The Macomber Travel Grant was established 10 years ago by Jerry and Nancy Neely in name of their daughter, Kathleen Neely Macomber ’92, who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in art history.
Selected through a competitive process, awardees receive a $5,000 prize to support proposed projects involving research-based travel, the production of new artwork and a public presentation of the new work.
Young Joon Kwak
Young Joon Kwak’s new project, Rebellion of the Body, takes its name and inspiration from butoh and its founder Hijikata Tatsumi, presenting a new interdisciplinary take on its themes of material and bodily transformation through a participatory performance, a musical soundtrack and a series of sculptures. The exhibition opens sometime next fall.
“The trip has been hugely inspirational,” Kwak said. “It expanded the ideas at play in my work, and I feel that my research of Hijikata and butoh has grounded my practice within a larger historical context. It’s hard to say how exactly this trip has impacted my work yet, because I’ve only barely begun.”
Selene Preciado
Selene Preciado’s research is on Mexican feminist artist Mónica Mayer, who was a member of Los Angeles’ Feminist Studio Workshop between 1978 and 1980.
As a curatorial studies student, her presentation involves revisiting Mayer’s participation in the feminist movement in the 1970s in Mexico and “her critical view of the invisibility of women artists in the Mexican artistic system during the early 1980s,” Preciado said. Her presentation is scheduled for May 13.
“The research trips have been meaningful for the development of this research paper and also my MA thesis,” said Preciado, who established connections with other artists and scholars in the feminist art community in Mexico City.
She closely with Mayer, visiting her archive and interviewing her, as well as with Karen Cordero Reiman, professor at the art history department of the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City, who is the curator of Mayer’s upcoming retrospective, programmed for February 2016 at the Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo in Mexico City.
Lina Cordero
Lina Cordero’s show, Vanished, opened on Oct. 16, 2014, at the Lindhurst Gallery. The main component was a black room with a surround system installation that transported visitors to a cell in the clandestine detention centers in Argentina during the 1970s dictatorship.
The show also featured an informational video, a sculptural piece in memory of the people who disappeared during the dictatorship and photography that Cordero took in Argentina’s detention centers.
“I can’t even begin to explain how this work, especially the research part of it, impacted my life,” Cordero said. “The opportunity of exploring Argentina’s history and dictatorship, visiting the places and hearing the testimonies of the survivors was certainly enlightening. Seeing that people were moved by my work, and that they began to think of other realities that have happened or are happening in the world, was the most rewarding to me.”