Side by Side: Beili Liu and Aram Han Sifuentes, giving voice to social and political concerns through material, performance and craft.
Friday, November 20, 2020, 4-5 PM CST
Side by Side: Beili Liu and Aram Han Sifuentes, giving voice to social and political concerns through material, performance and craft.
Austin-based visual artist Beili Liu and Chicago-based fiber and performance artist Aram Han Sifuentes will both speak and provide unique insight into their work, influences, and practices. Moderated by Janeil Engelstad, Founding Director of Make Art with Purpose (MAP) and Jacqueline Chao, Senior Curator, Crow Museum of Asian Art, this conversation is part of the festival MAP2020: The Further We Roll, The More We Gain, which commemorates the 100th anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution with art and public programs throughout Dallas and Fort Worth, including at the Crow Museum of Asian Art. This conversation will explore how the artists address the themes of migration, immigration, motherhood and identity in their work. Q&A to follow.
Beili Liu’s and Aram Han Sifuentes’ participation in MAP2020: The Further We Roll, The More We Gain was funded in part by Dallas Arts District Foundation.
About the Panelists:
Beili Liu is a visual artist who creates material and process-driven, site-responsive installations. Working with commonplace materials and elements such as thread, scissors, paper, stone, fire, and water, Liu manipulates their intrinsic qualities to extrapolate complex cultural narratives. Liu’s work has been exhibited in Asia, Europe, and across the United States. She has held solo exhibitions at venues such as the Ha Gamle Prestegard, Norwegian National Art and Culture Center; Hua Gallery, London, UK; and the Chinese Culture Foundation in San Francisco. Liu has been awarded the 2016 Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Grant, and named the 2018 Texas State Artist in 3D medium by the Texas State Legislature and the Texas Commission on the Arts. Liu’s work has received support from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Artistic Innovation and Collaboration Grant (Women and Their Work, 2013) and the National Endowment for the Arts (Museum of Southeast Texas, 2014).
Born in Jilin, China, Liu now lives and works in Austin, Texas. She received her MFA from The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and is currently the Leslie Waggener Professor in the Fine Arts at The University of Texas at Austin.
Aram Han Sifuentes is a fiber and social practice artist who works to claim spaces for immigrant and disenfranchised communities. Her work often revolves around skill sharing, specifically sewing techniques, to create multiethnic and intergenerational sewing circles, which become a place for empowerment, subversion and protest. Exhibitions of her work have been exhibited at Jane Addams Hull-House Museum (Chicago, IL), Hyde Park Art Center (Chicago, IL), Chicago Cultural Center (Chicago, IL), Pulitzer Arts Foundation (St. Louis, MO), MCA Denver (Denver, CO), and Moody Center for the Arts (Houston, TX). Her multi-stage solo exhibition, Talking Back to Power: Projects by Aram Han Sifuentes, is currently at the Skirball Cultural Center (Los Angeles, CA) in 2020-2022.
Aram is a 2016 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow, 2016 3Arts Awardee, and a 2020 Map Fund Grantee. Her project Protest Banner Lending Library was a finalist for the Beazley Design Awards at the Design Museum (London, UK) in 2016. She earned her BA in Art and Latin American Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, and her MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is currently an Adjunct Associate Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the 2020-2021 Artist-in-Residence at Loyola University Chicago.
Janeil Engelstad is an artist, activist and the Founding Director of Make Art with Purpose (MAP), an organization that produces collaborative, interdisciplinary projects addressing social and environmental concerns throughout the world. Engelstad’s work has been exhibited and produced in partnership with Amon Carter Museum of American Art, ARTMargins, California Museum of Photography, Center for Book and Paper Arts, City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, Dallas Museum of Art, Hyde Park Art Center, International Center of Photography, Laznia Centre for Contemporary Art Gdańsk, Museum of Arts and Design, New York City DOT Art Program, Oboro Montréal, Stanica Žilina-Záriečie, Whitebox and others. A Fulbright Scholar, Engelstad is a member of the Social Practice Art Research Center at University of California, Santa Cruz and is currently part of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government’s Public Leadership Program. In 2021 she will be Artist in Residence at the Institute for Global Engagement at University of Washington, Tacoma.
Dr. Jacqueline Chao is Senior Curator of Asian Art at the Crow Museum of Asian Art of the University of Texas at Dallas. Her curated exhibitions have presented works ranging from the historical to the contemporary in all medias from emerging and established artists from across the globe. A specialist in Chinese and Buddhist art, she previously taught Asian Art History at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, was Director of Exhibitions and Residencies at Chicago Artists Coalition, and contributed research to the Chinese painting collection at the Art Institute of Chicago. She holds an MA and PhD in the History and Theory of Art from Arizona State University, and an Honors BA in Art History from the University of Toronto.