ARTIST TALK: Art As a State of Becoming
ARTIST TALK: Art As a State of Becoming
Panel Discussion
In-Person
Friday, Dec 1, 2023
7-9pm CST
RSVP on Eventbrite
The Artists from TO PILLAR, TO PLATFORM join in a roundtable discussion about practice, research, and artists who build institutions.
Moderated by the exhibition’s curator, and the organization’s Executive and Artistic Director Kalaija Mallery, the conversation will surround practice-led research, a process that uniquely ties these artists together as those who build and sustain the organization.
She will use the framework from her forthcoming exhibition essay as a guiding point:
Art making, at its core, is a way of forming and communicating new ideas. In Western societies it is largely undervalued unless attached to commodities or academia; this is what makes The Luminary particularly vital to the arts eco-system– as a nonprofit arts organization, it fosters and supports research, exploration, and risk taking. The Luminary builds ideas.
The market has never been easy for artists, but where Capitalism has grown more extreme and as the United States enters a recession after a global pandemic, smaller galleries become rarities and long-term teaching contracts for artists cease to exist. Many institutions did not survive 2020, for better or worse. Still, MFA debt continues to soar. There are now even fewer entry-points into the Art World, with more professionalized artists and less places for them to go.
Artist peer-groups are important because they inspire resilience and perseverance in spite of these conditions. Group studios refine practice and offer space in service of dedicated time. Artists leave the cannon to work in the margins– they form their own communities underground. Sometimes, they take shape on the grid. Many of us have inherited these organizations from the last two decades and are building things on our own terms as best we can. Artist-led and supported institutions feel better for artists, which is why they are more likely to stick around; artist-organized spaces leave more room for the human.
Doors open at 7pm, with drinks and snacks at reception.
The conversation will begin promptly at 7:30.
Learn more about the current exhibition here.