CMU’s Miller ICA Presents "This Skin of Ours" Oct. 12-Nov. 17
Carnegie Mellon University's Miller Institute for Contemporary Art is pleased to present "This Skin of Ours," an exhibition guest-curated by Liz Park, curator of Exhibitions at University Buffalo Art Galleries. The exhibition is a topical investigation of skin as a sensing and protective organ, an artistic surface, and a metaphor for the boundary between the self and the other, pain and healing.
"This Skin of Ours" features artists Kader Attia, Matty Davis & Ben Gould, Victoria Fu & Matt Rich,
Byron Kim, Kiki Kogelnik, Sara Greenberger Rafferty, and Wilmer Wilson IV.
This exhibition will be on display Saturday, Oct. 12 through Sunday, Nov. 17, 2019 with an opening reception from 6 to 8 p.m., on Friday, Oct 11. There will be a conversation with Byron Kim
& the poet Carl Phillips at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 31, co-sponsored by CMU, the Center for the Arts in Society with support from the University of Pittsburgh, Center for African American Poetry and Poetics.
A performance by Matty Davis & Ben Gould will be at 2 p.m., Saturday Nov. 16, at Braddock Carnegie Library, as a culmination of a two-week long residency at the library. More details and additional public programs are coming soon. The Miller ICA, and all events associated with this exhibit, are free and open to the public.
"We sense the world through this skin of ours. It is the surface that brokers our relationship to external forces and translates them as pain or pleasure. Violence and intimacy both necessitate that our skins touch and communicate," said curator Liz Park. "I wanted to explore this organ as a site of injuries and repair, conflict and connection. At the same time, I wanted to think about the surface of an artist's chosen material — whether it be canvas, plywood or vinyl — as a kind of skin."
The artists grouped here explore pain and hurt, redemptive possibilities of healing, and the meeting of private and public lives through their unique lens. The exhibition is a proposal to experience the works as a collective sensing organ, pulsing with color and texture, and having the capacity to feel and empathize with the pain of others as well as the pleasure from tender touch.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a publication featuring a curatorial essay and a commissioned text by writer Wendy Vogel, scheduled to be released in early 2020.
About the Curator
Liz Park is curator of Exhibitions at University at Buffalo Art Galleries. She was most recently the associate curator of the 2018 Carnegie International at Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. She has curated exhibitions at a wide range of institutions including the Western Front in Vancouver, the Kitchen in New York, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, and Seoul Art Space_Geumcheon. Her writing has been published by Afterall Online, Afterimage, ArtAsiaPacific, Performa Magazine, Fillip, Yishu: A Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, Pluto Press, and Ryerson University Press, among others. She was a Helena Rubinstein Fellow at the Whitney Independent Study Program in 2011-2012 and Whitney-Lauder Curatorial Fellow at ICA Philadelphia in 2013-2015. To learn more, go to https://miller-ica.cmu.edu/exhibitions/#429/this-skin-of-ours
About Miller ICA
The Miller Institute for Contemporary Art Miller ICA provides transformative experiences with contemporary art through exhibitions, conversation, and exchange in a free and open public space. The Miller ICA is the contemporary art institute of Carnegie Mellon University and is a unit of the College of Fine Arts. It is located in the Purnell Center for the Arts on Carnegie Mellon's campus in Pittsburgh, Pa. The Miller Gallery is open to the public from 12 - 6 p.m., Tuesday through Sunday. Admission is free.