ART AND IMMORTALITY: Anton Vidokle and Xiaoyu Weng

Anton Vidokle, Immortality and Resurrection for All (still), 2017. Courtesy the artist.

Tuesday, February 19, 7:00 pm SVA MA Curatorial Practice, 132 West 21st Street, 10th floor, New York, NY

Guggenheim curator Xiaoyu Weng speaks with artist and e-flux founder Anton Vidokle about his research and films on Russian Cosmism and the theme of her forthcoming Ural Industrial Biennial, Immortality.

______

Anton Vidokle (b.1965, Russia) is an artist based in New York and Berlin. As founder of e- flux and e-flux journal, he has produced projects such as the Martha Rosler Library 2005- 2006, Pawnshop 2007, unitednationsplaza 2008-09 and Time/Bank 2010. Vidokle’s work has been exhibited internationally at Documenta 13 and the 56th Venice . His films have been screened at Bergen Assembly; Biennale; ; Witte de With, Rotterdam; Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw; Berlinale International Film Festival; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; ; Locarno Festival; and Centre Pompidou, among others.

Xiaoyu Weng was appointed to spearhead The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Chinese Art Initiative in 2015. At the Guggenheim, she has cocurated the exhibitions Tales of Our Time (2016–17) and One Hand Clapping, on view from May 4 through October 21, 2018. Previously she served as the founding director of the Kadist Art Foundation’s Asia Programs, Paris and San Francisco. She launched the Kadist Curatorial Collaboration, which organizes exhibitions that stimulate cultural exchange, and she oversaw artist residencies and the building of the contemporary Asian art collection. From 2009 to 2010, she worked as a curator at the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts at the California College of the Arts (CCA). Her other recent projects include Soft Crash at Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo, Italy (2016); Robert Zhao Renhui: Flies Prefer Yellow at Kadist Art Foundation, San Francisco (2014–15); Landscape: the virtual, the actual, the possible? at Guangdong Times Museum, Guangzhou, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco (2014); Invisible Hand: Curating as Gesture, the second CAFAM International Biennial at Central Academy of Fine Arts Museum, Beijing (2014); and Ming Wong: Making Chinatown at Kadist Art Foundation, San Francisco (2013). Educated at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing and CCA in San Francisco, Weng also has written on contemporary art and visual culture for various periodicals and in numerous catalogues, including those published for the 2012 Gwangju Biennial, 2012 Shenzhen Sculpture Biennial, and 2013 Auckland Triennial. She is a contributing editor of Leap, a bilingual magazine dedicated to contemporary art and visual culture from China. Her essay “Working with Archive” won the Artforum Critical Writing Award in 2011. Weng is the recipient of the 2017 Visionary Awards, which are presented by Art in General, New York, to highlight work that champions the transformative power of art and that nurtures and supports diverse artistic talents. Weng was selected for her innovative leadership and singular contributions to the field. She was also the winner of the eighth edition of Premio Lorenzo Bonald per L’Arte Enterprize for international curators in 2015.

______ABOUT MA CURATORIAL PRACTICE, THE SCHOOL OF VISUAL ARTS, NEW YORK

The Master of Arts degree in Curatorial Practice is a two-year program that focuses on professional training, with a thorough grounding in the relevant study of history, research, and theory, and with an emphasis on hands-on work with leading experts in the field, along with continuous opportunities for professional networking with curators, museum directors, and other professionals from around the world. Our foremost goal is to provide practical experience and intellectual depth in order to place graduates of the program in curatorial jobs. The program takes full advantage of the vast number of arts institutions and professionals on the doorstep of the school in Chelsea and throughout New York City, which provides countless occasions for study, mentoring, and professional development. Go to macp.sva.edu to find out more.