Revisiting Panamerica: A Conversation
with Pablo Helguera and Adetty Pérez de Miles,
a Book Launch Event for
Mobilizing Pedagogy: Two Social Practice Projects
in the Americas by Pablo Helguera and Suzanne Lacy
Saturday, December 8, 2018
from 3 to 5pm
at NADA Miami
Ice Palace Studios, 1400 North Miami Ave, Miami, FL
Programming is included with admission to NADA Miami
Pablo Helguera near Tok, Alaska, May 2006. Photo by Sean Arden. [Image Description: To the right artist Pablo Helguera stands on a white van holding a tan banner. A giant black bell with an eye in the middle of it is painted on the banner. Behind Helguera are some trees, a deep blue river, snow capped mountains, and a cloudy sky.]
To celebrate the launch of Mobilizing Pedagogy: Two Social Practice Projects in the Americas by Pablo Helguera and Suzanne Lacy, published by Amherst College Press, the event Revisiting Panamerica featured a conversation between artist Pablo Helguera and Adetty Pérez de Miles, critical theorist and professor of visual studies. The dialogue between Pérez de Miles and Helguera centered on his socially engaged, trans-continental project The School of Panamerican Unrest (2006). The discussion, moderated by Sara Reisman, traced Helguera and Pérez de Miles’ 2006 journey with anecdotes about artistic movements and communities encountered along the 25,000-mile expedition. The program culminated with a reading of selected Panamerican Addresses.
Bios
Pablo Helguera is a multidisciplinary artist and educator based in New York City. His artworks investigate topics such as history, pedagogy, sociolinguistics, ethnography, memory, and the absurd. Helguera’s projects often blur the line between pedagogy and politically engaged art, raising the question of how educational methodologies can contribute to social practice, and vice versa. He attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and worked in the museum’s education department while earning his BFA. He has since held positions in education at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and the Guggenheim Museum in New York, and is currently the Director of Adult and Academic Programs at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. He has performed and exhibited extensively throughout Europe and the Americas including: the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Museo de Arte Reina Sofia, the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Brooklyn Museum, the Guggenheim, and many others. He is the recipient of awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation/Fideicomiso para la Cultura Mexico, Creative Capital, Franklin Furnace, and a Fellowship for Socially Engaged Art from A Blade of Grass.
Adetty Pérez de Miles is an educator and scholar of art education and visual art studies. An assistant professor at the University of North Texas College of Visual Arts and Design, her teaching is centered on inquiry-based approaches to learning and socially responsible teaching. She earned a dual PhD in art education and women’s studies at Pennsylvania State University. Her dissertation, Dialogic Encounters: The School of Panamerican Unrest, investigates the pedagogical function of contemporary art. Pérez de Miles is the author of numerous scholarly articles on dialogic pedagogy, contemporary art, and feminist epistemology, featured in journals such as Studies in Art Education, Knowledge Cultures, and Visual Culture and Gender.
Sara Reisman is the Executive and Artistic Director of the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation which is focused on supporting art and social justice through grant making to organizations and exhibitions at The 8th Floor. Recent exhibitions include In the Power of Your Care, Enacting Stillness, The Intersectional Self, The Schoolhouse and the Bus, featuring works by Pablo Helguera and Suzanne Lacy, and The Supper Club, a solo exhibition by Elia Alba. From 2008 to 2014, Reisman was the director of New York City’s Percent for Art program where she commissioned permanent artworks by artists including Xu Bing, Pablo Helguera, Karyn Olivier, Ester Partegas, and Mary Mattingly, among others, for civic sites like libraries, public schools, courthouses, plazas, and parks. Reisman has worked in a curatorial capacity in organizations including the Queens Museum of Art (2008), the New Museum (2005-2006), and the Philadelphia ICA (2004-2005). Reisman was the 2011 Critic-in-Residence at Art Omi, and a 2013 Marica Vilcek Curatorial Fellow, awarded by the Foundation for a Civil Society. Reisman has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Purchase College, and since 2016, the School of Visual Arts’ Curatorial Practice Masters Program.