Antena @ Blaffer
Blaffer Art Museum
January 18 - May 10, 2014
Antena is a language justice and language experimentation collaborative founded in 2010 by Jen Hofer and John Pluecker, both of whom are writers, artists, literary translators, bookmakers and activist interpreters. From January 18 – May 10, 2014, Antena will be in residence at Blaffer, where they will inhabit various spaces of the museum to explore how critical views on language can help us to reimagine and rearticulate the worlds we live in.
Antena will facilitate a number of initiatives: books for sale from small independent presses and DIY endeavors throughout the U.S. and Latin America showcasing innovative writing by women, people of color, queer communities, and others outside the normative canon; an exhibition of work combining literary and visual arts, with artists from Houston and the wider U.S. as well as Chile, Guatemala, and Mexico; a weekly class titled “In The Between: At the Intersections of Writing, Art, Politics,” open to the public and UH students enrolled for credit in the interdisciplinary art minor (IART) on Tuesdays from 5:30-8:30pm; public workshops in writing, bookmaking, translation, and language justice; and, from February 13 – 16, an encuentro (gathering) of Antena’s participating artists, who will give public readings and performances, participate in panel discussions and open conversations, and lead workshops and community interventions outside the museum.
Antena views aesthetic practice as part and parcel of language justice work. In their ongoing efforts to create spaces in which everyone is able to express themselves in their preferred language, Antena is also invested in cross-cultural artistic production, reading, writing, bookmaking, and the visual arts. Interdisciplinary and multilingual, Antena explores these intersections further by inviting eleven artists from Houston, the wider U.S. and Latin America to exhibit their work at Blaffer. Participating artists are Benvenuto Chavajay (Sololá, Guatemala), Jamal Cyrus (Houston), María-Elisa Heg (Houston), Autumn Knight (Houston), Sueyeun Juliette Lee (Philadelphia), Ayanna Jolivet McCloud (Houston), Nuria Montiel (Mexico City), Kaia Sand (Portland), Efraín Velasco (Oaxaca), Cecilia Vicuña (New York/Santiago), and Stalina Villarreal (Houston). This selection of artists is designed to facilitate conversation and collaboration between Houston literary and visual arts communities and practices occurring nationally and internationally. The group will gather February 13 – 16, 2014 at Blaffer and other sites around Houston. Attendees will be invited to register online for the full schedule of events, while evening readings and performances will be open to the public.
Antena welcomes you.
Curator: Amy L. Powell with Jen Hofer and John Pluecker
http://artsandculturetx.com/antena-blaffer/
https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/mqr/2014/05/antena-language-justice-and-poetry/