Chat About
Please join us for our second Chat About Session of the Spring term this Friday!
Cameron Mankin & Robyn Tisman | Iona Liu, Thomas Lin & Yiran Chi
Cameron Mankin and Robyn Tisman explore the roles imagery, design, and textual materiality play in formation of both identity and art object itself. We discuss the use of found objects, surveillance footage and screens, and notions of inherent vice in the construction and dematerialization of new realities.
Iona Liu (MFA), Thomas Lin (MPP), and Yiran Chi (MAPH) consider how the politics of reproduction intersect with mass media, folk religion, mythology and scientific discourse. Iona, Thomas and Yiran reflect on how Iona’s multimedia installations and recent paintings illustrate her ever-expanding fascination with the historical, cultural, ideological and technological conjunctures of reproductive politics. Attentive to both local and global perspectives, Iona’s practices fundamentally question restrictive definitions of human, motherhood, and reproductive justice.
Presenter Bios
Cameron Mankin (b. 1993) makes drawings, prints, and artist's books that explore the role of design and rhetoric in the shaping of public space and personal identity. Working primarily from found materials, he investigates delicate systemic problems with a tongue-in-cheek rigor. Mankin received his BA in Visual Art from the University of Virginia (2016) and completed his MFA at the University of Chicago (2020). He is currently a lecturer in the University of Chicago's Media Art and Design program, where he teaches courses like Machine Learning at the Archive and Art and Digital Fabrication.
Robyn Tisman is an independent art advisor specializing in Postwar and Contemporary Art. Her career spans more than a decade working with artists, galleries, museums and cultural institutions in America and overseas. Among her favorite projects, Robyn counts working with artist Steve Balkin (one of Warhol’s Thirteen Most Beautiful Boys) to further document his cultural impact as an early producer of Fluxus Happenings and documentary photographer of the 1960s and ‘70s New York art world. She holds both her BSC and MA degrees from Northwestern University, and post-graduate certificates in Art Business and Fine Art Appraisal from New York University. Robyn currently works as a curatorial research assistant at The Smart Museum at The University of Chicago where she is continuing her graduate studies. Her research focuses on the intersections of Conceptual Art and language, fiction, intertextuality, and the material traces of fictive artists.
Iona Liu graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, currently getting an MFA degree at the University of Chicago. She is an independent artist who attempts to reinterpret feminism through technological media, liberate the reproductive choice of modern women from the shackle of traditional value, and re-examine the life choices of women as independent personalities. Her most recent solo exhibition was held in Hüten Gallery, Shanghai, China.
Thomas Lin is currently a public policy graduate student at the University of Chicago. At night, he is your reliable neighborhood philosopher who focuses on philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and mythology. This is his fourth consecutive year proposing to bring back knight duel in philosophy through International Federation of Philosophical Societies. This is also his third consecutive year to be banned by International Federation of Philosophical Societies.
Yiran Chi is a MAPH student and the Graduate Curatorial Intern at the Smart Museum. She graduated from Northwestern University with a major in Art History and a minor in Film and Media Studies. Her research interests include feminist and queer theories and moving images at the intersection of contemporary art and computational media. Previously, Yiran worked at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at Brooklyn Museum, The Drawing Center, and White Columns in New York.
Chat About is a student-run open-critique hosted by graduate students, supported by the Department of Art and the History Department of Visual Arts.
These open-critiques are organized to build community and to hold space for inter-disciplinary discourse—with an emphasis of thinking alongside practice and research. Artists open their work to a spectrum of opinions and articulate their practice; art historians, curators, and scholars probe, suggest and situate these works through research and exploration. We hope that Chat About inculcates space to discover new affinities and relationships.
Please contact Toby Wu (tobywu@uchicago.edu) or Catilyn Au (cmau@uchicago.edu) with any questions.
Image Details: Cameron Mankin | Iona Liu, Fetal Wishing Service Station, 2020, Mixed Media