Notice Board

Crossing Boundaries Speaker Series – Heidi Kumao
Thursday, February 25, 2016
7 pm, Dr. Foster James Penny Building
PB210, 324 – 5 Street South
FREE Admission, Everyone welcome
Q+A and Reception to follow

Performing Politics & Poetics
Kumao gives an overview of media based art works including machines, installations, interactive work and film that blend tragedy and comedy. 

Generating artistic spectacle through the intersection of cinema, sculpture, theater and technology, Heidi Kumao reframes ordinary gestures to explore their psychological underside.  Her interests have manifested a wide range of hybrid art forms including: a game interface that empowers users to hack live CNN broadcasts, provocative electronic clothing, electromechanical girl’s legs that “misbehave,” experimental animations, and narrative video sculptures.  Many of her works feature a minimalist theater set, a site for presenting simple actions such as writing, gardening, reading, or walking in order to call attention to these often overlooked acts. Through these animated tableaus, she demonstrates how small gestures, even the most private and poetic, can become significant acts of defiance.

Her work has been exhibited at Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, San Jose Museum of Art, Museo de Arte Moderno, Buenos Aires and numerous other venues worldwide.   She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Creative Capital grant and others.  Kumao is an Associate Professor in the School of Art & Design at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

For more information on this fascinating artist, visit Heidi Kumao’s website.

Image courtesy of artist, Egress, video installation detail.