History Is Always Present
Join us for this gathering of incredible artists recently in residence at the Brodsky Center at PAFA: Zoë Charlton, Nell Painter, and Kukuli Velarde! This conversation moderated by Pepón Osorio will engage in a conversation dedicated to their shared practice of referencing History and unearthing unexplored chapters through an array of artistic and conceptual strategies, including the history of slavery and colonialism. By interpreting the persistence of these histories, the works of the artists on this panel aim to cope with unanswered losses, animate awareness, and speculate on a future that is built on such wakefulness.
Educators and students register for free! Please use the registration link to access the complimentary ticket.
Image: Artist Kukuli Velarde in residence at the Brodsky Center at PAFA, December 2022, working on her new edition to be published in April 2023.
Zoë Charlton
The large-scale drawings and sculptural installations by Zoë Charlton (American, b. 1973) center around the Black female body and explore personal and universal stories of affirmation and empowerment in the context of systemic socio-economic and cultural racism. At the Brodsky Center at PAFA, in collaboration with papermaker Nicole Donnelly, Charlton created, struldbrugs, a one-on-one scale photographic self-portrait watermarked into white handmade cotton paper.
Charlton holds an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin (1999) and a BFA from Florida State University in Tallahassee (1995). Her work has been featured in numerous national and international exhibitions, including the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR, and Studio Museum in Harlem, New York. It is in the collections of these museums, among many others. Her work is currently on view in the acclaimed exhibition A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration, curated by the Mississippi Museum of Art at the Baltimore Museum of Art, opening at the Brooklyn Museum, NY, on March 3rd, 2023.
Image: Artist Zoë Charlton in residence at the Brodsky Center at PAFA, working on struldbrugs, published by the Brodsky Center 2022.
Nell Painter
The work of Nell Painter (American, b. 1942) is supported by her transformative contribution as a leading historian of African American studies to the understanding of American history and the social constructions brought about by institutional frames of gender and race. As an artist, Painter shares her subjective, emotive, poetic, imaginative, and political perspective in a rich body of paintings and prints collected by museums nationally and internationally. At the Brodsky Center at PAFA, in collaboration with printer Justine Ditto, Painter created the William Still Triptych, a suite of etchings and silkscreen prints inspired by the writings and life work of the 19th century Philadelphia-based abolitionist.
Painter is the Edwards Professor of American History Emerita at Princeton University. Painter received her BFA from the Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (2009) and her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design (2011). Painter's most recent exhibition, A Million Nells, was held this past fall at Time and Space Limited, Hudson, NY.
Image: Artist Nell Painter in residence at the Brodsky Center at PAFA with collaborative printer Justine Ditto, working on William Still Triptych, published by the Brodsky Center 2022.
Kukuli Velarde
In her multimedia work in ceramic, painting, and drawing, Kukuli Velarde (Peruvian, b. 1962) foregrounds the female Brown body in the context of visual motifs evoking precolonial Latin American and Western colonial artifacts, contemporary comic literature, and advertising. Her work combines lived experience and fabricated projections of Latinx identity to explore issues of beauty outside the canons. At the Brodsky Center at PAFA, in collaboration with printer Justine Ditto, Velarde is developing a lithograph that connects her Peruvian background with her Philadelphia roots, through the shared histories o indigenous Wari and Lenape people and her family life in Kensington.
Velarde received her BFA from Hunter College, New York (1992). Her work is in the collections of the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Lima, Perú, and PAFA, among many others. Velarde's solo exhibition, CORPUS, organized by the College of Charleston Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art, Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, and the University of Texas at San Antonio closes on March 3rd, 2023, a the University of Arkansas in Little Rock.
Image: Artist Kukuli Velarde in residence at the Brodsky Center at PAFA, December 2022, working on her new edition to be published in April 2023.
Pepón Osorio
Pepón Osorio (Puerto Rican, b. 1955) creates dioramic reconstructions of domestic or government spaces that combine lifelike and symbolic elements that echo marginalized experiences or dehumanizing processes. With a background as a social worker, prior to exhibiting in museums Osorio visited numerous communities and embedded art installations in unconventional locations. In 2000, Osorio came to the Brodsky Center and made I-95, a lithograph print of the magnified artist's fingerprint superimposed on a photographic detail of his eye seen through a lenticular lens that creates a stereoscopic illusion of movement while the boxed frame translates into a constraining window.
Osorio holds a BS from Lehman College, Bronx, NY (1978) and a MA from Columbia University (1986). He is John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellow (1999). His work is in the collection of El Museo del Barrio, New York and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York among many others. Osorio is working on an exhibition project curate by the Philadelphia Contemporary entitled Convalescence at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia that will open in the fall of 2024.
Image: Artist Pepón Osorio, image credit to Temple University
History is Always Present is supported by a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.