Visiting Artist: Gala Porras-Kim

Part of the Tuesday Night MFA Lecture Series at Boston University School of Visual Arts. Gala Porras-Kim is an interdisciplinary artist living in Los Angeles. Her work is made through the process of learning about the social and political contexts that influence how such intangible things as sounds, language, and history have been represented through methodologies in the fields of linguistics, history, and conservation. Interested in the nature of museum practices of preservation and conservation, Porras-Kim’s research-driven practice takes as a point of departure the assumptions that imbue cultural objects and artifacts with meaning and value. Utilizing museological approaches of display and cataloguing, the artist speculates on the possible narratives of objects that would otherwise be lost in history. Her recent work explores the limits of artists’ agency, property rights, and corporal integrity, considering artworks and artifacts within institutional collections. Originally from Bogotá, Colombia, Porras-Kim lives and works in Los Angeles. She has an MA in Latin American Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles, and an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. Her work has been shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Hammer Museum. In 2017 she was the recipient of an Artadia Award, and in 2015 of a Creative Capital award and a Tiffany Foundation award. She is currently a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study at Harvard University.

When 7:30 pm on Tuesday, February 4, 2020
Location Room 410, 808 Commonwealth Ave.
Building 808 Commonwealth Avenue
Room Room 410