Walker Art Center's Target Free Thursday Nights in January Highlighted by Contemporary Art in Conversation with JoAnn Verburg
The Walker Art Center’s Target Free Thursday Nights in January are highlighted by a Contemporary Art in Conversation talk with JoAnn Verburg (January 24, 7:30 pm), in conjunction with the new exhibition Present Tense: Photographs by JoAnn Verburg (opening January 12). The artist discusses her career with Walker consulting curator Siri Engberg and Museum of Modern Art photography curator Susan Kismaric. Also on view that evening from 6–9 pm in the U.S. Bank Orientation Lounge is a slideshow of JoAnn Verburg’s photographs documenting the original theatrical performance of David Byrne and Robert Wilson’s the Knee Plays, which premiered at the Walker in 1984. Also featured in January are a screening of the film Frida Naturaleza Viva, directed by Paul Leduc, which chronicles Frida Kahlo and her encounters with the personalities of her time (January 3, 7 pm); the discussion Tino Sehgal’s Art and Economy, led by University of Minnesota professors Jane Blocker and Richard Leppert, discussing how the work featured in the exhibition Tino Sehgal (opening December 12) conjures up questions about what we consider valuable in Western society (January 10, 7 pm); the discussion Performing Gender: Identity, Ethnicity, and Sexuality in Frida Kahlo and Onstage (January 17, 7 pm), during which Edén Torres, professor of Chicana feminist studies and chair of the Chicano Studies Department at the University of Minnesota, interviews drag queen/University instructor Esmé Rodríguez (a.k.a. T. Kupin) on the staging of gender and identity in her work and in the art and life of Frida Kahlo; and a screening of Jennifer Fox’s Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman, Parts 1–3 (January 31, 7 pm), part of the Walker’s Expanding the Frame series.
Target Free Thursday Nights sponsored by Target.
Target Free Thursday Nights
January 3, 10, 17, 24, 31
Galleries open 5–9; special events follow.
Free
Thursday, January 3
Gallery Tour, 6 pm
Film: Frida Naturaleza Viva, 7 pm
Directed by Paul Leduc
Cinema
Free tickets available at the Bazinet Garden Lobby desk from 6 pm
Frida Naturaleza Viva is the widely acclaimed tribute to the spirit and determination of Frida Kahlo, who risked her life for art and love. Told in surreal flashbacks evocative of her canvases, the film captures the spirit of an artist, a cultural leader, and a political activist. With Ofelia Medina and Juan José Gurrola. 1985, Mexico, video, in Spanish with English subtitles, 108 minutes.
Thursday, January 10
Brave New Worlds Tour, 6 pm
Discussion: Tino Sehgal’s Art and Economy, 7 pm
Lecture Room
Free tickets available at the Bazinet Garden Lobby desk from 6 pm
The exhibition of work by Tino Sehgal currently on view contains no objects. Instead, visitors encounter movements, singing, and speech in the galleries and at the lobby desk. Replacing material objects with human interaction is the underlying principle of Sehgal’s work, which conjures up questions about what we consider valuable in Western society, and what it means to produce something both artistically and economically. Participants discuss what an immaterial and more sustainable form of economic production could look like. Led by art historian and University of Minnesota professor Jane Blocker and Richard Leppert, professor in the Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota.
Thursday, January 17
Gallery Tour, 6 pm
Performing Gender: Identity, Ethnicity, and Sexuality in Frida Kahlo and Onstage, 7 pm
Cinema
Free tickets available at the Bazinet Garden Lobby desk from 6 pm
Frida Kahlo’s primary form of artistic expression—the self-portrait—allowed her to use images of her body to comment on her daily experiences as a Mexican of mixed ethnicities, a woman, and an artist. This self-representation became an important act of performance that defined her life. At this performative discussion, Edén Torres, professor of Chicana feminist studies and chair of the Chicano Studies Department at the University of Minnesota, interviews drag queen/University instructor Esmé Rodríguez (a.k.a. T. Kupin) on the staging of gender and identity in her work and in the art and life of Kahlo. Rodríguez’s comments on Kahlo are featured in Antenna Audio’s multimedia guide, available for rental as part of the Walker’s Frida Kahlo exhibition.
Thursday, January 24
Brave New Worlds Tour, 6 pm
Screening: the Knee Plays, 6–9 pm
U.S. Bank Orientation Lounge
Before the conversation with JoAnn Verburg at 7:30 pm, watch a slideshow of Verburg’s photographs documenting the original theatrical performance of David Byrne and Robert Wilson’s the Knee Plays, which premiered at the Walker in 1984. With recorded music, 57 minutes.
Contemporary Art in Conversation: JoAnn Verburg, 7:30 pm
Cinema
Free tickets available at the Bazinet Garden Lobby desk from 6 pm
JoAnn Verburg’s portraits, landscapes, and still lifes engage the viewer in a push and pull of time. Her images feature bodies floating in and out of space, newspaper headlines that recall past events, and olive trees that belong to no era in particular. In this conversation with Walker consulting curator Siri Engberg and Museum of Modern Art photography curator Susan Kismaric, Verburg discusses her 30-year career and muses on the ways artists performing on the Walker stage in the early 1980s altered her view of photography.
Thursday, January 31
Gallery Tour, 6 pm
Film: Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman, Parts 1–3, 7 pm
Directed by Jennifer Fox
Cinema
Free tickets available at the Hennepin Lobby desk from 6 pm
Jennifer Fox delivers a sexy, humorous, and personal yet universal investigation of modern womanhood. Flying follows Fox’s travels to more than a dozen countries to, as she puts it, “understand how women define their lives when there is no map.” While the story evolves over six hours, this compelling series’ distinct parts can be viewed individually or as a whole, in sequence or not. “Part delectable soap opera, sociopolitical inquiry, and narrative experiments, Flying sweeps us up into an addictive international adventure” (Sundance Film Festival). Screening as part of the Expanding the Frame series. 2007, video, 60 minutes each chapter (total running time 180 minutes).