Pratt Institute Visiting Artist Lecture Series: Park McArthur
ASL and CART will be available for this lecture.
New York-based artist Park McArthur works primarily in sculpture, sound and text. In addition to her use of readymade industrial objects, McArthur is interested in objects that result from, what she describes as, “the work necessary for life,” work that is also known as reproductive labor or living labor. Objects of this nature featured in previous sculptures and installations include, the artist’s own pajamas, worn and altered by processes of care and sleep, as well as twenty temporary access ramps, made or purchased at McArthur’s request in order to enter and exit buildings by wheelchair. Less interested in the body as a sovereign unit than in the fleshiness of bodies that deny such a unit, McArthur asks what materiality has to do with flesh and what flesh has to do with absorption, and absorption’s sibling, expulsion.
Under the guidance and instruction of disability McArthur experiments with personal and social meanings of debility, delay and dependency by making artwork across different media and formats. With Constantina Zavitsanos McArthur has published texts and exhibited collaborative work. In 2016 McArthur co-organized with Jennifer Burris a survey of Beverly Buchanan’s artistic practice that traveled from The Brooklyn Museum to The Spelman College Museum of Fine Art. McArthur has presented exhibitions at Kunsthalle Bern, MoMA, SFMOMA, and Chisenhale Gallery and in 2019 joined The Department of Art & Design at Rutgers University as Tepper Family Endowed Chair.
Top Image Credit: Park McArthur with Paula Stuttman, PARA-SITES, 2018, digital audio and transcript, English, installation view at MoMA, listening device, 1 + 3 AP; courtesy the artist and Maxwell Graham / Essex Street
About Pratt Institute Visiting Artist Lecture Series
Each year Pratt Fine Arts invites contemporary artists for a public lecture and to conduct studio visits with fine arts graduate students. This Visiting Artists Lecture Series (VALS) is coordinated by graduate student leaders. The aim is to provide our students with exposure to a wide array of artists working in a variety of fields at various stages in their career. Recent and past visiting artists include: Abigail D. Deville, Edgar Heap of Birds, Jennie Jieun Lee, Shazia Sikander, Elektra KB, Nina Katchadourian, Wardell Milan, Wendy Red Star, Narcissister, Pradeep Dalal, James Hyde, Jill Magid, Schezerade Garcia, Rochelle Feinstein, Lavar Munroe, Lorna Simpson, Rico Gatson,Nicole Eisenman, Tom Sachs, Aura Satz, Leigh Ledare, Judith Bernstein, Dan Walsh, Kalup Linzey, Keltie Ferris, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Diana Al-Hadid, Rashaad Newsome, Dora + Maja, Bryan Zanisnik, Nancy Grossman,Peter Saul, Michael Berryhill, Wafaa Bilal, and Catherine Opie.
Pratt’s Fine Arts Department Visiting Artists Lecture Series was made possible by a generous grant from the Robert Lehman Foundation.