To celebrate the culmination of their six-month residency in the Museum’s Artist Studios, artists Bang Geul Han, Katharine Ryals, and MAD Artist Fellow Michelle Im will each speak about their respective practices. Following the talks, visitors will have the opportunity to meet the artists in their studios and see their work created at MAD.

This event is free with registration.

SCHEDULE

6:30–7:15 pm: artist talks on the Floor 7
7:15–8 pm: open studios on Floor 6

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Michelle Im creates ceramic objects that explore themes of home, displacement, and cultural identity in the context of globalization. Through the lens of traditional Korean ceramics, Im examines the impact of historical and cultural forces on her Korean American identity. Using the vessel as a metaphor for the human body, she addresses the psychological aspects of embodying conflicting cultural ideologies such as individualism and collectivism.

Working in video, performance, code, and weaving, Bang Geul Han’s art practice uses text as a site of disclosure and declaration that blurs and complicates the distinction between public and private. Whether in the form of virtual reality or experimental textiles, her works function as alternative archives that highlight both the systemic limitations and the subversive potential of language and technology.

Katharine Ryals’ work examines how ornamentation and objects work in combination with myth to convey hierarchy, power, and value. Utilizing the dichotomies of natural/artificial, trash/treasure, sacred/profane, and luxury/kitsch, she emulates material culture artifacts to create mixed media sculptures, lens-based work, wearable art, and site-specific installations. Through her practice, she seeks to understand how the cultural currencies of authenticity, taste, and illusion are used to generate an economy of perceived value and hierarchy within our world.