January 4, 2023
MCLA Arts & Culture (MAC) will host a panel discussion, “Modes of Relationship,” focused
on art, race, nationality, and gender on January 26, 2023, with artist-in-residence
WANG Chen and Mikayla Patton,
artist-in-residence at The Studios at MASS MoCA.
The discussion will take place at 5 p.m. at the MCLA Design Lab on 49 Main St. The event is free and open to the public.
The panelists will reflect on the contemporary art world that insists on the ideas of authenticity and identity in their work. The discussion will be moderated by Dr. Eunice Uhm, Assistant Professor of art history and museum studies at MCLA.
“Modes of Relationship” question what it means to work as an artist with marginal identities and how identities inform artistic practices. The topics stem from the narrative Patrick Flores questions, “how can women’s art be deterred from reiterating the logic of objectification if it is to change it by reiterating its subjectivities?" Or Joan Kee’s question, “are affiliations of nation, race, and gender more important than those chosen by the artist or her work, even to the point where the latter is displaced by the former?”
WANG Chen is the 2022-2023 Benedetti Teaching artist-in-residence – a nine-month visiting fellowship offered through MAC and MCLA’s Department of Fine and Performing Arts. Chen has exhibited nationally and internationally, including at Fotografiska Museum in Stockholm, Sweden, Roswell Museum, New Mexico, Lauren Powell Project, Los Angeles, The Immigrant Artist Biennial, NYC, Alfred University, and Crosstown Art Center in Memphis. Her work incorporates drawing, animation, sculpture, costumed performance, fabrication, sound engineering, and 3D game design to create highly fictional immersive dreamscapes within video installation.
Mikayla Patton is a mixed-media artist from the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Her practice involves printmaking, paper making, beading, sculpture, and installation with an interest in the history, physicality, and symbolism of paper, sustainable methods, and paper-making through the combination of traditional and contemporary artistic methods. In 2022, Patton received the Artist in Business Leadership from First Peoples Fund, and LIFT: Early Career Support for Native Artists from Native Arts and Culture Foundation.
About MCLA
At MCLA, we’re here for all — and focused on each — of our students. Classes are taught
by educators who care deeply about teaching, and about seeing their students thrive
on every level of their lives. In nearly every way possible, the experience at MCLA
is designed to elevate our students as individuals, leaders, and communicators, fully
empowered to make their impressions on the world. In addition to our 128-year commitment
to public education, we have fortified our commitment to equitable academic excellence.
For 10 of the last 12 years, MCLA has been named a Top Ten College by U.S. News and
World Report. MCLA also appears on the organization’s list of top National Public
Liberal Arts Colleges. Since the list was created, MCLA has risen to #33 as a Top
Performer on Social Mobility and ranks first among all Massachusetts liberal arts
schools, which measures how well schools graduate students who receive Federal Pell
Grants. Learn more at www.mcla.edu.
About MAC
MCLA Arts & Culture (MAC) is MCLA’s newly expanded arts programming arm. MAC serves
as the nexus for internal and external partnerships to create engaging and equity-focused
projects that encourage public arts participation, as well as the investigation of
arts-based pedagogy that can reshape institutional practices. MAC (formerly known
as BCRC, the Berkshire Cultural Resource Center) functions as a hub that supports
interdisciplinary approaches to education, social justice, and academic research across
MCLA’s campus. MAC supports the expansion of MCLA programming to include: faculty
opportunities for interdisciplinary curriculum development; interdisciplinary faculty
and student social justice research; arts and culture symposia and workshops; internships
for underrepresented student communities; and the development of an open-access archive
that includes documented community arts projects and support tools that other college
campuses and communities can use and apply to fit their needs.
About the Studios at MASS MoCA
The Studios is MASS MoCA’s artist and writers residency program situated within the
museum’s factory campus and surrounded by the beautiful Berkshire Mountains. Operated
by MASS MoCA’s Assets for Artists department, the residency runs year-round and hosts
up to 10 artists at a time. Artists of any nationality can apply for stays of two
or four weeks. Learn more at www.assetsforartists.org/studios-at-mass-moca.
