Panel: "Sound, Air, Earth" | November 14, 6:30PM

Erin Genia's "Sound Vessels" (2019) is in the foreground with "After Powhatan's Robe" (2018) in the background. (Photo by FAIZAL WESTSCOTT)

Erin Genia's "Sound Vessels" (2019) is in the foreground with "After Powhatan's Robe" (2018) in the background. (Photo by FAIZAL WESTSCOTT)

As part of Urbano’s 10th anniversary curatorial theme, Creative Conditions, and within Erin Genia’s exhibition, Okoŋwaŋžidaŋ, join us for this panel moderated by Genia, with artists Rachel Allen, Nicole L’Huillier, and Nancy Valladares about their processes in working with unconventional materials and pushing the boundaries of the creative process in engaging with air, sound and earth in their work.

Rachel Allen, also currently in residence at Urbano, is is an artist and curator, exhibiting her artwork and presenting on her scholarship nationally. She is an Assistant Curator at the Peabody Essex Museum, and, most recently, she exhibited at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University.  She has dual citizenship with the United States and with her Native nations, the Nez Perce Tribe of Idaho. Allen holds an MFA in Printmaking and an MA in Arts & Cultural Management and Museum Studies from Michigan State University. She received her BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art. 

Visit her website here.

Nancy Valladares is an interdisciplinary artist from Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Collecting and reclassifying images and objects, her work attempts to trace the ecosystems of power embedded within modes of representation and image making technologies. Drawing from the historical entanglement between filmmaking, photography, and colonial consciousness, her work is a reconfiguration of storytelling and cultural memory. Valladares completed her Bachelor in Fine Arts from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she was the recipient of the Fred Endsley Memorial Fellowship and a Distinguished Scholar Award. Her work has been exhibited at The Art Institute of Chicago, Sullivan Galleries, SUGS Gallery X, ExFest Film Festival, The Research House for Asian Art, Columbia College, and Roman Susan Gallery in Chicago.

Visit her website here.

Nicole L’Huillier is a transdisciplinary artist from Santiago, Chile, currently based in Boston, United States. Through installations, performances, sculptures, compositions, and multiple transductions, her work explores human and non-human performativity, rituals of membranal and resonant architectures, as well as vibration and sound as construction materials for spaces, identity, and agency. She works at the intersection of music, art, architecture, science, and technology to challenge perceptual conventions and to open the possibility of new imaginaries. Nicole is also part of the MIT Media Lab Space Exploration Initiative, where she explores the experimental forms and implications of art, expression and culture in outer space. She is also an experimental musician, drummer, synth lover and one-half of the space pop duo Breaking Forms. Nicole is currently a PhD candidate and research assistant at MIT Media Lab, Opera of the Future group, she also holds a Master in Media Arts & Sciences (2017) from MIT Media Lab. Nicole will be an artist in residency at CERN, ESO Observatory, and ALMA Observatory during 2019. She has exhibited and performed at the Venice Architecture Biennale, Sónar +D, Ars Electronica, Institute of Contemporary Art Boston (ICA), SXSW, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Bienal de Artes Mediales Chile, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Santiago (MAC), Museum of Fine Arts Boston (MFA), Guggenheim Museum, Bienal de Arquitetura São Paulo, Centro Cultural GAM Santiago, among others. She has published and been invited as a speaker at Sónar +D, Thresholds Journal, Leonardo Journal, Siggraph, ACADIA, meConvention, Festival en Orbita (NYC, Lima, and Santiago), Festival FIIS Chile. She has been invited as a lecturer and guest critic at MIT Art Culture and Technology (ACT), School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), UPenn (PennDesign), Universidad de Chile, Universidad Finis Terrae, Universidad San Sebastián, Universidad Uniacc.

Visit her website here.