McKinney Visiting Artist Series

The McKinney Visiting Artist Series brings prominent working artists from a range of studio practices and fields to the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design. Artists lead workshops and critiques for students within the department, as well as lectures and gallery talks open to the campus community.

The College of Arts and Sciences and the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design gratefully acknowledge Dr. Meredith McKinney (B.A. ’65) and Elsa Luise Barthel McKinney (B.A. ’65) for their love of the arts and their generous support in endowing the McKinney Visiting Artist Series at Indiana University Bloomington.

Works displayed in banner are from 2016 visiting artists Eva Kwong, Yosuke Inoue + Paul Wackers.

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2024–25 Lecture Series

Aboubakar Fofana

Friday, September 06, 2024, 5 p.m.—Friday, September 06, 2024, 6 p.m.

Born in Mali and raised in France, Aboubakar Fofana is an internationally exhibiting, multidisciplinary artist and designer whose working mediums include calligraphy, textiles, and natural dyes. Anchored in the belief that nature is divine, Fofana undertakes artmaking as a spiritual practice. He is currently involved in creating a farm in Mali to help reinvigorate the indigenous West African indigo culture.

Donté K. Hayes: Future Artifacts

Friday, September 13, 2024, 5 p.m.—Friday, September 13, 2024, 6 p.m.

Donté K. Hayes processes history through ceramics. His clay sculptures are informed by his research into traditional African heirlooms and initiation rites of birth, adulthood, marriage, eldership, and ancestry, together with his interest in science fiction and hip-hop culture. The resulting “modern artifacts” document the past and present to initiate healing and understanding for the future.

Nathan Meltz, Evolutionary Robotics: Automatons Across Graphic Media

Friday, October 25, 2024, 5 p.m.—Friday, October 25, 2024, 6 p.m.

Graphic artist Nathan Meltz uses printmaking, animation, sculpture, and performance to draw attention to the ways technology infiltrates every facet of life, from farms and food to family and war. Punk, politics, and machine collage combine to tell stories about the inevitable robot invasion, and plans for resistance.

Dakota Mace

Friday, November 01, 2024, 5 p.m.—Friday, November 01, 2024, 6 p.m.

Interdisciplinary artist Dakota Mace uses alternative photography techniques, weaving, papermaking, and beadwork to address and explore her relationship to her Diné (Navajo) heritage, exploring themes of family lineage, community, and identity. Mace has worked with numerous institutions to develop dialogue on cultural appropriation and the importance of Indigenous design work.

Laura Anderson Barbata, Transcommunality. Artistic Collaborations Across Borders: Mexico, Trinidad and Tobago and New York

Friday, November 08, 2024, 5 p.m.—Friday, November 08, 2024, 6 p.m.

Laura Anderson Barbata will discuss her development as a socially engaged, transdisciplinary artist who works with multiple performers and artisan communities across the Americas to present collaborative ¨interventions¨ that combine political activism, street theater, textile arts, dance, music, spoken word, papermaking, and zines to bring attention to civil, indigenous, and environmental rights issues.

Julie Heffernan: Babe in the Woods, or the Art of Getting Lost; Telling Stories in Painting and Graphic Novels

Friday, January 24, 2025

5 p.m.

Julie Heffernan is an American painter whose artwork has been described by writer Rebecca Solnit as "a new kind of history painting" and by The New Yorker as "ironic rococo surrealism with a social-satirical twist." Heffernan’s graphic memoir "Babe in the Woods" (Algonquin Press) was published in 2024.

Baseera Khan: Aesthetic Civil Obedience

Friday, January 31, 2025

5 p.m.

Baseera Khan is a New York-based multidisciplinary installation artist whose work explores the relationships between surveillance and desire, and what is created and what is experienced, to discuss civil obedience within public and private spaces.

Celene Aubry, Hatch Show Print: 145 Years of Letterpress Lore, One Poster at a Time

Friday, February 07, 2025

5 p.m.

Celene Aubry is director and print shop manager at Hatch Show Print, the 145-year-old letterpress poster and design shop in Nashville, Tennessee known for its twentieth-century country music posters.

Thu Kim Vu: Journey with Line

Friday, February 21, 2025

5 p.m.

McKinney International Artist-in-Residence Thu Kim Vu works at the intersection of calligraphy and light sculpture. The artist, who is based in Hanoi, Viet Nam and inspired by her wide travels, uses Vietnamese Zo paper, Japanese Washi, Chinese ink brush, and LED light to explore and modify temporary spaces. Vu will be in residence at the Eskenazi School from February 1 through March 15.

Chelsea Thompto: Art and Speculative (Trans) Futurity

Friday, April 04, 2025

5 p.m.

A transdisciplinary artist and educator working at the intersection of art, trans studies, and technology, Chelsea Thompto moves ideas between and across materials and modes of working to explore form and concept. An assistant professor of creative technologies at Virginia Tech who has shown and published her work nationally and internationally, Thompto works in code, video, sound, book making, writing, and sculpture.

Masako Hamaguchi: A personal history of an ex-dedicated outener

Friday, April 18, 2025

5 p.m.

Masako Hamaguchi’s jewelry evinces her passion for symbols as a means of communication. The theme is a function of numerous international moves, necessitating the acquisition of entire new sets of languages – spoken, written, visual, and gestural. Born in Tokyo and educated as an artist in Michigan and the Netherlands, Hamaguchi delights in bringing out the hidden or unexpected properties of a given material.

McKinney Visiting Artist Series

McKinney Visiting Artist Series

2024–25 Lecture Series

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