Artist Talk with iris yirei hu
Weaver girl limns two rainbows:
An Artist Talk by iris yirei hu in conversation with Nasrin Himada and Jennifer Smith
November 16 at 7:00 pm CT
Event recording
Gallery 1C03 is pleased to invite you to another online gathering as part of Sovereign Intimacies, an exhibition co-curated by Nasrin Himada and Jennifer Smith in partnership with Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art, with support from Video Pool Media Arts Centre.
“Sovereign Intimacies” artist iris yirei hu will be in conversation with exhibition curators Nasrin Himada and Jennifer Smith. Through iris’s work, including the sculptural installation “Weaver girl limns two rainbows,” they will talk about the ways in which collaborations and fostering space for transformative encounters within interpersonal, cross-cultural relationships manifest in the exhibition, and how we can look to the genuine and nurturing relationships in our daily lives for guidance in changing the way museums and art spaces operate.
iris yirei hu (b. 1991, Los Angeles, CA) is an artist who works in painting, fibers, writing, and assemblage. In her work, one may encounter materials, stories, living organisms, and ecologies from Taiwan, California, Southern China, Mexico, and the American Southwest. She is interested in how people, places, and things are interconnected and networked, and how collaboration in the form of learning from, working with, and being in relation to, can enable transformative futures and friendships. Her work has led her to form connections with historians, artists, scientists, keepers of traditions, and community organizers and stakeholders, and she centers learning and collaboration as methods of engagement.
Her work is both research based and dependent on lived experience. hu has shown her work at the Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), OxyArts at Occidental College, John Michael Kohler Arts Center (Sheboygan, WI), Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Women's Center for Creative Work, Human Resources, Lenfest Center for the Arts (New York, NY), and Visitor Welcome Center. Public art commissions include mural wraps at California State University Dominguez Hills (2020) and bus and rail posters for Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (2016). She has held residencies at the Women's Center for Creative Work (2018), Carrizozo AIR (2020), and is currently in residence at the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator (LACI), where she will develop creative projects to reorient ourselves in the immediacy of the changing environment. Her work has been reviewed and featured in the LA Times, Artforum, Carla, CNN, Sinovision, KCET, X-TRA Online, and Artillery. She is working on her first book and is currently teaching Fine Arts at Otis College of Art and Design. She earned her BA from UCLA and MFA from Columbia University in the City of New York.
Sovereign Intimacies is a group exhibition co-curated by Nasrin Himada and Jennifer Smith, in partnership with Gallery 1C03, with support from Video Pool Media Arts Centre. The exhibition takes place at Plug In ICA from September 26 – December 20, 2020, with extensive programming that consists of online talks, workshops, screenings, and poetry readings. Sovereign Intimacies explores themes of cultural and community exchange between Indigenous artists and artists from the diaspora, more specifically artists who are First Nations, Inuit and Métis collaborating with artists living in what is currently called Canada who came to this land and are not part of the settler/colonial history of the country. The group show consists of pairings of artists, as well as individuals, whose work is based on process and relationship building, and for those whose work is invested in active conceptualization around topics of friendship and intimacy, who are working to build collective vision of a sovereign future. Due to current health restrictions, the exhibition at Plug In ICA is presently closed. We will announce when it is has re-opened.
Acknowledgments:
Gallery 1C03, Plug In ICA and Video Pool Media Arts Centre are on Treaty 1 Territory. We are located on the territories of the Anishinaabeg, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and the homeland of the Métis Nation.
Gallery 1C03 acknowledges financial assistance for Sovereign Intimacies from The University of Winnipeg and the Manitoba Arts Council.
For more information, contact:
Jennifer Gibson, Director/Curator, Gallery 1C03