home school and Ori Gallery invite you to join us on 4 Feb 2020, 7p at Ori Gallery (4038 N Mississippi) for a screening of video work by Legacy Russell and Aria Dean, followed by a poetry reading and chat with Russell and home school co-founder manuel arturo abreu.
We will screen Russell's BLACK MEME (2020) and Aria Dean's Eulogy for a Black Mass (2018), video works at the nexus of virality and social death which explore circulation as a material. When we grasp that "there is something Black about memes" (Aria Dean) we shed light on the longer historical trajectory of the concepts of "meme," antiblack mimetics, and affective economies of the color line, as Russell shows through her excavations of archival footage. This event is free and open to the public.
Legacy Russell is a curator, writer, and artist. Born and raised in New York City, she is the Associate Curator of Exhibitions at The Studio Museum in Harlem. Recent exhibitions include Projects 110 : Michael Armitage, organized with Thelma Golden and The Studio Museum in Harlem at MoMA (2019); Dozie Kanu : Function (2019); Radical Reading Room (2019) at The Studio Museum in Harlem; and MOOD : Studio Museum Artists in Residence 2018-19 (2019) at MoMA PS1. Russell’s ongoing academic work and research focuses on gender, performance, digital selfdom, internet idolatry, and new media ritual. She is the recipient of the Thoma Foundation 2019 Arts Writing Award in Digital Art and a 2020 Rauschenberg Residency Fellow. Her first book, Glitch Feminism, is forthcoming from Verso Books in Fall 2020.
Aria Dean (b. 1993) is an artist, writer and curator based in New York and Los Angeles. She is Assistant Curator of Net Art & Digital Culture at Rhizome. Dean’s writing has been featured in Texte zur Kunst, e-flux, Artforum, Art in America, Kaleidescope, Spike Magazine, and other publications. Recent solo and two-person exhibitions include (meta)models or how i got my groove back, Chapter NY; Aria Dean, Albright Knox Gallery, Buffalo; lonesome crowded west, Chateau Shatto, Los Angeles; Gut Pinch, The Sunroom, Richmond; and White Ppl Think I’m Radical, Arcadia Missa, London. Dean has also participated in group exhibitions internationally at Tai Kwun, Hong Kong; The MAC, Belfast; ICAVCU, Richmond; Het Hem, Amsterdam; ICA Philadelphia; Higher Pictures, NY; Bodega, NY; Schinkel Pavilion, Berlin. She has lectured and presented work at various institutions such as Yale University; Swiss Institute, NY; Serpentine Galleries, London; Centre d’Art Contemporain Genéve; Cranbrook Art Museum; La Casa Encendida; Transmediale Festival; and Atlanta Contemporary.
home school is a free pop-up art school in Portland that facilitates welcoming contexts for critical engagement with contemporary art. The fifth year of curriculum is funded by a Precipice Fund grant thanks to the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and Calligram / Allie Furlotti.
