August 1, 2024
Fall 2024 Highlights
The Institute of the Arts and Sciences (IAS) is pleased to announce exhibitions and events for Fall 2024, including the multi-sited exhibition Seeing through Stone, featuring over 80 artists and 16 new commissions, performances by sound artist Guillermo Galindo and multidisciplinary artist Caleb Duarte, a conversation with internationally recognized artist and member of the Lac Seul First Nation (Anishinaabe) Rebecca Belmore and renowned Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer and artist Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, monthly First Friday events, and more.
Exhibitions
Seeing through Stone
April 12, 2024 – January 5, 2025
Institute of the Arts and Sciences; San José Museum of Art; Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos
Curators: Gina Dent, Lauren Schell Dickens, Rachel Nelson
Seeing through Stone brings together artwork by contemporary artists from around the globe whose work engages prisons, justice, and freedom. Drawing its title from poet Etheridge Knight’s evocation of those who have “the secret eyes,” Seeing through Stone highlights the works of artists, including those who are formerly and currently incarcerated, that offer a vision beyond carceral systems, drawing out the flourishing collective story and alternative imagining currently underway in creating a future free of prisons. The multi-sited exhibition is not focused on prisons but rather is oriented towards artists who help provide a vision—and a model—of abolition in practice.
Seeing through Stone is co-organized by the Institute of the Arts and Sciences and San José Museum of Art.
Events
October 4, 2024
5:00 pm – 7:00 pm
An Evening of Performances with Guillermo Galindo and Caleb Duarte
Experimental composer and artist Guillermo Galindo creates objects made of discarded materials and personal items in the desert along the United States–Mexico border. In this unique performance, Galindo will activate Ojo / Eye, 2015, his artwork in which a bicycle wheel is transformed into a theremin, an instrument that produces sound through interference in its electromagnetic field. Ojo / Eye is currently on view in Seeing through Stone.
Caleb Duarte is a multidisciplinary artist, with works that exist in the space between theater and sculpture. Public and architectural interventions serve as the platform in Duarte’s practice on which to explore modes of relation, community building, and collaboration. For this evening of performances, Duarte and collaborators will activate Tres Terrenos, 2024, a sculptural work transforming a prison guard tower into a beacon for freedom also on view in Seeing through Stone.
October 18, 2024
6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
In Conversation: Rebecca Belmore and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
This conversation between internationally recognized artist Rebecca Belmore, member of the Lac Seul First Nation (Anishinaabe), and renowned Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg writer, and artist Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, mediated by Gina Dent and Rachel Nelson, will focus on Belmore’s and Betasamosake Simpson’s practices as they reflect on Seeing through Stone, which includes Belmore’s At Pelican Falls, 2017.
November 2, 2024
2:00 – 3:30 pm
Solitary Garden 5 Year Anniversary
For this anniversary celebration, participants in Solitary Garden will reflect on the past 5 years of tending to this participatory public sculpture and garden project with award-winning artist jackie sumell and Tim Young, who is currently incarcerated at Pelican Bay State Prison, fighting to prove his innocence in the California appellate court system.
November 7, 2024
6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Explode! Platform’s Passagem Activation: Exu, Orality and Ritual with Moisés PatrícioMoisés Patrício is a renowned babalorixá and multi-media artist based in Brazil whose practice engages the sacred elements of Amerindian and Afro-Brazilian culture. For this performance, Patrício will activate Explode! Platform’s artwork, Passagem, 2024, currently on view in Seeing through Stone. Passagem transforms the IAS’s library into an area of ongoing dialogue between Brazil and the U.S. about the movement for prison abolition and Black liberation.
November 9, 2024
2:00 pm – 4:00 pm
Alumni and Family Day at the Institute of the Arts & Sciences
Presented by the UC Santa Cruz Office of Alumni Engagement and the Institute of the Arts and Sciences, Alumni and Family Day invites UCSC Alumni and the Santa Cruz community to an afternoon of art and activities at the IAS. Bring the whole family and enjoy the exhibition and activities for all ages including crafts, a scavenger hunt, special giveaways, a caricature artist, a food truck, and more! Free and open to the public.
November 22, 2024
5:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Art, Technology, and Activism in Brazil: 20 years of Frente 3 de Fevereiro
Frente 3 de Fevereiro is a Brazilian collective founded in 2004 following the murder of Flávio Ferreira Sant’Ana, a Black dentist, by São Paulo military police. Based in São Paulo, the group uses different artistic languages to denounce the brutal situation faced by racialized people in Brazil while creating a new reality. During this conversation, Frente 3 de Fevereiro members will discuss Ancestral Intelligence, 2023-2024 a work on view in Seeing through Stone that uses AI as a counter-technology through which, Maurinete Lima, a Black feminist liberation leader is re-embodied and brings ancestral wisdom to current and future struggles.
December 6, 2024
6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Explode! Platform’s Passagem Activation: Ilê Aiyê and the Dimensions of Freedom with Dhandha da Hora
Dhandha da Hora is a master dancer and teacher, and a member of the Ilê Aiyê, one of Brazil’s most important musical and cultural institutions, founded in 1974. Through Afro Diasporic songs and dance, this performance will invoke the intersecting struggles for freedom between Bahia and the United States. The event is part Explode! Platform’s artwork, Passagem, 2024, currently on view in Seeing through Stone.
About the Institute of the Arts and Sciences:
As the keystone public galleries at UC Santa Cruz, the Institute of the Arts and Sciences (IAS) presents a unique vision for the arts at the forefront of social transformation. Drawing on the resources of a leading research university, the world-class exhibitions at the IAS engage the most critical issues of our time, catalyzing meaningful encounters with the arts and ideas.
The IAS is located at 100 Panetta Avenue, Santa Cruz, CA. Open Tuesday-Sunday, 12 p.m.-5 p.m., admission is free to the public. To learn more, visit www.ias.ucsc.edu.
Social Media
Instagram: @ucscias
Facebook: facebook.com/ucscias
Image: Photography by Glen Cheriton.
