It is a new year at SVA, which means new exhibitions, events and workshops. This month, you can attend a wonderful array of virtual lectures from photo industry experts as part of the i3: Images, Ideas, Inspiration series’ 10th anniversary, or try something new, like a virtual drawing or photography workshop with Continuing Education. Deep discussions on the intersection of art and politics, plus more online exhibitions, fill out this month’s offerings.

VIRTUAL EVENTS

January 11, 7:00 - 8:30pm | Ellen Jantzen

Join MPS Digital Photography for a lecture with St. Louis, MO-based image-maker Ellen Jantzen as part of the program's i3: Images, Ideas, Inspiration lecture series, now in its 10th year. A true confluence of technical advancements and creative desire culminates in Jantzen's current explorations of photo-inspired art, which uses a camera to capture imagery and a computer to alter, combine and manipulate the pieces. Jantzen's works, best described as “photomontages,” are shown and published internationally.

January 12, 6:30 - 8:00pm | Location Photography

Join SVA Continuing Education faculty members Janusz Kawa, Stacy Mehrfar, Joseph Sinnott and Esteban Toro for a panel discussion on the craft, production and aesthetics of making photographs on location. The event will start with each panelist presenting some of their work along with a conversation around the paths they took to achieve their results. An extended Q&A will allow attendees to have their questions answered.

January 13, 7:00 - 8:30pm | Daredoodles with Tom Motley

Join cartooning instructor Tom Motley for a series of drawing dares derived from his classes Cartooning Basics, Figure Drawing for Cartoonists and his new course on Short Form Comics. This time, attendees will generate doodles and develop them into comic sequences.

January 18, 6:30 - 8:00pm | America through a Chinese Lens with Herb Tam, curator/historian

Join curator Herb Hoi Chun Tam for a talk about the perceptions and self-representation of the Chinese American experience. Drawing from the Museum of Chinese in America’s vast image collection, which includes family snapshots, 1980s Hong Kong film posters, street photography (from Arnold Genthe’s late-9th century depictions of San Francisco Chinatown to contemporary images of Asian American life by professional and amateur photographers), home movies, and the work of contemporary artists, Tam will contextualize these images with the ways Chinese have been perceived throughout their history in America. The talk will focus on the pictorial background/foreground relationship and the idea that Chinese people have often been seen as two-dimensional backdrops to the main characters of the American narrative.

January 20, 12:00 - 1:00pm | The Creators of the Next documenta Speak

The global pandemic has dramatically changed the way we live, work and think together, but ruangrupa—the Jakarta-based artist collective responsible for the upcoming documenta fifteen, considered the most important of all international exhibitions—has actively explored many of these questions long before Covid-19 struck. Their documenta is highly anticipated for its global insights not only into how we can think about change in pandemic times but also about how art and exhibitions will reflect our ever-greater need for collectivity in life and work. Join members of the documenta fifteen artistic team for a special conversation previewing documenta’s opening this June.

January 25, 7:00 - 8:30pm | Rania Matar

Join MPS Digital Photography for a lecture with Lebanese-born photographer Rania Matar as part of the program's i3: Images, Ideas, Inspiration lecture series, now in its 10th year. Matar’s work has been widely exhibited in museums worldwide, she has published four books and received a 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship, 2017 Mellon Foundation artist-in-residency grant, 2011 Griffin Museum of Photography Legacy Award and a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowships in 2021, 2011 and 2007.