PARSONS FINE ARTS

Kaegan Sparks is a curator, critic, and art historian based in New York. During her PhD research at the CUNY Graduate Center, she has worked in various curatorial, editorial, and research-based positions at art institutions including the Museum of Modern Art (Department of Media and Performance), Dia Art Foundation, and the New Museum of Contemporary Art. She also maintains an independent curatorial practice, regularly publishes art criticism and book reviews, and has teaching experience at CUNY and in the department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Barnard College. She is currently completing a dissertation on the US performance artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles that analyzes her self-designated “Maintenance Art” in light of feminist debates on reproductive labor from the 1970s to today, as well as the broader retrenchment of the US welfare state during this period. This research has been supported by the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics at the Graduate Center (2022–23) and the Smithsonian American Art Museum (2021-22). In 2020–21, she paused her academic work to organize a mutual aid network in Queens. “Idle Hands.” Review of Surrealist Sabotage and the War on Work by Abigail Susik. Artforum.com, August 18, 2022. LINK “Mutual Understanding.” Review of Disasters and Social Reproduction: Crisis Response Between the State and Community by Peer Illner and Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next) by Dean Spade. Artforum.com, March 2, 2021. LINK “Bonded Debt: Kaegan Sparks on the films of Jordan Lord.” Artforum.com, June 9, 2020. LINK