First Friday Lecture Series
First Fridays are an informal lunch-hour workshop/lecture series on a wide variety of topics from how museums acquire artworks to the role of the artist in contemporary society.
Caroline Dukes, Ball on a Field around Noon, (detail) acrylic on canvas, 66” x 66”, 2003
Feminist Art: becoming a historical object
with Claudine Majzels
Friday, March 2, 2012, noon-1 pm at MAWA
What would a history of feminist art look like? When did it start? Is it over? Is feminist art a thing of the past? Another “ism” or historical style? Has a new canon of feminist art been established alongside the old hegemony of art history? Has feminist art been co-opted into the old structures of patriarchy? Claudine Majzels will begin to explore these questions and lead what will surely be a rousing discussion!
Claudine Majzels (Ph.D.) teaches Art History at the University of Winnipeg where she has created new courses on feminist art, Aboriginal arts and craft, and a seminar on “The Body in the Visual Arts” as part of the new MA program in Cultural Studies: Curatorial Practices at the U of W. Her publications include studies of 17th century Dutch Mennonite women artists and Winnipeg artist Caroline Dukes.
No First Friday in April. Have a good Good Friday!
Winnipeg Madam, fashion icon. Winnipeg Police Archive, 1904
Shadow archives and ladies of the evening: Commemoration, incarceration and self-fashioniong in Winnipeg mugshots, 1874-1916
with Laurie Bertram
Friday, May 4, 2012, noon-1 pm at MAWA
Presented by MAWA and Platform centre for Photographic & Digital Arts
Drawing from the Winnipeg Police Museum Archive, this talk examines turn-of-the-century mug shots of Western Canadian women on the margins who were arrested for various offenses. Through these photographs, Bertram investigates intersections between commemoration and incarceration. Amid ongoing attempts to secure attention for missing sex trade workers in the West, she asks: what challenges do criminalized women pose to Canada’s commemorative landscape? How can carceral images be redeployed in the construction of radical gender histories? Bertram will look at incarcerated women’s compelling use of fashion, cloth and notions of portraiture in their sometimes-defiant confrontation with police cameras and photographers who “captured” their image.
Born and raised in Winnipeg, Dr. Laurie K. Bertram is now the Grant Notley Memorial Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of History and Classics at the University of Alberta. She is a specialist in material culture, trauma, and memory in Canadian history and completed her PhD at the University of Toronto in 2010. Laurie’s exhibition, Pioneer Ladies (of the evening), will be at Platform from Friday, May 4 – Saturday, June 9, 2012, with an opening reception on Friday, May 4 from 7-10 pm.
Laurie Bertram. Photo by Meera Singh
And coming up in June…
History of Installation Art
with Jennifer Stillwell
Friday, June 1, 2012, noon-1 pm at MAWA
(stay tuned for details)