MAC’s “Modes of Relationship” Panel Discussion to Explore Art, Race, Nationality, and Gender

January 4, 2023

MCLA Arts & Culture (MAC) will host a panel discussion, “Modes of Relationship,” focused on art, race, nationality, and gender on January 26, 2023, with artist-in-residence WANG Chen and Mikayla Patton,
artist-in-residence at The Studios at MASS MoCA.  

The discussion will take place at 5 p.m. at the MCLA Design Lab on 49 Main St. The event is free and open to the public.  

The panelists will reflect on the contemporary art world that insists on the ideas of authenticity and identity in their work. The discussion will be moderated by Dr. Eunice Uhm, Assistant Professor of art history and museum studies at MCLA.   

“Modes of Relationship” question what it means to work as an artist with marginal identities and how identities inform artistic practices. The topics stem from the narrative Patrick Flores questions, “how can women’s art be deterred from reiterating the logic of objectification if it is to change it by reiterating its subjectivities?" Or Joan Kee’s question, “are affiliations of nation, race, and gender more important than those chosen by the artist or her work, even to the point where the latter is displaced by the former?” 

WANG Chen is the 2022-2023 Benedetti Teaching artist-in-residence – a nine-month visiting fellowship offered through MAC and MCLA’s Department of Fine and Performing Arts. Chen has exhibited nationally and internationally, including at Fotografiska Museum in Stockholm, Sweden, Roswell Museum, New Mexico, Lauren Powell Project, Los Angeles, The Immigrant Artist Biennial, NYC, Alfred University, and Crosstown Art Center in Memphis. Her work incorporates drawing, animation, sculpture, costumed performance, fabrication, sound engineering, and 3D game design to create highly fictional immersive dreamscapes within video installation.  

Mikayla Patton is a mixed-media artist from the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Her practice involves printmaking, paper making, beading, sculpture, and installation with an interest in the history, physicality, and symbolism of paper, sustainable methods, and paper-making through the combination of traditional and contemporary artistic methods. In 2022, Patton received the Artist in Business Leadership from First Peoples Fund, and LIFT: Early Career Support for Native Artists from Native Arts and Culture Foundation.  

About MCLA
At MCLA, we’re here for all — and focused on each — of our students. Classes are taught by educators who care deeply about teaching, and about seeing their students thrive on every level of their lives. In nearly every way possible, the experience at MCLA is designed to elevate our students as individuals, leaders, and communicators, fully empowered to make their impressions on the world. In addition to our 128-year commitment to public education, we have fortified our commitment to equitable academic excellence. For 10 of the last 12 years, MCLA has been named a Top Ten College by U.S. News and World Report. MCLA also appears on the organization’s list of top National Public Liberal Arts Colleges. Since the list was created, MCLA has risen to #33 as a Top Performer on Social Mobility and ranks first among all Massachusetts liberal arts schools, which measures how well schools graduate students who receive Federal Pell Grants. Learn more at www.mcla.edu.  

About MAC 
MCLA Arts & Culture (MAC) is MCLA’s newly expanded arts programming arm. MAC serves as the nexus for internal and external partnerships to create engaging and equity-focused projects that encourage public arts participation, as well as the investigation of arts-based pedagogy that can reshape institutional practices. MAC (formerly known as BCRC, the Berkshire Cultural Resource Center) functions as a hub that supports interdisciplinary approaches to education, social justice, and academic research across MCLA’s campus. MAC supports the expansion of MCLA programming to include: faculty opportunities for interdisciplinary curriculum development; interdisciplinary faculty and student social justice research; arts and culture symposia and workshops; internships for underrepresented student communities; and the development of an open-access archive that includes documented community arts projects and support tools that other college campuses and communities can use and apply to fit their needs. 

About the Studios at MASS MoCA
The Studios is MASS MoCA’s artist and writers residency program situated within the museum’s factory campus and surrounded by the beautiful Berkshire Mountains. Operated by MASS MoCA’s Assets for Artists department, the residency runs year-round and hosts up to 10 artists at a time. Artists of any nationality can apply for stays of two or four weeks. Learn more at www.assetsforartists.org/studios-at-mass-moca.