Here/Say – October 30, 2017

Monday, October 30, 7-9 pm

Here/Say – Framing, Part 2 [Climate]: Regarding our relationship to the [huge, frameless, changing] natural world

Louise McCagg Gallery, Diana Center

Riitta Ikonen, Finnish visual artist with a vivid nature relationship, Finnish artist Riitta Ikonen’s (b.1981) work, encompassing wearable sculptures, performance and photographs has been in curated solo and group exhibitions in Kiasma, Tate Britain, NADA Miami, and London 2012 Olympic Park amongst others. She exhibits, lectures and performs internationally often with the series Eyes as Big as Plates looking at the modern human’s affinity to nature. Ikonen graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2008, with an MA in Communication Art and is based in both Rockaway Beach and Finland.

www.riittaikonen.com www.EyesasBigasPlates.com www.newkirkeneshospital.com

Åsa Rennermalm, Professor, Arctic climate change researcher, Åsa Rennermalm is associate professor at the Department of Geography at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Her research interest is hydrology and glaciology of the Arctic region. Currently she is studying the Greenland ice sheet to better understand how much meltwater escapes to the ocean where it affects marine environments and raise global sea levels. Her work involves analysis of models, satellite and field data. She has participated several Arctic field expeditions.

Åsa joined Rutgers faculty in 2009. Before coming to Rutgers she was a postdoctoral researcher at Department of Geography at University of California Los Angeles. Her Ph.D is from Civil and Environmental Engineering at Princeton University, and she has a master and undergraduate degree from University of Copenhagen in Denmark.

Åsa’s research centers on understanding Greenland ice sheet mass loss and runoff. Her work spans from small-scale, fieldwork-based studies of ice sheet surface hydrology to Greenland-wide studies of how ice sheet hydrology and mass-loss connects to atmospheric and oceanographic conditions. She has done educational modules for pre-college students about the changing Arctic in collaborated with a NJ high school teacher. Several recent expeditions included collaborations with artists, including one with Diane Burko a Philadelphia-based photographer and landscape painter, and one, more recently with the Rutgers Film Lab.

ahrl.rutgers.edu oirap.rutgers.edu/Facsurv/html/Asa_K._Rennermalm.html

Vanessa Thill BC ’13, Artist, writer and curator, Vanessa Thill is an artist, writer, and curator. Her sculptures use cut paper forms, nets, and cauldrons of supplies such as glues, soaps, and dyes to create slowly evaporating sculptures, akin to scabbed skins, eroded terrain, woven garments, or luminous screens. She is interested in systems of non-human organization given a new material reality in which categories like natural landscape, built environment, and human body are deeply unsettled.

She has exhibited her work at Nicelle Beauchene, Bible, and on the digital platform SCREEN_, among others. She co-produces exhibitions, publications, and other projects as Sorry Archive, a platform for experimentation with display formats and social transactions. Most recently, Sorry Archive curated “Astral Oil, Global Family” an exhibition by Jonathan Durham and Rindon Johnson inspired by the century-long story of the Greenpoint Oil Spill.

In 2014, she curated an alumnae exhibition and edited a catalog of essays called “Lucid Gestures: An Exhibition of Alumnae Artists” with Eunice Yooni Kim at McCagg Gallery at Barnard College. She is also a Curator at Large at Knockdown Center in Queens, and their resident beekeeper.