UW News

Arts and entertainment

September 1, 2021

ArtSci Roundup: Bodies of Discovery – Naomi Fisher: Thermodynamic Flower, Works Cited: Experiments in Dismantling Texts, and More

Through public events and exhibitions, connect with the UW community every week! This week, attend gallery exhibitions, watch recorded events, and more. While you’re enjoying summer break, connect with campus through UW live webcams of Red Square and the quad.

Many of these online opportunities are streamed through Zoom. All UW faculty, staff, and students have access to Zoom Pro via UW-IT. 

Works Cited: experiments in dismantling texts with Elaine Cameron-Weir and Amaranth Borsuk

September 11, 1:00 – 3:00 PM | Henry Art Gallery

The public is invited to join the Henry Art Gallery for a participatory experiment in poetics that will engage acts of dismantling, re-contextualizing, and performing language, as well as exposing the institutions and systems it represents. Elaine Cameron-Weir’s creative process and sculptural practice is informed by found text—”raw language” culled from varying sources, including technical manuals, scientific field research, and other niche and non-literary genres—as well as her own writings that draw on and transform these existing texts. Within the context of poetry, these source materials and the knowledges they enact become strange, fragmentary, weakened or emboldened, and raise speculation about other ways of seeing, thinking, and being in the world. After a brief conversation about her relationship to language in STAR CLUB REDEMPTION BOOTH, Cameron-Weir, alongside Associate Professor and poet and educator Amaranth Borsuk, will guide participants through a creative process of dismantling and re-contextualizing language for poetic reflection and subversion.

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Bodies of Discovery – Naomi Fisher: Thermodynamic Flower

September 11 – November 2021 | Occidental Square

Naomi Fisher: Thermodynamic Flower is part of Bodies of Discovery, an expansive group exhibition taking place over the Summer/Fall of 2021 and featuring a series of performances, films, and installations. Set and performed in outdoor plazas and parks throughout downtown Seattle, this constellation of works explores the (re)activation of the physical body in our again-accessible public space, and will create sites of artistic discovery in unexpected places over the course of the exhibition. The presentations are curated by the Henry Art Gallery, On the Boards, and Velocity Dance Center, and supported by the Metropolitan Improvement District.

For Thermodynamic Flower, Naomi Fisher (b. 1976, Miami, Florida) drives at the tensions between nature and capitalist dynamics via feminist theories and strategies based on surrealist art. Created specifically for this public space, her thermodynamic sculptures made from galvanized steel invites participation. Solar thermal glass tubes arranged in a sunburst formation collect heat, which is then transferred to a flower shape painted with temperature sensitive paint. The sculpture transforms from black to red, illustrating metaphorically the sun’s psychological and emotional effects, as well as the literal transformation of solar radiation into heat via green technology. Mirrored surfaces of the leaf-shaped elements reflect the viewers and surroundings, enfolding the audience into the piece itself.

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On Your Own Time

Looking for more ways to connect with the UW? Check out this recorded and asynchronous content that can be accessed anytime.

Faculty Trio: Beethoven Piano Trios, Part 3

Online

University of Washington School of Music faculty Craig Sheppard (piano), Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir (cello), and Rachel Lee Priday (violin) conclude their three-concert performance of the complete cycle of Beethoven piano trios. This performance, streamed live from the UW’s Meany Hall, is followed by a brief question-and-answer session.

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Critical Issues in Contemporary Art Practice: Sadie Barnette

Online

This lecture in the Henry Art Gallery‘s Critical Issues in Contemporary Art Practice features Sadie Barnette. Sadie Barnette utilizes drawing, photography, found objects, family memorabilia, and reimagined social spaces to effect earthly resistance and speculative escape. Combining the glittery, maximalist aesthetics of her childhood with the necessity of political resistance, her recent works engage as primary source material the 500-page FBI surveillance file kept on her father, Rodney Barnette, who founded the Compton, California, chapter of the Black Panther Party in 1968. In the artist’s hands, these repressive documents are reclaimed—splashed with pink spray paint and adorned with crystals—in an intergenerational assertion of the power of the personal as political. Born in 1984 in Oakland, California, her work has been exhibited throughout the United States and internationally. She is a recipient of the Art Matters and Artadia awards, and her work is in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Berkeley Art Museum, the California African American Museum, the Cornell Fine Arts Museum, the Pérez Art Museum in Miami, The Studio Museum in Harlem, The Brooklyn Museum, and the Guggenheim.

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ArtsUW: On Demand 

Online

Engage with the arts at the University of Washington from the comfort of your own home, in your own time. This archive of events offers you the opportunity to watch the latest virtual lectures and performances, and see recent digital exhibitions. In addition, visit ArtsUW Events to see all that is coming up. 

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Looking for more?

Check out UWAA’s Stronger Together web page for more digital engagement opportunities.

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