Illinois State University Wonsook Kim School of Art presents the fall 2023 Visiting Artist Lecture Series. Lectures are open to the public and feature the following artists.
Benjamin Van Dyke
September 13-14
Benjamin Van Dyke’s life, and his intellectual pursuit, are a series of stark contrasts and experiential anomalies. As a stubborn wanderer, he finds pure joy in chaos by relying on stories told in the unseen patterns that govern our lives. By the time he embraced this as a virtue and not an affliction, his life work centered around the theory of Benevolent Flux. He received an M.F.A. from the Stamps School at the University of Michigan and a B.F.A. from Kendall College of Art & Design. Informed by critical theory and crypto linguistics, Van Dyke’s work uses language and letterforms as communicative yet enigmatic systems. Language and form become embodiments of the sociopolitical dialogues and discords between individuals and cultures, extending the formal power of graphic design to function as sociopolitical engagement. His work has been shared in galleries and museums across North America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and the Middle East. After a Fulbright Fellowship in the Netherlands and a tenured faculty position at the University at Buffalo, Van Dyke returned to Michigan to contribute to the state’s historic place in design history. Ben is currently an associate professor in the Department of Art, Art History, and Design at Michigan State University.
Benjamin Van Dyke will lead a one-day workshop with enrolled students in the Visiting Artist Seminar (ART 349) and give a public artist talk at University Galleries on Wednesday, September 13. A Q&A will follow.
Lecture: Noon, Wednesday, September 13, at University Galleries, Uptown Normal.
Delano Dunn
September 26-October 25
Delano Dunn was born in Los Angeles, California. He is a graduate of the School of Visual Arts with an M.F.A. in fine arts, and of Pratt Institute with a B.F.A. in illustration. Through painting, mixed media, and collage, Dunn explores questions of racial identity and perception within various contexts, ranging from the personal to the political, and drawing from his experience growing up in South Central L.A. He has had solo exhibitions in New York City, Los Angeles, and Paris. Group exhibitions include The Uptown Triennial 2020 at the Wallach Gallery Columbia University, I Like The Sound of That at Artspace in New Haven, Liberty and (in)Justice for All at Project for Empty Space in Newark, NJ, PULSE New York, PULSE Miami with Project for Empty Space and the Long Gallery Harlem, The Delaware Contemporary, and more. Features and interviews include La Monde, White Hot Magazine, The New York Times, VICE Creators, Black Lives Matter, and ArtNoir. Recent reviews include Hyperallergic and VICE Creators. Dunn was the recipient of Darryl Chappelle Foundation Emergency Grant, Allison B. Allen Visiting Artist Grant, Sustainable Arts Foundation Grant, the College Art Association’s Visual Arts Graduate Fellowship in 2016, the Delaware Contemporary’s Curator’s Choice Award, and SVA’s Edward Zutrau Memorial Award. Dunn has completed residences at Project for Empty Space in Newark, NJ, the Wassaic Artist Residency, SPACE at Ryder Farm, and Arts + Public Life. In addition, he is a board member for the Wassaic Project. His works are in numerous collections including the Studio Museum of Harlem. He lives in Chicago, IL with his wife and two children.
Delano Dunn will be in residence at Illinois State University to work with enrolled students in the Visiting Artist Seminar (ART 349). Dunn will give a public artist talk at University Galleries on Wednesday, October 11. A Q&A will follow.
Artist Statement:
“Through painting, drawing, mixed media, and collage my work explores questions of racial identity and perception through various contexts, ranging from the personal to the political. It is an ongoing investigation into the history of Blacks in America, rooted in chronologically parallel histories. I knit together American events and iconography which are typically recalled in isolation. Using archival images pulled from vintage Creole cookbooks, comic books, 1860’s issues of Harper’s Bazaar housed in the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and photojournalism of the Civil Rights era, among others, I frame a contemporary conversation about the Black experience in the face of racial tensions and violence that affect Black men and women in a way that often goes unnoticed in the larger discourse. Through striking materials and surfaces—lacquer, resin, glitter, rainbows, dripping, tar-like shoe polish, and velvety, vintage wallpaper—paired with painful imagery from racist memorabilia and depictions of Blacks in comics, documentary photography, and more, I create a new context within which we understand our histories as both singular and intersectional. I unite historical perspectives into multi-layered compositions to highlight the false narratives and promises of freedom for Black people in America. The work both embraces and subversively challenges a time and space in which America is an equitable and safe place for Black people.”
Lecture: Noon, Wednesday, October 11, at University Galleries, Uptown Normal
Hương Ngô
November 7-9
Hương Ngô works across mediums of printmaking, photography, installation, and performance to understand how the body is shaped by and therefore might resist transgenerational effects of colonial violence and imperial ideology. Often beginning with primary research materials from national and personal archives, her work turns a lens on the archive itself to understand how knowledge is constructed and histories become erased over time. The images or objects produced may be fleeting, temporal, or even challenge the borders of visibility, as Ngô seeks to intervene into viewer expectations and expose gaps in archival knowledge, giving form to that which is fugitive or rendered invisible.
Ngô’s artistic practice has been recognized and exhibited at institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, MCA Chicago, the New Museum in New York, and the Renaissance Society in Chicago, among others. She was awarded the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Grant in Vietnam in 2016 and has been described as “deftly and defiantly decolonial” by New City and “what intersectional feminist art looks like” by the Chicago Tribune. Ngô’s achievements also include being twice the recipient of the 3Arts Award and being featured in the Prague Biennial in 2005 and Prospect.5 Triennial in 2021.
Hương Ngô will lead a one-day workshop with enrolled students in the Visiting Artist Seminar (ART 349) and visit studios November 7-9. Ngô will give a public artist talk at University Galleries on Wednesday, November 8. A Q&A will follow.
Lecture: Noon, Wednesday, November 8, at University Galleries, Uptown Normal
