Sunday, July 31, 2016

Introducing Asha Ganpat

Artist in residence, July and August 2016


Asha Ganpat is a multimedia visual artist who was born in Trinidad and now lives and works in New Jersey, where she is an adjunct professor of sculpture at Montclair State University, is an independent curator, and co-founded Red Saw Gallery in Newark.

In late July and early August 2016, Ganpat is artist in residence at Alice Yard, where she plans to use locally sourced media for her work. In one piece, she will combine images from a Hindu story book and a published survey of insect life in Trinidad to play out a vengeance fantasy spurred by the many bites and stings and near-misses over the years. In another work, Ganpat will look at the imbalance of currency exchange and will seek valuation and revaluation through a playful consideration of alchemy.

Ganpat received a BFA from Mason Gross, Rutgers University, and an MFA from Montclair State University. She has shown her work at institutions such as the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Insitituto di Cultura, Exit Art, the Noyes Museum, the Queens Museum, the Jersey City Museum, and the Nathan Cummings Foundation. Her work was cited as one of NYC’s top ten art installations of 2012 by Complex magazine. She is an alumnus of Aljira’s Emerge, Gaia’s Wonderwomen Program, the Annual New Jersey Book Art Symposium, and Chashama North residencies.

Wednesday, July 20, 2016

Captured in the Grip of Listening?

Photographs of People with Radios in (Post-) Colonial Bamako
A talk and research exhibition by Antawan I. Byrd
Wednesday 27 July, 2016, 7 pm, at Alice Yard


Studio Photo Diallo, Untitled, 1962, Silver Gelatin Print, 5 x 7 in., Private Collection

Antawan I. Byrd is a PhD Candidate in Art History at Northwestern University, studying modern and contemporary art of Africa and the African Diaspora. During the months of July and August, 2016, he is researcher in residence at Alice Yard.

His dissertation, tentatively titled “Interferences: Sound, Technology, and the Politics of Listening in Afro-Atlantic Art”, examines how artists in Bamako, Port of Spain, and New York use sound technologies to engage profound moments of political change, beginning in the second half of the twentieth century.

On Wednesday 27 July, he will give an informal talk at Alice Yard, discussing his research on sound and photography in Bamako, and introducing his research interests and aims for Port of Spain. A selection of photographs collected during this research will be on display, continuing until Sunday 31 July.

All are invited.

Photo: Steeve Bauras

About Antawan I. Byrd:

Most recently, Byrd was an Associate Curator for Telling Time, the 10th Bamako Encounters Biennale of African Photography, 2015, and was a member of the editorial team for the 2012 Biennale Bénin Inventer Le Monde: L’artiste Citoyen. He was a curatorial assistant for J.D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere: Moments of Beauty at the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, in 2011. From 2009-2011, Byrd worked at the Centre for Contemporary Art in Lagos as a curatorial assistant. His research has been supported by an Andrew Mellon CLIR fellowship, a Block Museum curatorial fellowship, a grant from Northwestern University’s Buffett Institute for Global Studies, and a Fulbright fellowship.