Cultural Baggage is an invitational exhibition of original photography-based works by 20 artists. The show will be held in conjunction with the Media Studies Symposium, House, Home, Homeland. The works in this exhibition will represent the artists' response to issues involving exile, identity, and environments. These same issues will be at the nucleus of presentations and discussions at the symposium. Cultural Baggage is being organized by Bill Thomas, a Houston-based artist and educator who works at Rice University and the University of Houston.
The following artists are participating in Cultural Baggage:
Eduardo Aparicio is an artist and a writer. In 1993 he formed "Colectivo
Latinos Atrevidos/ Provocative Latins Collective" with Ernesto Pujol and
Rafael Ferrera-Balanquet to design and distribute a visibility campaign for
The March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Equal Rights and
Liberation. Most recently, he participated in Cuba: La Isla Posible (Cuba:
The Possible Island), a group show of Cuban artists at Centre de Cultura
Contemporania, Barcelona, Spain. A selection of his Fragments from Cuban
Narratives was shown at Il Taller Internacional de la Imagen Fotografica,
part of the V Havana Bienial, 1994, and will be published in Bridges to
Cuba, edited by Ruth Behar, forthcoming from Michigan University Press.
His work is in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Photography,
Chicago; the Museum of Art of Fort Lauderdale, Florida; and The Library of
Congress. He currently publishes PERRA! LA REVISTA, a gay Latino
monthly.
Email: PerraMiami@aol.com
Originally from Houston, Texas, Monica Chau is a mixed media installation
artist who utilizes photography and digital media processes in her work to
question issues of historical representation in relation to one's memories
of the past. An inextricable part of her installation work juxtaposes text
and image to comment upon the process of looking and being looked at, both
as a woman and as an Asian American. A past participant in the American
Photography Institute's National Graduate Seminar, Chau was also a Helena
Rubinstein Fellow in the Whitney Museum of Art's Independent Study Program
for which she was a co-curator for the exhibition, "The Subject of Rape."
Most recently, Chau guest-curated an exhibition for the Houston Center of
Photography entitled, "Picturing Asia America." This exhibition of
photography and related media by Asian American artists, currently on view
in Pittsburgh, will travel in 1996 to Arlington, Texas. A recent recipient
of an NEA/Western States Arts Federation grant, Chau is currently a
visiting professor in the Dept. of Studio Art at University of California,
Irvine and Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles. Her published
writings and artwork appear in the Whitney Museum of American Art ISP
Journal (1993), Framework Magazine (Fall 1995), and the CalArts 25th
Anniversary CD-ROM.
Email:mchau@usa.net
Daniel J. Martinez is a cross media conceptual artist who combines photography, video, sculpture and language projects in site specific installations, performances and public art projects. Installations have occurred at New Langton Arts (San Francisco), the 1993 Whitney Biennial, and the Aperto at the Venice Biennale. Martinez is currently Assistant Professor of Studio Art (New Genres) at the University of California, Irvine.
University of Houston, Houston, Texas
Virginia Beth Shields was born in Chesnee, SC. She received her BFA from Converse College in Spartanburg, SC and her MFA from University of South Florida, Tampa, FL. She also attended American Photography Institute, National Graduate Seminar, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University.
Born in Chicago, Gayle Tanaka received her BFA from the University of
Hawaii and her MFA from San Francisco State University. Venues in which
her work has been shown in San Francisco include the Center for the Arts at
Yerba Buena Gardens and Olga Dollar Gallery. She has also recently shown
in Chicago at the Chicago Cultural Center. Her work has been featured in
publications including Camerwork, Artweek and Zyzzyva. Gayle currently
makes her home in San Francisco.
For fourteen years prior to his career as an artist, Bill Thomas was
extensively involved in the domestic resettlement of thousands of refugees
from over a dozen countries. Since finishing graduate school (MFA '93), he
has continued to live and work in Houston. In Suicide, his ongoing
photographic series of self-constructed tableaux, Thomas examines our
cultural attitudes about suicide from an ironic point of view. His works
have been exhibited at The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; The
Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; The Modern Art Museum, Ft. Worth, and
The Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi. He was awarded a 1993
fellowship from the Houston Center for Photography, a 1993 Graduate
fellowship from the American Photography Institute at New York University,
and an Artist Award from the Cultural Arts Council of Houston in 1994.
Recently, Thomas was awarded a 1995 Artist Fellowship from the Mid-America
Arts Alliance/National Endowment for the Arts. Thomas received his M.F.A.
degree from the University of Houston. Currently he is the Photography
Coordinator at the Rice Media Center, a Lecturer in the Art and Art History
Department at Rice University, and the Acting Area Coordinator for
Photography at the University of Houston, Department of Art.
Email:bthomas@rice.edu
Deborah Willis has successfully pursued a dual professional career. First an art photographer, she later became one of the nation's leading historians of African American photography and curators of African American culture. From 1980 to 1992, she served as Exhibition Coordinator and Curator of Photographs and Prints at the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. While there, she lectured and published widely on the contributions of African Americans to contemporary and historical photography. She has curated many exhibitions identifying important artists now well recognized due to her insight and scholarship. Among her most notable projects are Imagining Families: Images and Voices (1994), VanDerZee (1993), Constructed Images: New Photography (1989), and Black Photographers Bear Witness: 100 Years of Social Protest (1989). Currently, Deborah Willis is Collections Coordinator for the National African American Museum Project, Smithsonian Institution.
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fax: 713-285-5910
e-mail: bthomas@rice.edu
WWW: http://riceinfo.rice.edu/projects/depts/arts/RMC/