Artist Beatriz Santiago Muñoz to give talk at Civic Studio

Civic Studio, in conjunction with the GVSU Art & Design Department’s Visiting Artist Committee, is honored to host a lecture by artist Beatriz Santiago Muñoz at 6:30 p.m. on February 1, 2017, at Civic Studio’s current project site at 336 Straight Ave. SW in Grand Rapids. Limited seating is available and no admission fee of any kind will be charged.

Santiago Muñoz, who is based in San Juan, Puerto Rico, is visiting Grand Rapids and GVSU while preparing for the 2017 Whitney Biennial, amidst recent projects at Serpentine Gallery in London, Sullivan Galleries in Chicago, El Museo del Barrio and the New Museum in New York, and the Institute for New Connotative Action in Seattle.

Her work, which is rooted in traditions of video art and documentary filmmaking, explores recuperation from trauma, regeneration, affect, and the ways in which our connections to the past are actively produced, maintained, and refuted. The uncontrived, observational style of her art aligns it with the sensibility of documentary film, while simultaneously blurring the boundaries between fact and fiction. Her focus on the in-depth exploration of such subject matter as the the post-colonial Caribbean has resulted in a body of work which displays a profound level of engagement with cultural and material histories of places and peoples. Despite its ostensible simplicity, Santiago Muñoz’s work stems from intensive research, and demonstrates her concern for the role of the camera as a linguistic, political, and conceptual frame through which actions or events are seen.

This will be the third ART AND THE RADICAL talk, a lecture series featuring creative workers whose projects deepen our understanding of the world by revealing alternate histories, highlighting marginalized communities, and challenging widely held beliefs and traditions. Fall 2016 events featured artists Jen Delos Reyes and Nicolas Lampert. Details will be forthcoming on the upcoming lecture by Jeanne Vaccaro.