Annie Dugan lets us know about two “virtual” online events happening on-line this week on the Duluth Art Institute’s website. There is no cost for either of these events, but pre-registration is required:
- On Wednesday (1/26) from 5:30 – 7pm on Zoom, there will be a virtual artist talk for the exhibit, Like Me, Like You, featuring artists of the Twin Ports Asian Pacific Islander Desi Americans (APIDA) Collective. The exhibit showcases “the stories of your APIDA neighbors and friends reckoning with stereotypes, myths, assimilation, and years of invisibility, documented through podcasts and videography, through two-dimensional work including photographs and paintings, and through sculpture, jewelry and the written word. Individual narratives come together to reveal truths about living as APIDA in the Twin Ports.” The artists include Julia Cheng, Aya Kawaguchi, Laura Judd, Da Hee Kim, Julie Kim, Matthew Koshmrl, Sharon Kwong, Pakou Ly, Viann Nguyen-Feng, Kim Nordin, and Sharon Yung.
- Also on Wednesday (1/26) from 5:30 – 7pm on Zoom is a virtual celebration of New York artist Beth Livensperger's Don't Like Mondays, currently on display in the Morrison Gallery at the DAI. Livensperger’s large-scale collages “depict women navigating the banal yet psychologically-charged space of office interiors, foregrounding female relationships across generations, from adversarial to supportive. In these pieces, receptionists are trapped behind tiny desks, a lone employee drowns in paperwork, and a manager delivers bad news to a subordinate. Men are relegated to bit parts – with visible hints that they still call the shots.”
If you happen to be traveling to Chicago in the next couple of months, a selection of Essential Worker Portraits by northern Minnesotan artist Carolyn Olson are on display at the Swedish American Institute Gallery through August. From the beginning of the stay-at-home order during the COVID-19 pandemic, Olson created a series of pastels of essential workers that beg the question, “How can we ask the essential worker to do this work while not being paid enough, provided no health insurance or affordable housing?” If you're not headed to Chicago any time soon, there are also 13 original Essential Worker Portraits on display locally at the UU church in Duluth through late April. There are also plans for a book of the collection to be published later in the spring/summer and a full exhibit at Prøve Gallery as well.
