Lyle Ashton Harris

Artist lecture Thursday, February 15, 2018 7PM
Timken Lecture Hall, California College of the Arts, 1111 Eighth Street, San Francisco CA, 94107
Lyle Ashton Harris, installation view of Once (Now) Again at the 2017 Whitney Biennial.
For more than twenty years, artist Lyle Ashton Harris has explored ideas of black identity, gender, sexuality, belonging, and various cultural histories using a variety of media including photography, video, collage, installation, and performance. Over this time, his vision has been subtly honed, yet increasingly layered. Focusing on the historical objectification of the black figure in Western culture, his works reinterpret the legacies of iconic cultural figures and also feature individuals from his life in Ghana and the United States. Harris’s Once (Now) Again—featured in the 2017 Whitney Biennial—is part of a larger ongoing project, the Ektachrome Archive, comprised of slide images shot from 1986 to 1998, photographic prints from his journals, and diaristic video works. The resulting assemblage serves to both memorialize and evoke moments lived at the intersection of the personal and political.
Harris received his BA from Wesleyan University and MFA from the California Institute of the Art. His work is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Studio Museum, Harlem; and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. In addition to his inclusion in the 2017 Whitney Biennial, he was featured in the 2016 Sao Paulo Biennial. An Associate Professor at New York University, Harris lives and works between New York City and Accra, Ghana.

Larry Sultan Visiting Artist Program

Pier 24 Photography is pleased to present the Larry Sultan Visiting Artist Program in collaboration with California College of the Arts and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Each year, the Larry Sultan Visiting Artist Program brings six photographers, writers, and curators to San Francisco to offer free and open lectures, and to work one-on-one with students at California College of the Arts.


Larry Sultan Photography Award


Jonathan Calm, Double Vision (Recording I), 2018

Jonathan Calm

Fall 2019 Residency
Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA

Click HERE for more information on the Larry Sultan Photography Award

Jonathan Calm is a visual artist who works in photography, video, installation, and performance. A central theme of his work is the relationship between photography and urban architecture, and the powerful role of images in the way architectural constructs shape the lives of individuals and communities.

In his most recent work, Calm explores the complex representation of African-American automobility from a historical and contemporary perspective, focusing and drawing on the importance and resonance of the Negro Motorist Green Book. Of this project, he explains, “the image of the infinite highway and the unbridled freedom to roam the land has always been considered a quintessential expression of the modern American spirit, but the black American experience of travel, which involves heightened subjectivity and exposure, has to this day proven a precarious privilege rather than an inalienable right.”

Calm’s art practice is international in scope and has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including Frequency at the Studio Museum in Harlem (2005); Role Play at the Tate Britain (2006); Black Is, Black Ain’t at the University of Chicago’s Renaissance Society (2008); Streetwise at the Reina Sophia Museum in Madrid (2008) and the Chelsea Art Museum (2011); deCordova Biennial at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum (2013); and Rooted Movements at LMAKprojects in New York City (2014). Calm currently lives in Palo Alto, CA where he is a faculty member in the Department of Art and Art History at Stanford University.