Andrea Bowers in Conversation with Sara Reisman
Friday, February 19, 2016
6 to 8pm
Andrea Bowers, Workers' Rights Posters, 2013. [Image Description: An art piece that comprises three rows and eight columns of multicolored human rights posters that have various slogans such as “DON’T MOURN. ORGANIZE” and “Ignore your rights and they will go away”.]
Artist, activist, and fair wage campaigner Andrea Bowers discussed the role of activism within her artistic practice. Invoking American history, contemporary political issues, and protest, Bowers’ work gives visibility to the plight of excluded groups, addressing a range of issues, from environmental policy to labor conditions in the art world, including tree sitting in the California forest and a critique of the hiring practices of Frieze Art Fair in 2013 for outsourcing non-union workers.
Born in 1965 in Wilmington, Ohio, Andrea Bowers lives and works in Los Angeles, California. Bowers received her MFA from the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, California, in 1992 and her BFA from Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio, in 1987. Bowers is represented by Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects in Los Angeles, Andrew Kreps Gallery in New York, Capitain Petzel in Berlin, Germany, and kaufmann repetto in Milan, Italy.
Bowers has been featured in solo exhibitions including Transformer Display for Community Fundraising: Phase 4 (a two-person exhibition with Olga Koumoundouros) at the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York (2013); Ni Una Muerta Mas at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens, Greece (2011); The Weight of Relevance at the ZKM I Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie in Karlsruhe, Germany (2008), the Vienna Secession in Vienna, Austria (2007), and The Power Plant in Toronto, Canada (2007); and Nothing is Neutral: Andrea Bowers at REDCAT in Los Angeles (2006). In 2014, Bowers collaborated with Suzanne Lacy on a 10-day performance and installation at The Drawing Center in New York.
Bowers was included in the 2004 Whitney Biennial and in numerous group exhibitions including Arctic at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebcek, Denmark (2013); Selections from the Grunwald Center and the Hammer Contemporary Collection at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles (2013); The Past is Present at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit in Detroit, Michigan (2013); Labour and Wait at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in Santa Barbara, California (2013); Approximately Infinite Universe at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego in San Diego, California (2013); The Living Years: Art after 1989 at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota (2012); Audience as Subject Part 2: Extra Large at Verba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, California (2012); The Residue of Memory at the Aspen Art Museum in Aspen, Colorado (2012); I Am Still Alive: Politics and Everyday Life in Contemporary Drawing at The Museum of Modern Art in New York (2011); Drawn from Photography at The Drawing Center in New York (2011}; The Last Newspaper at the New Museum in New York (2010); The Artist's Museum: Los Angeles Artists 1980-2010 at The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (2010); Round 33: The Seventh House at Project Row Houses in Houston, Texas (2010); In the Balance: Art for a Changing World at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, Australia (2010); Radical Hospitality at The Suburban in Chicago, Illinois (2007); Casino 2001 at the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst in Ghent, Belgium (2002); and Subject Plural at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, Texas (2001). Bowers will also be included in the 2014 Gwangju Biennale in South Korea and SITEiines 2014 at SITE Santa Fe in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Bowers's work is included in many prestigious public and private collections including Artpace in San Antonio, Texas; the Baltimore Museum of Art in Baltimore, Maryland; the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens, Greece; the Orange County Museum of Art in Newport Beach, California; the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C.; the lngvild Goetz Collection in Munich, Germany; Museum Abteiberg in Moenchengladbach, Germany; the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego in San Diego, California; The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles; the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas; The Museum of Modern Art in New York; the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles; the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; and the Utah Museum of Fine Arts in Salt Lake City, Utah.