Join the Sié Center and the School of Art and Art History (SAAH) for this collaborative event as part of the Cultural Diplomacy Initiative! Each year, SAAH hosts the Lanius Lecture, a series that brings to the DU campus distinguished artists, scholars, and curators working in areas formerly marginalized by art historical and museum/arts institutional narratives. By shifting our attention to these areas of focus, particularly the global south, diasporic communities, and indigenous communities, this lecture series reaffirms the DU School of Art and Art History’s commitment to amplifying these voices, as well as the role of arts and culture in the field of diplomacy and intercultural exchange. We are grateful to the Lanius Lecture Series for funding this event!

On Thursday, October 10th, we are thrilled to be joined by Iranian-American artist and educator Maryam Taghavi مریم تقوی . Originally from Tehran and currently based in Chicago, she holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Emily Carr University and a Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she was honored with the New Artist Society Scholarship.

Maryam has showcased her work both nationally and internationally at prominent venues such as LAXART, the Queens Museum, Exterressa Museum, the Chicago Cultural Center, EXPO Chicago, the Driehaus Museum, the Chicago Artists Coalition, The University Club, and Sazmanab Gallery, among others. Her work has garnered numerous awards and grants, including support from the Canada Council for the Arts and the 2022 Artadia Award.

In 2023, her work was permanently installed at O’Hare International Airport, and she launched her solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in 2024. Maryam is a lecturer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

About the event:

We will first begin with opening remarks by affiliated Korbel/Sie Center faculty Dr. Andrea Stanton to discuss the Cultural Diplomacy initiative, followed by an introduction of the Lanius Lecture and the artist's work by SAAH professor of global contemporary art history Dr. Sarah Magnatta.

Maryam Taghavi’s practice is driven by the power of language in shaping perception and forming belief systems. Through her work, she seeks to subvert these systems of meaning-making by reincarnating symbols, signs, and names, reexamining their meanings through a feminist diasporic lens.

In her interdisciplinary approach, written text becomes a physical entity, where its materiality introduces a third dimension that integrates personal, cultural, social, and metaphysical elements into the meaning-making process. Her exploration of abstraction and language has led her to study talismans, calligraphy, and the Islamic occult—domains where the arrangement of letterforms and numbers is believed to harness magical powers.

In this talk, she will introduce her oeuvre, with a focus on her touring exhibition that was inaugurated at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.

Join us for an evening of art, conversation, and community!

Doors open at 5pm and programming begins at 5:30pm. Refreshments will be provided! Please feel free to contact the Sié Center about parking and accessibility needs at sie.center@du.edu.

Link to eventbrite here:

The Partition of British India in August 1947 divided the subcontinent into the nations of India and Pakistan and incited the largest mass migration in human history. Independence from colonial rule was thus cause for both celebration and despair—a paradox that artists of the period represented in varied and arresting ways. Post-independence art reveals a unique confluence of mixed emotions and histories, where ancient tales and modern abstraction convey both sorrow and hope, separation and unity. In honor of the 75th anniversary of independence, this presentation entitled “Crossing the Line and Closing the Circle: The Legacy of Independence on Modern Indian Art” examines the dreams and visions of artists working after 1947, through works that convey tremendous cultural pride as well as visions of a hopeful though undetermined future. 

Siddhartha V. Shah is the John Wieland 1958 Director of the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College.  He was previously the Director of Education and Civic Engagement and Curator of South Asian Art at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, which is home to one of the leading collections of modern Indian art outside the subcontinent. Dr. Shah earned his BA in art history from Johns Hopkins University, an MA in Hindu philosophy and Jungian psychoanalysis from the California Institute of Integral Studies, and a PhD in art history from Columbia University.  His academic and curatorial projects have been featured in publications ranging from The Times of India and India Today, to The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, and Psychology Today.

Join Shanna Shelby, Denver Arts & Venues, and guest curators by Sarah Magnatta and Christy Cattin for a discussion on the life and work of Louise Cadillac.  

This virtual discussion is a companion to "Stone, Ritual, Interior: Paintings by Louise Cadillac" on display at McNichols Civic Center Building, Second Floor Boettcher Cultural Pavilion, October 16- December 19, 2021, and presented in conjunction with Denver Arts Week.

This event is free and open to the public, but people must register in order to get a link and instructions to join the discussion. 

About the exhibition: In 1989, an art critic noted Louise Cadillac’s paintings “work like a vivid but imperfectly understood dream... the paintings burrow series by series, deeper and deeper into unconscious thought.” Artworks from those same series referenced—the Stone Series, Ritual Series and Interior Series—are amongst those presented in this exhibition more than thirty years after their initial showing.  And although the paintings may still serve as glimpses of unconscious thought, they are also tangible markers of a full life.

Cadillac, now in her mid-nineties, employs a number of experimental painting techniques in her work: “My efforts are to produce a surface as visually rich as it is richly symbolic of the layers of time, of space, of oxidation, and corrosion.” Although her paintings have been published in several books and journals, including The Artist’s Magazine and Creative Watercolors, Cadillac was perhaps underappreciated as an artist who explored abstract imagery during the predominance of figural painting in the 1980s. The works shown here—a mere handful from the more than 700 acrylic paintings, watercolors, and monotypes Cadillac produced during the past half century—are a testament to her life’s work as one of Colorado’s great abstract artists.

Join me and the artists opening night for the reception for Spirit Resonance: The Vitality of Printmaking. More details found here.

Karma and Faith: The Artwork of Karma Phuntsok and Faith Stone

Stay tuned for details and click here for the Chancery Art Space website.

Join me at the Tibet House, U.S. in New York City for the opening of Tenzing Rigdol: My World Is in Your Blind Spot. More information here. Information about Curator’s tour (5-5:45) found here.

Join this timely conversation about collecting and selling art in the current art market. We’ll talk about what it means for both artists and collectors to subvert the art-buying process, the links between art and our well-being, and how to create a different kind of value within the exchange of art and money. Free and open to everyone. Please register to attend. 

Panelists include writer, curator and Hey Hue founder Deanne Gertner; holistic therapist and founder of Trilogy Holistic Mental Health, Chelli Pumphrey; independent curator and University of Denver affiliate faculty, Sarah Magnatta; and Denver artist and design researcher, Angela Craven.

For more information, please visit the RiNo Made Salon website here.

Panel at the Association for Asian Studies

Location: Savoy, Tower Bldg., Majestic Level

Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel

The 2019 Venice Biennale will be titled “May You Live in Interesting Times” and will “view works through the lens of the political unrest caused by the spread of misinformation.”  Artists around the globe are navigating identity and culture, political ecologies, and geographic displacement--all issues that are subject to misinformation or misunderstanding--in ways that are unexpected and challenging.  Tenzing Rigdol’s series of Buddha panels, titled My World is in Your Blindspot, showcase the self-immolations of Tibetans under Chinese rule; the reference to a “blindspot” speaks to both the viewer’s lack of knowledge of these events, but also to the media’s lack of coverage.  Artist B. Baatarzorig’s MGL addresses the politicization and commercialization of Mongolian natural resources, raising  important questions regarding the environmental effects of such practices and the imbalance of profit resulting from them.  Lhasa-based artists Nortse, Gade, and Tsering Nyandak create work that comment on economic and cultural displacement, issues that affect Tibetan artists both in Tibet and abroad, but are especially nuanced coming from artists living in the contested land.  Khadim Ali explores disparate interpretations of cultural heritage through his work regarding the Bamiyan Buddhas, including Islamic and Buddhist views, in an attempt to overcome misinformation with global understanding. The intersection of art and politics is not new, but the emerging discourse surrounding misinformation and/or misunderstanding is interpreted and reflected in new ways by artists in Asia and beyond.  This panel explores the role of the artist in these “interesting times.”

Organized by Sarah Magnatta. Panelists include Sarah Magnatta, Uranchimeg Tsultem, Yi Yi Mon (Rosaline) Kyo, and Padma Maitland. For more information, please see the conference website here.

Please join us on Friday, March 22 at 6pm at McNichols Building for the opening night of the exhibition Leang Seckon: Prophecy.  The artist will be performing a work inspired by traditional Cambodian dance at 7pm.  

Leang Seckon was born in Prey Veng province, Cambodia, in the early 1970’s and lived during a time of genocide perpetrated by the ruling Khmer Rouge.  His artwork often reflects this fraught history, so much so that his 2014 solo exhibition at Rossi & Rossi in London was titled Hell on Earth.  His paintings are often multi-layered, both literally and symbolically.  He uses cut-outs to create deep patterning and shadows within the canvas; the resulting effect is visually stunning.  His paintings and collages bring unlikely figures together: kings from Cambodia’s past empires sit aside modern global political leaders.  The exhibition at McNichols Building brings together a dozen of Seckon’s latest endeavors, including paintings, collages, and installed mixed-media works.  The exhibition is guest curated by Sarah Magnatta.

For more information please visit the McNichols site here.

For parking information, please see Emmanuel Art Gallery website here.

Artist, activist, and poet, Tenzing Rigdol, will discuss his upcoming exhibition at the Emmanuel Gallery with curator Sarah Magnatta.

Rigdol was trained in several traditional Tibetan arts, including thangka painting, in India and Nepal. He moved to the United States and graduated from the College of Arts and Media at the University of Colorado, Denver, in 2005.  His mastery over a wide range of materials is evident in his paintings, digital works, photographs, and a site-specific installation of Tibetan soil brought to India.  Rigdol was the first contemporary Tibetan artist to have work collected by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Rigdol’s large series of Buddhas will be the centerpiece of Rigdol’s first solo exhibition in the United States, opening March 21 on the campus of the University of Colorado at Denver.

WHEN
Thursday, February 28, 2019
6 - 7 PM
Doors open at 5:30 PM
Reception to follow

WHERE
Denver Art Museum
Hamilton Building, Sharp Auditorium
100 West 14th Ave. Parkway
Denver, CO 80204

TICKETS
Free for Contemporary Alliance members and students with valid student ID
$20 Non-members, $15 DAM members, $10 DAM volunteers

A reception will follow at the ART, a hotel.

The Logan Lecture Series is sponsored by Vicki and Kent Logan in affiliation with Contemporary Alliance, a Denver Art Museum support group.

Image: Tenzing Rigdol, My World is in Your Blindspot (detail), 2014. Silk brocade, scripture; five panels, 182 cm x 182 cm (6 x 6 ft) each.

Contemporary Alliance website