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(Online) Viewfinder: Tragedy and the Everyday with Laurel Nakadate
September 2, 2021 | 5:30 pm
FREE
This program is online only via Zoom.
Register in advance now! Advance registration is required. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the talk.
Laurel Nakadate is an American artist who works in video and photography to address questions of gender, sexuality, power, and vulnerability. Greater New York (5:10 min., 2005), which Nakadate filmed on and shortly after September 11, features the artist engaged in a variety of activities throughout New York City: dancing with a Walkman, speaking to a dead bird, conversing with an older man, and—in a recurring, haunting image—staring into a column of smoke left by the collapsed Twin Towers. Dressed in a Girl Scout uniform and raising a hand in salute, she alludes to Dorothea Lange’s photograph of Japanese American schoolchildren in the moments before they were incarcerated in internment camps during World War II. Nakadate’s work is in the collections of major institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Guggenheim Museum. Hirshhorn Associate Curator Marina Isgro and Lily Siegel, executive director of Hamiltonian Artists and curator of an upcoming exhibition of Nakadate’s work at Tephra Institute of Contemporary Art, will join Nakadate in a conversation about this and other works.
This program is part of “Viewfinder: Women’s Film and Video from the Smithsonian,” a monthly virtual film screening and conversation series sponsored by the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative, Because of Her Story. This first sequence of selected works reflects on interiority—a particularly timely topic during this global pandemic. Visit WomensHistory.si.edu for more information about upcoming events in this screening series.
CART (real-time captioning) will be provided for this program. If you have any questions about accessibility for this program, please email isgrom@si.edu.
Image: Courtesy the artist and Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects
