June 6, 2022
MCLA Arts and Culture (MAC) will welcome interdisciplinary artist and researcher Sherwin Rio to campus this summer via MCLA’s Artist Lab Residency program.
Rio will join the MCLA community for the summer, creating a body of work that will culminate in a residency at MCLA’s Gallery 51 on Main Street in North Adams. At least two times a year, Artist Lab residents are invited to create work, share work, and in some cases teach courses at MCLA. The artist is provided housing and given a studio space in the Art Lab, next door to Gallery 51. In Art Lab, artists can conduct workshops, talks, and other types of programming they are interested in facilitating for the community.
The MCLA Artist Lab (Laboratory) Residency was created to give MCLA students, and the North Adams community, access to accomplished artists from all over the world. The Artist Lab Residency is dedicated to supporting the creation, exhibition, criticism, and documentation of work by historically underrepresented artists. The artists invited to participate provide both inspiration and advice for best navigating and understanding the art world. Artists are selected based on their practice, their contribution to the art world, and the way in which their career reflects the diversity of thought, talent and triumph that exists among artists striving to contribute to, and consequently expand, what is considered the art history canon.
Learn more at https://www.mcla.edu/mcla-in-the-community/bcrc/mcla-gallery-51/untitled.php.
About Sherwin Rio
Sherwin Rio (Brooklyn/San Francisco) is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher making site-specific and research-based metaphors addressing colonization, historical public amnesia, and intergenerational storytelling through a Filipinx-American lens in the fields of sculpture, installation, video, performance, and audio. He has exhibited and performed as a solo and collaborative artist in venues such as: La Becque (CH), Asian Art Museum of San Francisco (CA), de Young Museum (CA), Carnegie Museum of Art (PA), Carlsbad Museum of Art (NM), San Jose State University (CA), Portland State University (OR), University of Northern Colorado (CO), Human Resources (CA), and Torpedo Factory (VA). His work has been acquired by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
Rio has received awards including the San Francisco Foundation's Jack K. and Gertrude Murphy Award, the Ella King Torrey Award for Innovation and Excellence in the Arts, and the San Francisco Art Institute's Outstanding MFA Graduate Award, as well as a fellowship at the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, CA. He has had residencies at the Josephine Sculpture Park (Frankfort, KY) through the International Sculpture Center and the Walkaway House (North Adams, MA).
He received a dual MFA in Studio Art and MA in History and Theory of Contemporary Art from SFAI and a BFA in Printmaking with a minor in Art History from the University of Florida.
