Artist Talk
Emerging Artist Program presents Cynthia Aurora Brannvall in conversation with Mirka Knaster
In-Person at MoAD
Sat
May 14, 2022
2:00 am
 - 
3:30 am
Free Admission
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About

Join us for a talk with Cynthia Aurora Brannvall in conversation with fiber artist Mirka Knaster about Brannvall's current exhibition on view in the MoAD Salon. The Threads that Bind is an allusion to a body of artwork rendered in textiles to evoke memory, presence, labor, trade, industry, slavery, luxury, baptisms, weddings, funerals, gender and history in the African diaspora.  The concept and material of thread creates meaning as an ancestral carrier traveling through time across borders through voluntary and involuntary migration from one body to another. The bind refers to shared experiences of trauma, oppression and perseverance that cohere in Black identity.

Cynthia Brannvall is an art historian and a multi-media artist who teaches art history as a full time faculty member of Foothill Community College. She is a California native of African American and Swedish descent. Cynthia has undergraduate degrees in Art Practice and Art History from UC Berkeley where she was a Phi Beta Kappa and a Ronald E. McNair scholar and was awarded the Departmental Citation for her research in Art History.  She has an MA in Art History from San Francisco State University with an emphasis on Modern and Contemporary art. An advocate and ally for social justice and equity, Cynthia’s artwork explores identity formation envisioned in an imagined deep time terrain of memory, reclamation, and the geographies of forced and voluntary migrations of body and spirit. Her artwork has selected for juried group exhibitions in the San Francisco Bay Area, San Luis Obispo, Los Angeles, New Orleans and Washington DC.

Mirka Knaster, Ph.D., is an author and a fiber artist whose work has been exhibited internationally. A board member of the Textile Arts Council (Fine Arts Museums, SF), she co-chairs its Tours & Workshops Committee. She has curated several exhibits of Korean fiber art at venues in Northern California and Nevada and is working on a new show, On the Move: Migration, Emigration, Immigration. She creates in a studio on the north coast and writes a blog about diverse aspects of art.

This is an in-person program at MoAD. Proof of Covid-19 vaccination or a negative Covid-19 test within 72 hours of entry is required.

This program is presented in conjuction with the exhibition Emerging Artists Program presents Cynthia Aurora Brannvall: The Threads That Bind on view currently at MoAD.

MoAD Emerging Artists is generously funded by Karen Jenkins-Johnson & Kevin Johnson and Westridge Foundation.

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