Zoom Room
Tue
Feb 23, 2021
10:00 pm
 - 
11:15 pm
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About

MoAD’s physical building may be closed due to the mandatory shelter-in-place, but you can still get your fill of art and artists of the African Diaspora. Each Wednesday at 1:00 pm PST, join MoAD staff members as we visit some of our favorite artists in their studios to see what they’re currently working on and how their work is changing as a result of the quarantine. This is a rare opportunity to hear from artists directly from their studios. We will follow all talks with an audience Q&A.

Los Angeles-based artist Alison Saar has a transformative practice, telling stories through figurative forms that focus on personal and cultural narratives. Inspired by her mother, artist Betye Saar, and her father Richard Saar, a ceramist and art restorer, Saar grew up surrounded by creativity. With her use of distinctive forms and materials, she creates powerful figurative sculptures, paintings, and prints that activate histories and legacies of survival. Saar transforms her figures by bestowing agency and strength, often arming them with personal belongings or tools to center their tenacity, resilience, and communal significance. Saar graduated from Scripps College in 1978 with a B.A. in studio art, and received her M.F.A. from Otis Art Institute in 1981.

She has received three fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (1984, 1985 and 1988), and was awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 1989, the Flintridge Foundation Award for Visual Artists in 2000, the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award in 1998 and the Joan Mitchell Artist in Residence in 2013. In 2012, the United States Artists Program named Saar one of 50 USA fellows. Select public works include Monument to the Great Northern Migration (Chicago, Illinois), Swing Low: Harriet Tubman Memorial (Harlem, New York) and Embodied (Los Angeles, California).

Generous support for this series provided by the Westridge Foundation

This series is supported by the Facebook Art Department, UNTITLED, Art Fairs and The Art Report.

 

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