Distinguished Visiting Artist Program

The Distinguished Visiting Artist Program brings senior practicing artists to the Department to lead an intensive seminar, participate in graduate student critiques and assist MFA students in the development of their work and early professional career. Past visiting artists include Rebecca Belmore, Liesbeth Bik and Jos van der Pol, Mark Boulos, David Claerbout, Maria Eichhorn, Andrea Fraser, Melanie Gilligan, Dan Graham, Brian Jungen, Mary Kelly, Michael Krebber, Scott Lyall, Ken Lum, Josephine Pryde, Jeanne Randolph, Stefan Romer, Cheyney Thompson, Kerry Tribe, Francesco Vezzoli, Ian Wallace and Li Yifan.

Past Artists

• Jeanine Oleson Artist Talk February 28th,  2018 5:30 pm Conduct Matters An Artist Talk by Jeanine Oleson Wednesday, February 28, 2018 5:30 PM Room 104 Frederic Lasserre Building 6333 Memorial Road, UBC Event is free and open to the public The UBC Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory is pleased to present an artist talk by Jeanine...

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• Re: Rehearsals March 1st,  2017 5:30 pm An Artist Talk by Constanze Ruhm Wednesday, March 1, 2017 5:30 pm Room 102 Frederic Lasserre Building, UBC 6333 Memorial Road   I mean you rehearse how to be someone else, and then you try to rehearse being the one who was first learning how to be someone else. —The character...

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• Producing without Profit: Art, Labour and Postcapitalism February 1st,  2017 5:30 pm An Artist Talk by Dave Beech Wednesday, February 1, 2017 5:30 pm Room 1002 Audain Art Centre, UBC 6398 University Boulevard Dave Beech is an artist in the collective Free (with Andy Hewitt and Mel Jordan), as well as a writer and curator. He has written widely on the politics...

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• Grid and Gradient: An Artist Talk by Sam Lewitt January 11th,  2017 5:30 pm Wednesday, January 11, 2017 5:30 PM Room 102, Frederic Lasserre Building 6333 Memorial Road, UBC www.ahva.ubc.ca Sam Lewitt’s talk in the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory at UBC will introduce several recent exhibitions in the U.S. and Europe, as a way into a constellation of problems concerning...

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• It’s All a Blur: An Artist Talk by Tony Labat March 30th,  2016 5:30 pm Join us for the last Distinguished Visiting Artist talk this term! Since the early 1980s, Cuban-born artist Tony Labat has developed a body of work in performance, video, sculpture, and installation dealing with the body, popular culture, identity, urban relations, politics, and the media. Labat has exhibited internationally over the...

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• Stefan Romer March 5th,  2016 Stefan Romer is professor for New Media at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and works conceptually between art practice and critical theory; his works and essays are widely exhibited and published. His background is activism and documentarism with the tendency to de-conceptualize traditional epistemological canons and dissolve academic...

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• Artist Talk by Maria Hupfield March 2nd,  2016 5:30 pm Wasauksing artist Maria Hupfield presents public talk March 2, 2016 Maria Hupfield’s public talk, If You Want to Be Included You Have to Participate, is about rising above through the act of doing and through embodied knowledge. Topics include the politics of recognition, cultural revitalization, native feminism, social activism, the...

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• Treasure Island: An Artist Talk by Daniel Boyd February 10th,  2016 5:30 pm Aboriginal Australian artist Daniel Boyd presents public talk February 10, 2016 Daniel Boyd (b. 1982) is an Aboriginal Australian artist who has been exhibiting his work nationally and internationally since 2005. Boyd’s ancestry can be traced throughout Queensland and Northern New South Wales to the peoples of Kudjla, Eastern Kuku...

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• An Artist’s talk by Emily Wardill – and they lay them before you like reasons February 25th,  2015 5:30 pm You are warmly invited to attend the next DVA Lecture. By blurring truth and fiction, symbolism and reality, and rationality and emotion in her work, Wardill unlocks the hierarchical structures of knowledge and rearranges them. While her practice contains an element of analysis, she experiments with different visual or verbal...

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• Florian Pumhösl: Works and Exhibitions November 6th,  2014 5:30 pm Join us for the first DVA Lecture of 2014-2015 Florian Pumhösl (*1971, lives in Vienna) makes paintings and films. Neither historical reference, nor appropriation, his works operate within a canon of abstract visual language, and reflect on the diverse manifestations of modernity. Florian Pumhösl will present and discuss his practice,...

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• An Artist’s Talk by R.H. Quaytman February 26th,  2014 5:30 pm “I seek to maintain and simultaneously disrupt painting’s absolute presence.” R.H. Quaytman is an internationally exhibited artist based in New York. Recent exhibitions of her work include: Passing Through the Opposite of What It Approaches, Chapter 25, at The Renaissance Society in Chicago; “Dalet, Chapter 24,” Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach, Germany; Spine,...

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• A Conversation with John Kelsey January 8th,  2014 6:00 pm “You can almost taste an artist emerging in a dealer’s mouth” The Department of Art History Visual Art and Theory is pleased to announce the rescheduling of John Kelsey’s visit to our program as part of the Distinguished Visiting Artist Program. On January 8, Kelsey will discuss a broad range...

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• A Whole New Season of Lost – Artist’s Talk by Blake Rayne October 3rd,  2013 6:00 pm “Sleep is the last ungentrified neighborhood” Blake Rayne has exhibited his work throughout the United States and Europe for the last 15 years. Since the mid-1990’s Rayne’s work has contributed to transformations in the field of art, and specifically painting, primarily through his consistent and varied approaches to putting pressure...

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• Jakob Jakobsen – Artist’s Talk March 6th,  2013 6:00 pm Self-institutionalisation can be viewed as a kind of exorcism, a kind of externalisation of this internalised control. Jakob Jakobsen is a politically engaged visual artist, educator and activist. He was part of the Copenhagen Free University from 2001 to 2007 (copenhagenfreeuniversity.dk), was co-founder of the trade union Young Artworkers (UKK)...

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• ART & VALUE: An Artist’s Talk by Dave Beech February 12th,  2013 6:00 pm The aesthetic function of public art is to codify social distinctions as natural ones Dave Beech is an artist in the collective Free (with Andy Hewitt and Mel Jordan), as well as a writer and curator. He studied painting at Leicester Polytechnic and Cultural Theory the Royal College of Art,...

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• Arms Are Overrated: An Artist’s Talk by Stanya Kahn January 17th,  2013 6:00 pm Artist’s Talk by Stanya Kahn Stanya Kahn is an interdisciplinary artist working primarily in video, with a practice that includes performance, writing, sound design, drawing, animation and digital media. Kahn’s hybrid media practice borrows from pop vernacular, documentary tropes, improvisation, comedy and experimental film/video praxis in its re-working of signs,...

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• Conversations with Stalin: A Performative Reading by Eleanor Antin November 29th,  2012 6:30 pm Performance from the artist’s coming-of-age memoir, followed by a conversation with Michael Morris. As part of the exhibition, State of Mind: New California Art Circa 1970, at the Belkin Art Gallery, Eleanor Antin will give a performative reading of chapters from Conversations with Stalin. Eleanor Antin is a major figure...

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• TOTAL DISCLOSURE: An Artist’s Talk by Scott Lyall March 7th,  2012 6:00 pm Color is less an image than a tangled occupation for thought. Scott Lyall is a Canadian-born artist, whose practice constructs intricate dispositifs, in which various epistemological models and concrete material processes find themselves in unfamiliar proximity, producing surprising aesthetic and theoretical effects. His print-works, graphic images, and sculptural installations have been exhibited regularly in North...

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• Robert Macaire Presents: An Artist’s Talk by Cheyney Thompson November 30th,  2011 6:00 pm Cheyney Thompson is a New York-based artist whose work in painting and sculpture centers on issues of abstraction and representation. Cheyney Thompson is a New York-based artist whose work in painting and sculpture centers on issues of abstraction and representation. His work is the subject of a survey exhibition which...

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• A Talk by Francesco Vezzoli November 14th,  2011 12:30 pm All are welcome to attend this free, public talk. Question and answer period to follow. Francesco Vezzoli is an Italian artist known for his lavish video works, in particular “Trailer for a Remake of Gore Vidal’s Caligula,” and for his embroideries. His work explores melodrama, humour, and glamour, gravitating toward...

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• Miss Austen Enjoys Photography: An Artist’s Talk by Josephine Pryde November 9th,  2011 6:00 pm Part of the Distinguished Visiting Artist Program Josephine Pryde is an artist who lives in London, and in Berlin where she has been Professor for Contemporary Photography at the University of the Arts since 2008. She has had recent solo exhibitions at Chisenhale Gallery, London; MD72, Berlin; Reena Spaulings Fine...

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• UN TRAIN PEUT EN CACHER UN AUTRE April 1st,  2011 5:00 pm An Artist Talk by Michael Krebber Michael Krebber is a Cologne-based German artist whose practice incorporates painting, drawing, installation, critical writing and bookmaking. He has taught a painting class at the Städelschule in Frankfurt since 2002. His critical writing has been published in Texte zur Kunst and Artforum. “For several...

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• Popular Unrest: An Artist’s Talk by Melanie Gilligan November 23rd,  2010 5:30 pm Melanie Gilligan will present an artist’s lecture, discussing a range of her material, historical and intellectual interests as an artist. “Of course you’re special, special like everyone else.”* Melanie Gilligan is a London-based Canadian artist whose practice incorporates video, performance, drawing and installation, critical writing, and music. Gilligan has received...

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• Maria Eichhorn February 1st,  2010 5:30 pm Lectures are free and open to the public. Maria Eichhorn will present on works like the “Film Lexicon of Sexual Practices”, “Maria Eichhorn Aktiengesellschaft”, her new book The Artist’s C o n t r a c t , the journal C a m p u s , her exhibitions “The...

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• Ian Wallace: The Modernity Thesis and the Crisis in Representation January 11th,  2010 5:30 pm Ian Wallace is a Vancouver-based artist and art historian. A recent recipient of the Molson Prize, he is known throughout the world for his critical reflections and contributions as and pioneer in photo-conceptual art. A graduate of the University of British Columbia, Wallace has served as a mentor and teacher to several generations of artists...

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• Mark Boulos March 3rd,  2009 6:00 pm Mark Boulos (Boston, 1975) is an artist-filmmaker working in Amsterdam. Mark Boulos works with documentary film, often around the themes of political militancy and religious ecstasy. He recently exhibited his work in the 2008 Biennale of Sydney, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, the Swiss Art Awards...

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• Bik Van der Pol January 14th,  2009 Studio visits and seminar. The Rotterdam artists Liesbeth Bik and Jos van der Pol have been making work together for ten years. Proceeding from their engagement with the immediate surroundings they create installations, often architecturally inspired, which they fill with a specific program. They thus confront the public with a...

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• Dan Graham October 31st,  2008 1:00 pm Dan Graham was one of the first artists to work within the parameters of “Conceptual Art” in the 1960s. He works across architecture, film, photography, and performance. Some of the main ideas, themes, and approahces he has explored throughout his career include: inter-subjectivity, the mirror and the double, time delay...

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• David Claerbout October 11th,  2008 7:00 pm Artist talk David Claerbout’s work explores the conventions of film and photography via digital technology. Often his work investigates the blurred boundary between still and moving images, with the main focus being on the manipulation of time: the singular moment versus narrative – repetition and the expansion of a moment...

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• Jeanne Randolph October 10th,  2008 1:30 pm Psychoanalyst, theorist, critic, art writer and performer. Jeanne Randolph is an autonomous intellectual whose talks, performances and writings reveal the commonalities between psychoanalytic theory, spectator sports, western philosophy, doo-dads, contemporary Canadian visual arts, advertising, insect life and other stuff.  Her first book, PSYCHOANALYSIS & SYNCHRONIZED SWIMMING was very influential.  Other...

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• Mary Kelly October 6th,  2008 5:30 pm On Fidelity – Art, Politics, Passion and Event. Part of the Distinguished Visiting Artist Program. Mary Kelly has contributed extensively to the discourse of feminism and postmodernism through her large-scale narrative installations and theoretical writings. Her recent exhibitions include Documenta XII, Kassel, , WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, Museum...

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• Li Yifan: Artist Talk October 3rd,  2008 12:30 pm Li Yifan is a Chinese artist and documentary filmmaker. The Distinguished Visiting Artist Program is made possible through the generous support of the Rennie Collection.

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• Rebecca Belmore March 13th,  2008 7:00 pm Rebecca Belmore is an artist currently living in Vancouver. Born in Upsala, Ontario, Rebecca Belmore is an artist currently living in Vancouver, British Columbia. She attended the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto and is internationally recognized for her performance and installation art. Since 1987, her multi-disciplinary work...

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• Stefan Romer: Artist Talk March 4th,  2008 12:30 pm Stefan Romer is professor for New Media at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and works conceptually between art practice and critical theory; his works and essays are widely exhibited and published. His background is activism and documentarism with the tendency to de-conceptualize traditional epistemological canons and dissolve academic...

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• Andrea Fraser: Artist Talk January 29th,  2008 5:15 pm Andrea Fraser’s work, writes Pierre Bourdieu in his foreword to Museum Highlights, is able to “trigger a social mechanism, a sort of machine infernale whose operation causes the hidden truth of social reality to reveal itself.” It often does this by incorporating and inhabiting the social role it sets out...

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• Kerry Tribe: Artist Talk November 29th,  2007 12:30 pm Kerry Tribe (b. 1973) is an artist based in Los Angeles and Berlin. Kerry Tribe has had solo exhibitions at Art 28 Statements, Basel; REC, Berlin; Galerie Masonneuve, Paris; Southern Exposure, San Francisco; and Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions. Her work has also been shown at Kunst-Werke Berlin; The Generali Foundation,...

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• Brian Jungen February 15th,  2007 6:30 pm Along with Michael Turner and Monika Szewczyk moderated by Scott Watson Panel Discussion with Brian Jungen. Assistance provided by the Dean of Arts Office has enabled Brian Jungen to be the Distinguished Visiting Artist in residence for February 2007 in the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory.  AHVA...

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