” being published in November by Yale University Press and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Opie will be honored for ICP Spotlights on November 4th, 2021 at the International Center of Photography in New York City. And she will deliver the Monson Photography Lecture at the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington in Seattle on November 12, 2021.
Xunka Tulan (Navenchauc, San Lorenzo Zinacantán, Chiapas, Mexico); Wedding huipil, commissioned late 1970s; cotton, feathers; Fowler Museum at UCLA, X91.546; Gift of Mrs. Gene Stuart
Elena Phipps, lecturer in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, will participate in an event with the Fowler Museum called "Feather Embellishments in Mexican Huipiles" on November 10th at 11 am. The program will briefly trace the history of the huipil – a garment worn by women in Mexico from the time before the arrival of the Europeans until the present day – and highlight some of its special features. Phipps, a scholar of textile traditions of the Americas, will speak with Hector Meneses Lozano, director of the Museo Textil de Oaxaca. Lozano will share some examples from the extensive collection of the Museo Textil de Oaxaca, alongside a few special pieces from the Fowler Museum. The discussion will then focus on a unique group of huipiles woven with spun downy bird feathers.
David Shorter, a professor in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, has received a $50,000 grant from the California Community Foundation to facilitate work on his Archive of Healing, one of the largest databases of medicinal folklore from around the world. Over the next three years, people with the archive will work with partners in Indigenous Tongva communities on projects related to community health and wellness. The grant will provide a much-needed response to the damages brought on from COVID-19.
Eon (detail), 2020. Computer animation and video installation, 360 x 108 in. Commission for Landmarks, The University of Texas at Austin. Photo: Courtesy Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, and Greengrassi, London
Jennifer Steinkamp, professor in the Department of Design Media Arts, received the 2021 CODAaward for education for her installation Eon, a 30 x 9-foot digital installation commissioned for Welch Hall, the largest academic facility at The University of Texas at Austin and part of the College of Natural Sciences. A statement announcing the award states, “The installation transforms the main corridor of Welch Hall into a hyperreal, simulated natural world, while signaling the research that takes place within the building. A vision as powerful as it is beautiful, it serves as a reminder that life on earth began through cooperation, and that our future depends upon it.”
HEADER IMAGE: Julia Koerner, The Setae Jacket.
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