Tag: umma

PREVIEW: UMMA AFTER HOURS

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UMMA AFTER HOURS

Twice a year, the UMMA stays open late for visitors to explore the artwork After Hours. On Thursday March 14th, the spring celebration of the late night event will take place in the museum. There are a number of exquisite permanent collection pieces, as well as a series of visiting exhibits that are worth checking out by night. If you can’t find time during regular hours, this a great opportunity to get your art fix. In addition to the usual artwork, there will be live music performed by the Ingrid Racine Quartet, playing Jazz and Afro Pop tunes. From the UMMA’s site, After Hours is about:

Standing before the shimmering fields of color created by West African artist El Anatsui in the career retrospective El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote to You About Africa, taking a walk around London with the Queen of England’s guards in Francis Alÿs’s video work Guards, traveling to the Himalayas with Buddhist Thangkas and Treasures: The Walter Koelz Collection, Museum of Anthropology, and finding out what an architect does with Alice in Wonderland and Andy Warhol’s dessert recipes in Florencia Pita/FP mod. The

After Hours runs from 7-10 pm. Click here for more info. And for more updates about happenings at UMMA and around campus, check out the blog The Annex. See you there!

PREVIEW: Crush, Crumple, Fold: The Art of El Anatsui

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Crush, Crumple, Fold: The Art of El Anatsui

As a part of the “EL Anatsui: When I Last Wrote To You About Africa” exhibit, UMMA will be hosting a film screening of a documentary on the artists work. This film will discus the process, inspirations, and challenges of the world renowned artist. Tuesday, February 19th at 7 pm in the Helmut Stern auditorium.  Read more information about the making of the film and its connection to the exhibit on UMMA’s website. Click here for a quick clip about the film and here to read a review. See you there!

PREVIEW: Ecstasy and Fantasy

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Ecstasy and Fantasy

On Friday, February 15th, the School of Music, UM Chamber Choir,  and UMMA collaborate to create an evening of sounds inspired by Alice in Wonderland. Faculty from the school will perform a selection from Iriving Fine’s “Alice in Wonderland” as well as several other composers from the same era as well as a contemporary, visiting composer. The music will be performed alongside Florencia Pita’s “Alice” inspired artwork. The dual representation of imagination, fantasy, mystery, and magic will surely create a dynamic and intriguing performance. 7 pm at the UMMA.

REVIEW: Florencia Pita

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Florencia Pita

If you’ve passed by the UMMA in the past month, you’ve probably noticed an incredibly curious landscape looking out at you from the windowed, first floor  gallery. Bright reds, spinning blues, swirling shapes and swirling constructions fill the space, drawing the eye in, maintaing mysterious and fantasy  no matter how long the viewer looks. Florencia Pita’s designs are all about organic exaggerations and whimsical, barely  recognizable figures. The Argentine-born artist is trained as an architect but works with furniture, jewelry, graphic design, sculpture, and more. Many of her foliage-like  configurations are inspired by the feminine form. Yet these representations are complex: both her  large scale architecture installations  and her minute scrupulous  jewelry designs often represen the same, flowery  forms. In this way, her work confounds scales and draws the viewer in infinitely.

In an interview with UMMA Academic Coordinator  David Choberka, I learned more about Florencia Pita’s inspirations and styles:

“She makes these cool, whimsical, conceptual, digital designs that are really interesting because of how she plays with scale—her flowery, colorful treelike structures could be anything from buildings to vases, furniture, jewelry or tableware. She makes these large-scale wall hanging appliqués based on children’s stories—one is inspired by Alice in Wonderland. The exhibition features a couple of her installation pieces, as well as models and digital representations of her work. She is developed an original piece for this exhibition, which is exciting. She has won a ton of awards and been featured in exhibitions all over the world. Her work really blurs the boundaries between visual art, architecture, and design, and is definitely worth checking out.”

Click here for more about Florencia Pita and her studio FP/Mod. To read about the exhibit, look at UMMA’s website. The exhibit is open during museum hours until the middle of June.

REVIEW: AI WEIWEI: NEVER SORRY

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AI WEIWEI: NEVER SORRY


On Tuesday December 4th, I attended the UMMA’s Heroes and Icons Film Series. Every Tuesday night at 7 pm, the Student Programming Advisory Council hosts a film in the auditorium of the UMMA, featuring pioneering artists who have made strong statements through their life’s work. This week featured China’s most infamous and controversial artist Ai Weiwei.

If you don’t know anything about Chinese history or its contemporary art movement, thats ok. I will give you the briefest and most topical- and opinionated- overview: in China, the government imposes very strict and fearful censorship on the public expression of its people. This issue has been of particular debate in the past decade because of the rise of social networking and Internet communication. Ai Weiwei is an international artist who has made numerous controversial pieces since he began his work int he early 70’s. Most recently, he has created a photographic documentation daily life in China. His gallery space is unconventional however; his exhibition is displayed via  Twitter.

In 2008, a massive earthquake in the Sichuan province shattered the lives of thousands of citizens, many of whom were children attending a poorly constructed public school building. The government tried to hide the extent of the destruction by refusing to release numbers of casualties or names of victims. Infuriated and inspired, Ai Weiwei ventured to the Sichuan province and began documenting and Tweeting his findings. As you might imagine, the government was displeased with the dissemination of his opinions and came to his hotel room late at night. They kicked in the door and entered unwarranted. The rolling camera captured the sound of a police man hitting Ai Wei Wei’s head.

One year later, the artist finds himself in Munich trying to build an installation to honor the lost lives of the children in the Sichuan earthquake when he discovers that the lingering trauma from the beating will require surgery. The premise of the film, therefore, follows Ai Weiwei’s recovery process and continued defiance of government restriction through his artwork. This particular installation is a mosaic of 70,000 children’s backpacks hoisted onto the façade of Haus der Kunst, a German building connected to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime. This statement, called “Remembering,” is one that is difficult to forget.

Film maker Alison Klayman tells a very detailed story of an irreverent and soulful man who has powerfully challenged the fundamentals of the Chinese society through his artwork. I was particularly excited to see this film for that reason AND because I spent the summer in Beijing interning at an architecture studio that is right across the street from Ai Weiwei’s! The second image above (the turquoise door) is the entrance to his studio Fake in ArtZone Caochangdi. That was the view I saw every single day for months whenever I exited or entered my studio. Unfortunately, however, I never got the chance to see  Ai Weiwei. That is partially because he was on house arrest the entire time I was there. During his trial, a group of policemen blocked the street and tried to stop him from attending. A very dramatic, 24-hour police stake-out took place on our block for over a week, involving trucks, cameras, and many men in uniform. There was a great deal of publicity on the conflict, and  our studio’s exterior was featured here in the New York Times! See the elderly onlooker peering out from behind the bricks in the back? I know her!

REVIEW: Jennifer Holms, lecture and reading

Kayla Silverstein 1 Comment

Thursday evening, I sat in the Stern Auditorium of the UMMA, perhaps my favorite auditorium on campus, to hear Jennifer Holms give a lecture about her life as a children’s author. Quirky, energetic, and quite hilarious, she enraptured us with the stories behind her three Newbery awards and success as a published author.

Holms had four brothers growing up, and she mentioned how greatly that environment continues to influence her life as an author today. She discussed that her motivation to start a graphic novel series for young girls was because she remembers growing up, only having comic books about boys to read: Superman, Spiderman, and Batman. Holms saw young girls as an audience that was largely lacking in their own comic books of sorts, and wrote her series “Babymouse” to fill the gap. “Babymouse” tells the story of a small mouse named Babymouse and her experiences in school, struggling with adolescence, boys, lockers, and running for class elections. She is cute, relatable, loves pink, and eats a lot of cupcakes. Since I too love pink and eat way too many cupcakes, I think I may have to start reading these books.

Holms’ lecture touched on her 3 Newbery award winning novels: Turtle in Paradise, Our Only May Amelia, and Penny from Heaven. As an aspiring young writer myself, I was so interested to hear how all of her stories stemmed from the experiences and traditions passed along in her family. I saw so much passion as she spoke about the subjects of these stories, that I understood at least a core reason why she’d so deserved those awards.

As an introduction before Holms’ lecture, a woman got up and spoke about why we continue to love and appreciate children’s literature now that we are older. She mentioned how it reminds us of how we began as readers; that childlike wonder of knowing you’ve finished your first chapter book. I think this lecture reminded me too of what that feels like.

In the end, I’m obviously so glad I went. It was definitely a dream come true to hear one of my childhood idols, Jennifer Holms, give a talk. Moral of the story, if I were to give one, would be read your e-mails. There are so many opportunities here in Ann Arbor, and I definitely would have missed it if I hadn’t actually read some of those English department newsletters. Hope to see you at the next reading!