6660 Manasota Key Rd. Englewood
FL 34223
“Visual Art: New Ways of Seeing” with Aram Han Sifuentes and Amanda Williams
Friday, June 17 at 6:30 pm on the beach at the Hermitage
Presented in partnership with Art Center Sarasota, two acclaimed visual artists discuss their creative process and share examples of their work. Hermitage Fellows Aram Han Sifuentes and Amanda Williams create in two different mediums of art. Han Sifuentes, whose work has been described as having “radical power” (The Guardian), works with fiber and materials. Williams, a visual artist trained as an architect, uses color in bold and energetic ways. At the center of both of their artistic practices is the mission to change the way we see the world around us and forge new communities in shared spaces.
Register here.
Registration is required. $5 per person.
Aram Han Sifuentes – Returning Hermitage Fellow Aram Han Sifuentes (she/they) is a fiber and social practice artist, writer, and educator who works to center immigrant and disenfranchised communities. Her work often revolves around skill sharing – specifically sewing techniques – to create multi-ethnic and intergenerational sewing circles, which become a place for empowerment, subversion, and protest. Han Sifuentes earned her B.A. in Art and Latin American Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, and her M.F.A. in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has been a recipient of a Hermitage Fellowship, Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, Map Fund, Asian Cultural Council’s Individual Fellowship, 3Arts Award, and 3Arts Next Level/Spare Room Award. Her project, “Protest Banner Lending Library,” was a finalist for the Beazley Design Awards at the Design Museum in London in 2016. Solo exhibitions of her work have been shown at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, Chicago Cultural Center, Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, Asian Arts Initiative, and Hyde Park Art Center. Her upcoming solo exhibitions include “Talking Back to Power: Projects by Aram Han Sifuentes” (2022) at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles and “Who Was This Built To Protect?” (2022) at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, where she is currently the inaugural Getting to Know You Artist in Residence. Han Sifuentes’s art works are included in various public collections including the Renwick Gallery of Smithsonian American Art Museum, Denver Art Museum, Herbert Johnson Museum of Art, DePaul Art Museum, University Galleries at Illinois State University, and Wing Luke Museum of Asian Pacific American Experience. She also publishes writings and texts including “How Internalized White Supremacy Manifest for My BIPOC Students in Art School,” for the summer issue of Art Journal (2021) for which she was awarded the 2021 Lois Moran Award for Craft Writing. Her monograph, We Are Never Never Other, was published in 2021 by University Galleries at Illinois State University. She was the 2020-2021 Artist-in-Residence at Loyola University and is currently an associate professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. AramHanSifuentes.com
Amanda Williams -Hermitage Fellow Amanda Williams is a visual artist who trained as an architect. Williams’ creative practice employs color as a way to draw attention to the complexities of race, place, and value in cities. The landscapes in which she operates are the visual residue of the invisible policies and forces that have misshapen most inner cities. Williams’ installations, paintings and works on paper seek to inspire new ways of looking at the familiar and in the process, raise questions about the state of urban space and citizenship in America. Williams has exhibited widely, including the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, a solo exhibition at the MCA Chicago, and a public project with the Pulitzer Arts Foundation in St. Louis. She is a 2018 USA Ford Fellow, a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors grantee, an Efroymson Family Arts Fellow, a Leadership Greater Chicago Fellow and a member of the multidisciplinary Museum Design team for the Obama Presidential Center. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Art Institute of Chicago. Williams lives and works in Chicago. AWStudioArt.com