ADVANCED PRACTICE: NEW TEXTILES
CRN: 13486 PGFA 5305 A
Faculty: Natalia Nakazawa
Thurs. 12:10 – 2:50pm
In this course we will examine the expanded field of textiles through contemporary artists, exhibitions, collectives, and art movements. Artists are currently using this powerful material to address historically maligned issues around care, relationships, site-specificity, ecology and labor practices in regards to materials, and to talk about ancestry, community, and intergenerational space. This class provides opportunities to understand contemporary arts practices, develop archives of supporting materials, experiment with different mediums and ideas, and give feedback to each other on developing bodies of work. Using contemporary artists as the jump off point for many of our inquiries – we will experiment with many types of concept-driven making including both analog and digital mediums. Students will write, reflect, and respond to the content of the class through weekly zines to document their experiences, and use these reflections to produce a culminating final project.
Our conversations will be framed by the work of artists such as Faith Ringgold, Billie Zangewa, Christopher Myers, Bisa Butler, Guadalupe Maravilla, Diedrick Brackens, Lina Puerta, Duane Linklater, Andrea Zittel, Sandford Biggers, Saya Woolfalk, and look at exhibitions like “The New Bend” curated by Legacy Russell, and “With Pleasure: Pattern and Decoration in American Art 1972-1985” organized by Anna Katz, Curator, with Rebecca Lowery, Assistant Curator, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
Open to: MFA Fine Arts & upper level BFA Fine Arts students only. Others by permission. Some seats reserved for MFA Fine Arts Students.
Faculty Bio:
Natalia Nakazawa is a Queens-based interdisciplinary artist working across the mediums of painting, textiles, and social practice. Utilizing strategies drawn from a range of experiences in the fields of education, arts administration, and community activism, Natalia negotiates spaces between institutions and individuals, often inviting participation and collective imagining. Her woven tapestries incorporate public domain images from the online archives and collections of major institutions, layering imagery that questions national identities. She held the position of Assistant Director of EFA Studios for close to 10 years, supporting a large network of contemporary artists through subsidized studio spaces and professional practice opportunities in midtown Manhattan. Natalia received her MFA in studio practice from California College of the Arts, a MSEd from Queens College, and a BFA in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design. Her work has recently been exhibited at Wave Hill (Bronx, NY), (Arlington Arts Center (Washington, DC), Transmitter Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY), American Folk Art Museum Gallery (Long Island City, NY), Wassaic Project (Wassaic, NY), The Old Stone House in Brooklyn (NY). Natalia has been an artist in residence at The Children’s Museum of Manhattan, MASS Moca, SPACE on Ryder, Wassaic Project, Meta Open Arts, Interlude Artist Residency, CAMPO Garzon, and Wave Hill Winter Workspace.
