How does contemporary art create opportunities for critical engagement in the language classroom? This presentation will explore the ways in which an orientation toward contemporary and global art practices serves as a critical and creative praxis to expand the potential for socially-just language learning.
CAA Panel
We are teaching at a moment in which entrenched positions of bias and exclusion have been reaffirmed and reified in the national dialogue, while at the same time, our student populations are increasingly diverse representing a range of identities (racial, ethnic, linguistic, national, ability, gender, sexual-preference, and economic). As such, there is a growing need in academia to have an honest conversation about power dynamics in the classroom. Enacting inclusive pedagogies is necessary for students from historically marginalized and underrepresented groups to feel safe and have a voice; however, some educators may feel unprepared while others may feel too overloaded by their current responsibilities to undertake such work. Still others may feel they have to choose between teaching the “true” content of their classes and addressing the needs of “non-normative” students. This panel seeks to address a range of topics related to practical approaches for inclusion, awareness, diversity training, and the cultivation of empathy. The following questions serve as a guide for papers to develop or oppose: How can we employ pedagogical models (feminist, queer, hip-hop, etc.) to include rather than silence or tokenize these student populations? And how can we do so from micro levels (individual assignments) to marco levels (program development)? How do we implicate students from majority identity groups (white, cis, male, able-bodied, middle/upper-class, etc.) so they engage these concerns as necessary for their own lives? And finally, how do we use arts-based skills of noticing, interpretation, and critique as skill-sets for ethical engagements with difference?
More info here.
Group Exhibition
Opening: Saturday 3 February 7:00pm - 9:00pm
Shhh… surveys a landscape of propaganda, information and disinformation, darkened by political uncertainty. It’s a story of amorphous narratives, irrational conclusions and omnipresent media – an epic of a nation coming apart under the pressure of its own freedoms and liberties.
More info here.
Group Exhibition
Opening: Saturday 3 February 7:00pm - 11:00pm
Alex Chitty, Anna Showers-Cruser, Sherwin Ovid, Danny Floyd, Jory Drew, Allison Yasukawa, Josh Rios, Stella J. Brown, Brandon Alvendia, Meg Nafziger, Lauren Edwards
Curated by Jesse Malmed
Most of the words used in this text have been used thibsing’d of times. Aside from the occasional neologism, they’re generally used and well used and, like so many luxury goods, we don’t own them, we’re just their temporary steward. It's hard to imagine an exhibition that isn't site-specific. If the works work in a vacuum, well that's about as specific a place as we can imagine. You will have to trust that every word in this sentence was not typed but pasted from a sprawling series of fascinating and far better texts.
Heaven Is a Place brings together a banker’s dozen of artists each making work for a specific show, just not the same one. Each work constitutes a(n art) historical insertion and a speculative citation and a wormhole to another exhibition. Featuring some of Chicago’s sharpest, this exhibition offers the opportunity for a bit of historical re-vision-ing, in which the august museum group show from our birth year—first discovered through a tattered library copy of the exhibition catalogue—finally includes our work; where the hot new show at the cool new space in the temperate old town that included every idea you have but not the name you use gets rectified; where the doodle in the margin becomes canon with the blithe affect of a butterfly.
Solo Exhibition
Opening: 7 October, 2017 6:00pm - 9:00pm
Allison Yasukawa’s project for Ski Club, Mayhem, is a character study in an American archetype: the grandeur-delusional asshole. He is charming, he is reckless, and he has the drive, and the expectation, to be the very best of the very worst. He was there, reigning on high, when something went terribly, terribly wrong. Now he is no longer America’s loathsome sweetheart, but he will not take his defeat lying down. Mayhem is his undoing—an ensuing destruction that slams him to the ground, swagger and all.
More info here.
Two-Person Exhibition
Opening: 14 October, 2017 6:00pm - 9:00pm
In the wake of the summer Olympic games, and on the eve of the presidential elections, we are witness to an America that is as enduring as it is invincible. The artworks in Best Dream Success by Adam Farcus and Allison Yasukawa question who authors America and how it is defined by engaging ideologies, experiences, and geographies that are perhaps lesser considered but equally relevant.
More info here.
I will be co-chairing the panel “Miss Nelson is Missing: Fostering Risk-Taking and Student Autonomy in Introductory Studio Classes.”
I will be co-chairing the panel “Art + Speak: The State of English Language Education in Art Schools.”
