Stony Brook University
Department of Art
welcomes artist Coleman Collins
Friday May, 7th, 2021
3pm EST
Coleman Collins is an interdisciplinary artist and writer from Stone Mountain, Georgia. His work explores issues related to debt, world history, and social relations – how our economic and sociocultural systems converge to produce certain realities and fictions. Recent exhibitions and screenings include Carré d’Art, Nîmes; Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; Nothing Special, Los Angeles; Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, New York; ltd los angeles, Los Angeles; Artspace, New Haven, and Human Resources Los Angeles. He received an MFA from UCLA in 2018, and was a 2017 resident at the Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture. He lives in New York, where he was a 2019 participant in the Whitney Independent Study Program.
Collins will discuss his art practice as well as his project “GuiltCoin” — a multidisciplinary work that was recently on view in the exhibition Cybernetics of the Poor at the Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (December 18, 2020–March 28, 2021). GuiltCoin is a thought experiment that explores the intimate relationship between guilt and debt. It seeks to contend with the notion of existential guilt. How is guilt already financialized, instrumentalized? What is its value – and what is value, anyway? How are we relating to each other, emotionally, and how can it be otherwise? The lecture will go over the conceptual framework for the work, some material aspects of its expression, and the collaborative process that led to its production.
