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Story about MFA candidate Matthew Troyer on UNC front page today

November 10, 2022

As part of their Veterans’ Day focus on student veterans at Carolina, UNC Communications produced this video profile of MFA candidate Matthew Troyer. Matthew is channeling his experience in the Marine Corps to create photography that shares the military experience with the civilian population and fellow veterans.

Artist talk with faculty member Sabine Gruffat at Davidson October 25

October 14, 2022

October 25, 4:30-5:30 pm, Visual Arts Center, 117 Semans Lecture Hall, Davidson College

Sabine Gruffat is a digital media artist and award-winning filmmaker. Her creative work includes experimental video and animation, media-enhanced performance, participatory public art, and immersive installation.

Sabine’s films and videos have screened at festivals worldwide including the Image Forum Festival in Japan, The Ann Arbor Film Festival and Migrating Forms in New York. Her feature essay films I Have Always Been A Dreamer and Speculation Nation have screened internationally including at the Viennale, MoMA, Cinéma du Réel at the Centre Pompidou, and The Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival.

She has also produced art for public spaces as well as interactive installations that have been shown at the Zolla Lieberman Gallery in Chicago, Art In General, Devotion Gallery, PS1 Contemporary Art Museum, and Hudson Franklin in New York.

She teaches film and animation at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Co-sponsored by Davidson College’s Departments of Art and English and Davidson Arts and Creative Engagement

Position Search: Department Chair and Edna J. Koury Distinguished Professor

October 7, 2022

The College of Arts & Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill invites applications for Department Chair and Edna J. Koury Distinguished Professor in the Department of Art & Art History, which is comprised of diverse faculty representing a range of fields, media, and methodologies. The start date will be July 1, 2023. We welcome candidates in any discipline of art history, studio art practice, or related fields with the credentials to be appointed at the rank of full professor with tenure. Candidates will be asked to articulate an innovative vision for the future of the department that values forward thinking, critical inquiry, creativity, diversity, equity, and inclusion. We are seeking candidates who have an outstanding record of research and/or artistic achievement, teaching, and service, as well as experience as a dynamic, consultative leader and administrator. The chair supports departmental faculty and staff in their academic, research, and service activities, and facilitates student recruitment, budget administration, and personnel management. We seek applicants committed to diversity and inclusion in higher education, including but not limited to recruiting and retaining diverse faculty, staff, and students. Charged with building these important relationships, the chair will work with a wide range of constituencies. The term of the chair will be four years, with the possibility for a second term, after which the chair will continue to serve on the faculty as a Full Professor. We welcome applications from individuals who may have had non-traditional career paths or who have achieved excellence outside of academia.

We welcome candidates in any discipline of art history, studio art practice, or related fields with the credentials to be appointed at the rank of full professor with tenure. Candidates will be asked to articulate an innovative vision for the future of the department that values forward thinking, critical inquiry, creativity, diversity, equity, and inclusion. We are seeking candidates who have an outstanding record of research and/or artistic achievement, teaching, and service, as well as experience as a dynamic, consultative leader and administrator.

Job Posting Application Information

Faculty members Hong-An Truong and Lien Truong part of group show in New York

September 30, 2022

Congratulations to Hồng-Ân and Lien on the opening of their group show Circular Ruins at island in NYC.

Rubber Factory begins a new chapter as island | gallery inaugural exhibition: Circular Ruinsreception on September 30 from 6 to 8 pm

Open through October 30

Hồng-Ân Trương, Tammy Nguyen, Ragini Bhow, Lien Truong, Mo Kong, Pacifico Silano, Myeongsoo Kim, Ben Tong, Jia Sung, Alex Callender, Sonia Louise Davis, Tess Bilhartz, Y. M. Kwok, Ang Xia Yi, Raya Terran.  
island is pleased to present our inaugural show at our new location at 83 Bowery titled, circular ruins. The exhibition marks the end of our time as “Rubber Factory” and the start of a new chapter as “island”.The show draws its title from a Borges fiction where a protagonist washes up on the ruins of a temple and struggles with the act of creation itself. circular ruins examines the many intentions and conceptual frameworks that charge our new identity as “island”.Islands are defined by their unique geology of discrete land masses separate from mainlands while often having perimeters that are variably submerged. They also form a membrane of nodes across the planet, with more than 900,000 islands serving as frontier lands that are extremely sensitive to change. While many also serve as ahistorical territories which are silent witnesses to historical traumas perpetrated elsewhere and these islands are potential sites for remembrance and regeneration.Artists in circular ruins are engaged in acts of world-building, creating their own languages indexed to their lived experiences. From Ragini Bhow’s abstract vessel-like sculpture to Ben Tong’s pulsing repetitive forms made using a percussive device or Ang Xia Yi’s intimate fabrics made from burnishing images onto vernacular textiles, the works are containers for new ways of knowing. They suggest a divergent path, not dissimilar to the way that the distinct ecologies of islands enable them to be producers of alternative cultures, techniques, and histories.Islands are often sites of colonial, imperialistic conquest, performing the role of flagpole for the extension of vast empires. Because they are on the edge of the world they mark the supple perimeters of power. Tammy Nguyen’s Freehold series in the exhibition about Forest City, a tax-free, man-made island in Johor Malaysia, located along the Singapore Strait deconstructs the fiction of this stabilized geographic realm, interrogating the contemporary urge to seek out new utopian models. While Lien Truong and Hong-An Truong’s “The Sky Is Not Sacred” explores the trauma of Western ideology’s impact on the Vietnamese landscape unpacking the scarring effect on collective psyche and land alike.circular ruins also proposes the island as refuge, as hidden topography, and as porous land where communities can form generative bonds. Pacifico Silano reenacts the history of gay bars as a place of refuge, pleasure, and community. By creating a series of neon works miming the bar signage of these LGBTQ islands that are now shuttered Pacifico memorializes these sites as places for resistant ecosystems to congregate. While Mo Kong’s works from their Swift Island Chain: Letter to Home series locates the diasporic compulsion to seek out new environments and the dissonance that follows.
83 Bowery 2nd Floor

Multiple Faculty and Alumni featured in current Basement X Peel Group Exhibition

September 12, 2022

BASEMENT X PEEL

Fundraiser Exhibition Event

Opening Reception: Friday, September 9th at Peel.

Closing Reception: Saturday, September 24th at BASEMENT.

BASEMENT X PEEL will be on view at both BASEMENT and Peel from Friday, September 9th until Saturday, September 24th. Peel will host an opening reception and silent auction on Friday, September 9th from 6-9 pm, during the Carrboro, Chapel Hill 2nd Friday Art Walk, with refreshments in the parking lot and live music. BASEMENT will host a closing reception and silent auction on Saturday, September 24th from 6-9 pm with “A STANK/STINK Outdoor Happenings,” a performance art experience.

All work in the exhibition will be available for purchase via both traditional sale and silent auction during both receptions and during all open hours of the exhibition at both locations. All proceeds from sales will go to supporting BASEMENT and Peel programming.

BASEMENT Open Hours: 9/10 & 9/11 and 9/17 & 9/18 from 2-5 pm

BASEMENT address: 605 Caswell Rd. Chapel Hill, NC (stairs to BASEMENT on left of driveway)

Featuring work by Adriana Ameigh // Alissa Van Atta // Allison Tierney //Anna-Christina De La Iglesia // Ashlie Johnson Coggins // Ayla Gizlice David D’Agostino // Dawn Colsia // Emma Stevens // Fabrizio Bianchi // Georgia Paige Welch // Hillary Ensminger // Hồng-Ân Trương // Jean Gray Mohs // Jenn Adams // Jimmy Fountain // John Shaw // Jon Neal // Jonh Blanco // Joy Drury Cox // Jphono1 // Leah Foushee Waller // Madeleine Grace Popkin // Madison Speyer // Mark Allen Soderstrom // Mark Anthony Brown Jr. // Marsha Glickman // Matthew Tauch // Natasja Brezenski // Nathaniel Quinn // Paget Fink // Paul Deblinger // Peg Bachenheimer // Rachel Moon // River Cortes // Rusty Shackleford // Serena Fenton // Shelley Smith // Sterling Bowen // Tama Hochbaum // Toni Hartley // Tricia Russ // Gadisse Lee // Jiahn Kang // Lindsay Metivier

MFA Alumna Elizabeth Cornejo named Southern Prize Finalist

September 6, 2022

At the sixth annual Southern Prize and State Fellowships award ceremony held at the Bo Bartlett Center in Columbus, GA yesterday evening, Louisiana artist Hannah Chalew was named the 2022 Southern Prize winner receiving an award of $25,000. The Southern Prize Finalist, receiving a $10,000 award, is Tennessee artist Sarah Elizabeth Cornejo. Both Southern Prize recipients also receive a two-week residency at the Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts and Sciences.

They are among the nine State Fellowship recipients, each of whom received a $5,000 award, currently featured in an exhibition on display at the Bo Bartlett Center through December 10, 2022, before touring to additional locations across the region next year.

“Congratulations to Hannah, Sarah, and all of this year’s State Fellowship recipients,” said Neil Barclay, board chair for South Arts. “This cohort of artists represents the diversity in voices, thought, technique, and style of our region, and we are honored to support their work with these awards.”

The nine 2022 Southern Prize and State Fellowship recipients are:

  • Jenny Fine. Multidisciplinary. Alabama Fellow.
  • GeoVanna Gonzalez. Multidisciplinary. Florida Fellow.
  • Antonio Darden. Sculpture. Georgia Fellow.
  • Crystal Gregory. Sculpture. Kentucky Fellow.
  • Hannah Chalew. Mixed Media. Louisiana Fellow and Southern Prize Winner.
  • Gloria Gipson Suggs. Painting. Mississippi Fellow.
  • Marcus Dunn. Painting. North Carolina Fellow.
  • Brittany M. Watkins. Mixed Media. South Carolina Fellow.
  • Sarah Elizabeth Cornejo. Sculpture. Tennessee Fellow and Southern Prize Finalist.

Roundup: Art History Alumni starting new positions

August 30, 2022

Congratulations to the following Art History alumni who are all starting new positions!

Recent PhD alumna Rachel Ozerkevich has received a two-year teaching position at Kenyon College.

BA alumna Hallie Ringle was appointed Chief Curator of ICA Philadelphia.

BA alumna Maya Brooks was appointed Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art at the NCMA.

MA alumna Julianne Miao was appointed a Curatorial Assistant for the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University.