Course info

'Material Worlds' explores how history continues to shape our understanding of objects, materials, and bodies. By combining performance and sculpture, we will generate discourse, create social interventions, and aim to look beyond human experience. The work of sculpture today incorporates a broad range of interdisciplinary practices: movement, sound, video, ceramics, and even performance. Within sculpture there are abridged meanings and histories condensed within the material of the object, sites and bodies. Scholar Lisa Lowe points out, “artifacts appear to abbreviate the whole course of history into a finite object”, while simultaneously refusing to yield this infinite multiplicity.” In this course we can begin to question social constructs, craft narratives, and raise questions of existence. Drawing on the work of Nao Bustamante, Coco Fusco, Guadalupe Maravilla, and Ana Mendieta, we will examine how these artists and others are re-imagining objects and movements in light of our current political climate.

While this course is concerned with a thorough investigation of materials, it is yet fiercely dedicated to experimentation. Students will engage in a dialogue about conceptual problem-solving both individually and amongst their peers. Students will learn to convey a thought, a story through the choice of materials including their bodies.

In addition to critiques and writing reflections in your process book, you will discuss texts that help situate the work we engage with and create, into the larger cultural context.