FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2007
Translocalities/transmodernities: Panel Discussion, Seminar Room, Townsend
Center
11 a.m. – 1 p.m. Polycentric sessions, UC-Berkeley, Townsend Center
for the Humanities
Back to Program
This presentation by Johanna Poethig will focus
on local, national and international public art projects and exchanges.
From collaborative works with the incarcerated in California to International
Mural Projects in Cuba and Mexico and the recent expedition to the Philippines
on the “Galleon Trade” this work builds connections and
addresses the issues of visual culture, mural and street art traditions,
contemporary public art practice, media art, gender issues, colonialism,
activism, globalism, art education pedagogies and curriculum and definitions
of community. The work spans from the early 1980’s to present
and will explore the way this form of artistic communication is the
same and has changed over the years in relationship to the politics
and available technologies of the times,
Participant's Bio:
Johanna Poethig has exhibited internationally and has been actively
creating public art works, murals, paintings, sculpture and multi-media
installations for over 25 years. She was raised in the Philippines through
highschool and has lived in Chicago, San Francisco and Oakland since
coming to the United States. She received her BFA at University of California,
Santa Cruz and her MFA at Mills College in Oakland, California.
Poethig’s work crosses the private and
public realms. Her paintings, sculpture, video and installations reflect
her interest in symbol, satire, society and our consumerist culture.
She has shown this work at the Togonon Gallery, New Langton Arts, The
Luggage Store Gallery, Headlands Center for the Arts, The Bronx Museum,
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and the Los Angeles Museum of Art. She
produces and participates in performance events that mix feminism, global
politics, costume, props, cabaret, experimental music and video. She
recently produced and performed in the “Extreme Insecurity Forces”
at 21 Grand in Oakland. Her video “Barbaric” was shown in
the Netherlands and in Manila at the Mag:net Gallery this summer as
part of the “Galleon Trade” exchange.
Johanna Poethig’s public art works intervene
in the urban landscape on public buildings, along freeways, in parks,
hospitals, schools, Universities, homeless shelters, and advertising
venues. She has received numerous commissions and awards for this work.
She was recently selected to do a major public art work for Glide’s
new housing development in the Tenderloin, Her recent projects include
mural on a 24 story historic building for downtown Chicago’s loop
district, an interior public art work for the new Clark Center in Vancouver,Washington
, and the artwork for San Francisco’s new Juvenile Hall created
in collaboration with Julio Morales and for Youth Uprising in Oakland
created with Mildred Howard.
Johanna Poethig is on the faculty of the Visual
and Public Art Department (VPA) at California State University, Monterey
Bay (CSUMB). As an arts educator and community artist she deconstructs
traditional "art world" boundaries in a collaborative artistic
process grounded in a process of research, production, critique, improvisation
and reciprocal learning. As one of CSUMB's pioneer faculty she contributes
this experience to VPA's innovative and socially engaged arts program.
Her interest in the dialogue between the public and personal, politics
and aesthetics, the ridiculous and the sublime and an inclusive cultural
life informs her process and inspires her work.