RISD

Filmmaker Natalia Almada MFA 01 PH has earned valuable new support from Sundance to continue “working at the vanguard of inventive artistic practice in story, craft and form.” In October the Utah-based nonprofit announced that she is one of four filmmakers to be named 2018 Art of Nonfiction Fellows. The program provides “artists with a distinct voice and vision” unrestricted grants and year-long fellowship tracks tailored to their individual creative goals.

Almada, a native of Mexico and recipient of a 2012 MacArthur “genius” award, is known for making expressive films that combine deep personal reflection with critical social commentary. Her 2011 documentary El Velador (The Night Watchman) addresses the heartbreak of ongoing drug wars by focusing on a single worker at one of the rapidly growing cemeteries where Mexico’s most powerful drug lords are buried. Todo lo demás (Everything Else), her most recent film—and first narrative feature—presents a portrait of extreme isolation, “a low-key character study whose gently repetitive rhythms mask an unusually keen sense of nuance and subtlety,” as New York Timescritic Jeannette Catsoulis puts it.

Made while Almada was a MacArthur Fellow, the film follows the monotonous daily routine—ripe with rituals—of a 63-year-old government clerk in Mexico City named Doña Flor (played by Adriana Barraza), who exists largely removed from meaningful human contact…Click to read more

When Mike Eckhaus 10 SC and Zoe Latta 10 TX first rented a space in Brooklyn together, they didn’t quite realize that what started as an experimental studio practice would quickly mushroom into a fashion industry phenomenon. Among their growing accolades, Eckhaus Latta continues to draw a lot of media attention for their largely androgynous apparel and fabulous, twice annual runway shows.

In 2016 they made Forbes’ list of 30 Under 30 outstanding talents and were invited to edit A Magazine Curated By, creating something of a spoof on the advertisement-filled September issue of a mainstream fashion magazine like Vogue. By that fall, the actual Vogue was applauding “the buzzy brand’s most coherent and accomplished show yet,” referring to the New York Fashion Week debut of their spring/summer 2018 collection.

Now the duo known for confounding definition is pleasantly surprised to be making a cultural impact through its first solo museum exhibition—at none other than the Whitney in NYC. Aptly titled Eckhaus Latta: Possessed, the show—much like their practice—questions the connections between art, design, clothing, consumption and commerce. “They are known for using unexpected materials, emphasizing texture and tactility in their designs, and for incorporating writing, performance and video into their practice,” note the curators.

Possessed melds together “once-distinct disciplines like dance, fashion, art, photography, food and performance,” writes David Colman in The New York Times, offering a show in tune with the growing “blurrealist trend” among the cultural vanguard. “All together, this kit and caboodle is really something else entirely, a kind of conceptual art installation that aims to encapsulate today’s fashion system (if not today’s galloping consumption of all kinds) through a distillation of our experience with shopping and clothes into a three-chambered feast for the eyes.”

As part of the multifarious exhibition, the Whitney agreed to let Eckhaus and Latta install a pop-up shop outside one of the galleries—the first time it has sanctioned sales transactions outside of its own museum shop. Museum goers are invited to try on and buy clothing from a collection made specifically for the event, with tags that read “Special Museum Exhibition Product” and products emblazoned with statements like “I Was On the American Flag’s Website.”

While the crowd at the August 3 opening initially didn’t know what to make of the blatant commingling of art and commerce, by the end of the night they almost bought out the entire inventory. “We didn’t have any expectation in terms of how the clothes would actually sell,” Latta told The Cut, pointing out that the idea was to create “an experience.” But with the exhibition set to continue through October 8, she adds: “It’s a little overwhelming. We might have to make more stuff.”

Connecting through RISD
Since Eckhaus majored in Sculpture at RISD and Latta in Textiles, neither one had any experience in the world of fashion when they started out. “But both of us were really interested in making work for the body,” Latta explains—and both wanted to continue experimenting after graduation.

“For us there has always been this community of people who we graduated with at RISD and who have been integral to the practice,” Eckhaus says. “It’s interesting how the relationships you form at school really do carry forward when you leave and figure out the kind of creative landscape you want to make.”

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Hanging above Bolt Coffee at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum is Pedro Reyes’ flag “Hands On With A Vision,” the latest installment in “Pledges of Allegiance,” a nationwide art project put on by the New York-based public arts nonprofit Creative Time.

With each opening of the cafe’s heavy doors, the sky-blue flag ripples slightly, revealing more of the image obscured by its folds. The flag’s graphic plays on the recognizable flag of the United Nations, which depicts a similar white emblem centered on a blue background. The emblem on Reyes’ flag reinterprets the UN symbol: An open eye sits in the palm of a hand and is layered in front of a globe that is dissected by longitudinal and latitudinal lines. The flag represents “The People’s United Nations” — “pUN” — which the flag’s placard describes as “an experimental conference developed by the artist” that has brought together individuals from over 160 countries at three meetings.

On the placard, Reyes writes: “This right palm with an eye at the center … has been a symbol of protection across cultures and millennia,” adding that the hand, which is open in salutation, “placed over an orb is meant to signal our mission to protect the planet.”

Reyes’ work is the eighth installment of a collaborative compilation of 16 flags, which will be on display at museums nationwide through July 31. Other featured artists include Alex Da Corte, Tania Bruguera and Jeremy Deller. The first flag shown at the RISD Museum “Untitled (Dividing Time)” was also displayed at nine other locations across the nation from Sept. 13 through Oct. 11 last year. The number of museums, galleries and institutions hosting installments of the series has increased each month as participants are continuously added to host pieces of the rotating series. In addition to the RISD Museum, California College of the Arts, Texas State Galleries and the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell will also display the flags.

On its website, Creative Time states that, in response to the current political climate, the exhibition’s goal is “to inspire a sense of community among cultural institutions, and begin articulating the urgent response our political moment demands.”

“We … thought that this would really be a great way for us to … have a project that kept pace with changing times,” said Dominic Molon, the Richard Brown Baker curator of contemporary art at the RISD Museum. “Pledges of Allegiance” is dynamic in nature, which Molon sees as “something that would … demonstrate how the museum was wanting to engage with the present moment and with the future.”

According to Molon, “Imagine Peace,” the flag by Yoko Ono, was one of the most well received at the RISD Museum. On the flag, bold type reads, “THINK PEACE ACT PEACE SPREAD PEACE IMAGINE PEACE,” against a white backdrop. In the background of a video accompanying “Imagine Peace” on Creative Time’s website, echoing voices recite statements describing their definition of peace. For one speaker, “peace is understanding someone else’s point of view,” while for another, “peace is like a puddle of puppies … or sleeping on a marshmallow.”

Molon considers the museum a place where community members can find “some kind of reflection of what’s going on out there in the world.” “Pledges of Allegiance,” its changing nature and the artists’ messages demonstrate this concept. “Hands On With A Vision” will be on display at the RISD Museum until Feb. 14, while the entire exhibition, “Pledges of Allegiance,” will continue to show through July 31.

This article was published in The Brown Daily Herald on February 1, 2018. Click here to read more

The D train was sweltering in early July as I traveled past 22 subway stops on my way to the Brooklyn studio of contemporary textiles artist Liz Collins91 TX/MFA 99. Looking around the D, I noticed that everyone seemed to be wearing elaborate prints, Doc Martens and/or visible paint stains. It was the first day of my nine-week summer internship and I was nervous, anxious and excited.

Not surprisingly, the other arty types and I all got off at the same stop and headed toward a trendy-looking block of buildings and restaurants. My enthusiasm for the internship only increased when I saw that one of Liz’s pieces adorns the main walkway of the subway station.

Studio manager and fellow RISD grad Zev Schwartz 12 AP greeted me at the door to the large studio, which is clearly Liz’s space: a well-organized wonderland of colorful yarns, knitted fabrics and wacky furniture. I immediately recognized her signature use of bright colors and sharp lines and peered around the room, finding samples of her WW3 (Warp Weft 3) series, which I would later get the opportunity to work on.

Liz primarily hired me to assist with a new installation that opened on September 27 at the New Museum in Manhattan as part of Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon. My first task involved sourcing materials. I was on the hunt for mesh fencing, a quest that led me through the Park Slope and Sunset Park neighborhoods of Brooklyn, where I encountered an eccentric hardware store owner and a talkative bus driver who complained bitterly about the city’s increasing traffic problems.

I was happy to collaborate with Liz, but was also excited that my friend Felix Beaudry 18 TX landed a summer internship at the studio, too. We were both psyched to brainstorm ideas for the New Museum show.

Later that week Liz assigned me exactly the kind of work I had hoped I’d be doing. Once she explained that she wanted to use stills from the weird 1982 film classic Liquid Sky to create a carpet for the exhibition, I spent weeks piecing together images in Photoshop and was happy to apply the skills I learned in my CAD in Textiles class last spring. We worked with an industrial carpet producer to finalize the design and select just the right swatches to match the film’s color palette.

Another highlight of the internship was going to the New Museum with Liz to mock up her plan for the installation. After seeing countless museum exhibitions where the designs seem so self-evident, it was great to get a behind-the-scenes look at the planning process and to be included in conversations about the overall cohesiveness of the show and what was working and what wasn’t.

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