Save the Dates: Artist Levester Williams at CADVC

Tue, 27 Feb 2024 10:12:15 -0500

February 29, 6pm at the Fine Arts Building Amphitheater:

CADVC presents experimental demos of a public video art gallery, with free food and a conversation between visiting artist Levester Williams and guest curator Lisa Freiman!

The work, "dreaming of a beyond: Baltimore," is the result of the Levester Williams's Exploratory Research Residency at CADVC, ongoing since 2023. During this time, Williams has been researching the histories and mythologies of Cockeysville (Maryland) marble, a material used in many salient objects in the local built environment, including the Washington Monument and iconic exterior steps of Baltimore rowhomes. The film results from this research as well as movement workshops and other activities that included the participation of UMBC students and other Baltimore residents. Artist Nia Hampton, a current IMDA graduate student, and her mother, artist and arts advocate Sheila Gaskins, are featured performers. The filmic work was assisted by IMDA graduate student Bao Nguyen and artist Savannah Knoop, who worked on the project as an intimacy coordinator and facilitator. In Williams's words, the project underscores the "intertwined history of African-Americans' plight to self-determined agency and full citizenship, and a rather benign stone."

Levester Williams will be joined in conversation with Lisa Freiman, an acclaimed independent curator. She was the inaugural director of the Institute of Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University, and formerly Chair of Contemporary Art at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. In 2011, she was Commissioner of the American Pavillion at the Venice Biennial.
Free and open to all! For more information: https://cadvc.umbc.edu/cadvc-demos-public-video-art-projection-gallery/

March 5, 6pm at the Lion Brothers building -- RSVP required

Levester Williams will be in intimate conversation with collaborators Sheila Gaskins and Savannah Knoop on his current work in progress, "dreaming of a beyond: Baltimore" (2021-2024). This conversation will be hosted within the context of a course in the UMBC American Studies department AMST 430/680 "Seminar in American Signs: Place-Based Artistic Research" This public humanities seminar explores the work of of contemporary artists and other cultural practitioners whose work responds to place-based contexts.

Spaces are limited. RSVP required at this link: https://forms.gle/cV5xEnT572A2e9zNA