Part six of GRAPHIC LIBERATION: PERSPECTIVES ON IMAGE MAKING AND POLITICAL MOVEMENTS

A critical conversation between Tomie Arai and Josh MacPhee, engaging questions around identity and political graphics, the tension within aesthetics and social movements, bringing the graphics off the page and into the world, and the politics of representation. Link to register HERE.

Tomie Arai is an American artist and community activist who was born, raised, and is still active in New York City. Her works works consist multimedia site specific art pieces that deal with topics of gender, community, and racial identity. She is highly involved in community discourse, and co-founded the Chinatown Art Brigade.

Graphic Liberation: Tomie Arai is the 6th in a series of live conversations between Josh MacPhee, Colgate students, and distinguished political graphics producers, exploring the role of culture in social movements and the history and evolutionary usage of political graphics.

Josh MacPhee is a designer, artist, and archivist. He is a founding member of both the Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative, a decentralized group of political artists from the US, Canada, and Mexico, and Interference Archive, a public collection of cultural materials produced by social movements, based in Brooklyn, NY. MacPhee is the author and editor of numerous publications, including Signs of Change: Social Movement Cultures 1960s to Now and Signal: A Journal of International Political Graphics and Culture.

Presented by the Art and Art History Department and the Christian A. Johnson Foundation. The Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation Artist-in-Residence was established in 1986 as a challenge grant in support of the arts at Colgate. The residency program permits one or more artists or scholars in each of the areas of fine arts, music, and theater to become part of the Colgate community every academic year.

image: Tomie Arai, Swirl (detail), silkscreen, wood, steel, 2006.