Author Archives: Isak Berbic

OPPORTUNITY: Funded MFA Study at Stony Brook University 

Overview

Stony Brook University seeks applicants for a combined MFA in Studio Art and Research Fellowship.  This is a funded opportunity offering tuition scholarship and research assistantship for an artist working with data, emerging, digital or computational media combined with an interest in race, gender, aging, social engagement, or human futurity.  The successful applicant will help build the Future Histories Studio while participating in the Studio Art MFA Program at Stony Brook University.

MFA students at Stony Brook enjoy spacious private studios, multiple campus-based galleries in which to show work and upon completion a terminal degree that qualifies graduates to teach at the university level. 

Requirements

A deep interest and practice in the intersection of equity and emerging technologies. The ability to research, learn and implement new skills and knowledge on an ongoing basis. An undergraduate degree in a related field from an accredited institution. Technical skills and experience highly encouraged, but not required. IRL participation required (covid conditions permitting)

Applications available April 18, 2021 

Apply: https://graduateschool.stonybrook.edu/apply/

Deadline: Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis until May 10, 2021 

Future History Studio

The Future History Studio (FHS) is a new laboratory for emerging modes of arts-centered research, production, and presentation. It is an exploratory hub for those interested in hybrid inquiry and developing practice-based research at the intersections of art, technology, race, storytelling, and social justice.  

The FHS experiments with art at the intersection of emerging technologies.  Specific research areas include, but are not limited to artificial intelligence, blockchain, robotics, and bio-art inclusive of computer vision, data equity, community agreement, governance, and care.  Emphasis is on art and knowledge production exploring concepts, questions, and intuitions through free study, practice, craft, tinkering, and collaboration with the aim of combating techno supremacy by modeling and alternative methodologies with the potential for tangible social impact.

FHS is part of The Digital Inquiry, Speculation, Collaboration, & Optimism (DISCO) network.  Initiated in April 2021 with the generous support of the  Mellon Foundation, DISCO envisions a new anti-racist, anti-ableist digital future through a speculative, experimental, nuanced, and critical lens to be investigated with a variety of approaches at labs on five leading public research universities.  The DISCO network consists of professor Lisa Nakamura and associate professor Remi Yergeau, University of Michigan;  André Brock, Georgia Institute of Technology; Rayvon Fouché, Purdue University; Catherine Knight Steele, the University of Maryland; and Stephanie Dinkins, Stony Brook University. 

Masters of Fine Arts (MFA)

The MFA in Studio Art is a three-year, critically engaged, creative practice program that fosters interdisciplinary study in the visual arts. The curriculum offers the opportunity to engage in intensive artistic research, interacting with artist peers and scholars in the department and across campus. Supported by a vibrant research community, renowned faculty, and private art studios, our MFA candidates are well supported in the meaningful exploration of their research interests and deepening of their art practices.

Through this opportunity, support is offered for 3 years of study on-campus study resulting in an MFA and $20,000 per year stipend. As a selective program in a large, public institution, we offer graduate training with all the benefits and resources of a major research university. As a small art department, we offer students the opportunity to create individualized paths of study. Like all of our students,  the student-research fellow will have access to courses from across the SBU campus including a variety of programs in the humanities, philosophy, computer science, engineering,  and so on.

Our combined Studio Art and Art History faculty are internationally renowned scholars, curators, and teachers. The student-fellow will have the opportunity to work with and be mentored by artist and professor Stephanie Dinkins and work with current faculty which include: Izumi Ashizawa, Shimon Attie, Brooke Belisle, Isak Berbic, Toby Buonagurio, Barbara E. Frank, Shoki Goodarzi, Helen A. Harrison,Sohl Lee, Martin Levine, Karen Levitov, Karen Lloyd, John Lutterbie, Nobuho Nagasawa, Zabet Patterson, Howardena Pindell, Jason Paradis, Lorena Salcedo-Watson, Margaret Schedel, Maya Schindler, Katy Siegel, Andrew V. Uroskie, Lorraine Walsh.

Art Department facilities include private studios for MFA candidates, the Lawrence Alloway Gallery dedicated to MFA use,  collaborative media workshops, a large sculpture shop, printshop, maker space and the flagship Zuccaire Art Gallery.

To be considered applications must be received by May 10, 2021, at 11:59 EST

Related Links:

Stony Brook Department of Art 

Other Graduate Programs at Stony Brook https://grad.stonybrook.edu/academics/academic_programs.php

Apply: https://graduateschool.stonybrook.edu/apply/

For more information about FHS & DISCO, contact: stephanie.dinkins@stonybrook.edu

Artist Talks 2021: Minerva Cuevas

On behalf of the Graduate Student Organization and Department of Art, I am pleased to announce our guest artist Minerva Cuevas. Please join us for Minerva’s artist talk on Friday March 19th 2021. 11AM-12PM.

Minerva Cuevas (born 1975, Mexico City) is one of the Latin-American artists renowned  for her work based on context research and interventions integrated with subversive  visual and socio-political messages. Her works often include participatory elements of endeavors in cultural, urban civic and  virtual space exploring the ways in which the mass media is implicated in these activities  as a powerful mediating element in society. She founded Better Life Corporation in 1998, became a member of Irational.org and  founded the International Understanding Foundation in 2016. Working across a variety of media, Cueva’s institutional solo exhibitions include  daadgalerie, Berlin, the Museo de la Ciudad de Mexico; Kunsthalle Basel and the Van  Abbemusem, Holland; Centre d’art contemporain, Saint-Nazaire, France among others. Recent group exhibitions include: “Soft Power” at the San Francisco Museum of Modern  Art; Bienal de Liverpool (2010), Bienal de Berlin (2010), Bienal de Lyon (2007), Bienal de  San Pablo (2006), Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam 2005), Bienal de Sharjah (2005).  Upcoming projects will be shown as part of the Mediacity Biennial in Seul, Korea and  Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany.

Jenny Polak speaks at the Stony Brook University Department of Art: Wed, February 13, 2019 1:30pm

Jenny Polak makes site and community responsive art that reframes immigrant-citizen relations, amplifying demands for social justice. Collaborations and site-specific projects have been exhibited widely and awarded support by NYFA, the Graham Foundation for the Advanced Study of Visual Art and Franklin Furnace, among others. Jenny Polak has held artist residencies including with the National Park Service, Newark Museum, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and the Lower East Side Tenement Museum.

Dread Scott speaks at the Stony Brook University Department of Art: Wed, February 6, 2019 2:30pm

2:30pm Theatre One, Staller Center for the Arts
Hear Dread Scott, one of our department’s artists in residence, give a talk about his creative practice.
Dread Scott is an American artist whose practice addresses the experience of African Americans in the contemporary United States. In 1989, the entire US Senate denounced and outlawed his artwork and President Bush declared it “disgraceful” because of its use of the American flag. Their work has been exhibited/performed at the Whitney
Museum, MoMA/PS1, BAM Fisher and galleries and street corners across
the country. Their work is in the collection of the Whitney Museum and
they have received grants and awards from Creative Capital Foundation,
The Map Fund, the Pollock Kranser Foundation, and a Socially Engaged
Artists Fellowship from A Blade of Grass Foundation. They have been
written about in The New York Times, Sculpture, Art In America, ArtNews,
The Village Voice, Time and The London Guardian.

Natalie Bell, Associate Curator at the New Museum @ Stony Brook University Department of Art | Monday, May 7th | South Studios

Natalie Bell is Associate Curator at the New Museum, New York, where she has curated and co-curated recent solo exhibitions by Hiwa K (2018), Anna Boghiguian (2018), Jonathas de Andrade (2017), Elaine Cameron-Weir (2017), Kahlil Joseph (2017), Albert Oehlen (2015), Barbara Rossi (2015), Anri Sala (2016), Andra Ursuta (2016), and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye (2017). She has also co-curated several major group exhibitions at the New Museum, including Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon (2017); The Keeper (2016), and Here and Elsewhere (2014).