Harvard University's Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies (AFVS) is thrilled to welcome artist Anicka Yi as the 2024 Josep Luis Sert Practitioner in the Arts. Yi will be in residence from February 21 to 23, 2024.
Yi (b. 1971 in Seoul, South Korea) is a Korean-American conceptual artist known for her focus on olfaction and her use of unorthodox, living, and perishable materials. Informed by scientific research, biology, and perfumers, Anicka Yi has produced a unique body of work over the past decade at the intersection of politics and macrobiotics. Her practice questions the increasingly hazy taxonomic distinctions between what is human, animal, plant and machine, and is the result of an alchemical process of experimentation that explores often incompatible materials. She collaborates with researchers to create media that are often inherently political, and delves into the cultural conditioning of sense and perception in a way she describes as a "biopolitics of the senses." Her diverse installations, which draw on scientific concepts and techniques to activate vivid fictional scenarios, ask incisive questions about human psychology and the workings of society.
Yi's work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions at institutions around the world, including Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan; Tate Modern, London; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany; Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland; List Visual Arts Center, MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts; The Kitchen, New York; and the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio. In 2016, Yi was awarded the Hugo Boss Prize and in 2019 her work was featured in the 58th International Venice Biennale, titled May You Live In Interesting Times. Anicka Yi was awarded the 2020 Tate Turbine Hall Hyundai Commission.
During her three-day residency, Yi will contribute to the intellectual and creative life of the Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies through a public lecture, a student workshop, and class visits. The public lecture will take place on February 22, 2024, from 5:30 – 7:30 pm in the Theater at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts.
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The Josep Luis Sert Practitioner in The Arts program invites visiting artists in all media to spend several days in formal and informal activities at AFVS, including lectures, demonstrations, screenings, seminars, readings, performances, and close work with students of the Department. The Sert Practitioner is made possible by a gift from Robert Gardner, former director of the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, former director of the Film Study Center, and former chair of the Department.
Practitioners are nominated through a department-wide open call for nominations which are then considered by the AFVS Visiting Artists Committee, comprised of members representing all areas of the Department, including graduate and undergraduate students.