For this special conversation, join artists Diedrick Brackens and Mika Tajima as they explore Ruth Asawa’s ways of making, seeing, and being in community in the context of the exhibition Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective. The conversation will be moderated by writer Dawn Chan.
After the conversation, enjoy Artist Party: Ruth Asawa, a celebration of Asawa’s dedication to boundless experimentation, continuous learning, and community.
Admission to the Artist Talk is free with registration.
Diedrick Brackens is best known for woven tapestries that explore allegory and narrative through autobiography, broader themes of African American and queer identity, and American history. Brackens employs techniques from West African weaving, quilting from the American South, and European tapestry-making to create both abstract and figurative works. Often depicting moments of male tenderness, Brackens culls from African and African American literature, poetry, and folklore. Beginning his process through the hand-dying of cotton, a material he deliberately uses in acknowledgement of its brutal history, Brackens presents rich, nuanced visions of African American life and identity, while also alluding to the complicated histories of labor and migration. Brackens utilizes both commercial dyes and atypical pigments such as wine, tea, and bleach to create vibrant, intricately woven tapestries that investigate historical gaps, interlacing the present with his singular magical-realist worldview.
Dawn Chan is a writer who has frequently contributed to the New York Times. You can also find her writing in ArtReview, the Atlantic.com, Bookforum, the New Yorker, New York Magazine, the Paris Review, and the Village Voice. Currently core faculty at Bard’s Center for Curatorial Studies, Chan has received a Warhol Arts Writers Grant, a Thoma Foundation writing award, and a Fulbright Grant. She also formerly wrote for Artforum, where she worked as an editor in the 2010s.
Mika Tajima is an artist whose practice materializes techniques developed to shape the physicality, productivity, and desires of the human body. Her sculptures, paintings, videos, and installations focus on the embodied experience of ortho-architectonic control and computational life. From architectural systems to ergonomic design to psychographic data, Tajima’s works operate in the space between the immaterial and the tangible to create heightened encounters that target the senses and emotions of the viewer, underlining the dynamics of control and agency.
Accessibility
For questions about accessibility, please email [email protected].
The Ronald S. & Jo Carole Lauder entrance at 11 W 53rd Street is wheelchair accessible and has a power-assist door. Reserved and wheelchair-accessible seating is available in Titus Theater 2. Gallery stools, wheelchairs, and rollators are available by request at all Museum entrances, on a first-come, first-served basis.
Accessible and all-gender restrooms are located on the first floor and lower levels.
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The Adobe Foundation is proud to support equity, learning, and creativity at MoMA.
Major funding is provided by the Agnes Gund Education Endowment Fund for Public Programs, the Jeanne Thayer Young Scholars Fund, and the Annual Education Fund.