Critical Conversations by The Ford Family Foundation Presents: Risa Puleo
Independent curator Risa Puleo will speak about how debates driving social practice during the AIDS crisis inspire her working methods and exhibitions such as Walls Turned Sideways: Artists Confront the Justice System, Monarchs: Brown and Native Artists in the Path of the Butterfly, and her curatorial contribution to the 2023 Counterpublic Triennial, which resulted in the rematriation of a sacred site.
Puleo makes exhibitions, such as Walls Turned Sideways: Artists Confront the Justice System (The Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, 2018), about how artists intervene in social structures. Working at the intersection of art historical, curatorial and social practices, and grounded in methods of abolition and sovereignty, Risa increasingly uses artistic and curatorial channels to implement changes in the material, infrastructural, and social fabric of a place.
For example, in collaboration with the 2023 Counterpublic Triennial and Native film collaborative, New Red Order, she supported the rematriation of a sacred site back to Osage Nation. Her exhibition Monarchs: Brown and Native Artists in the Path of the Butterfly was curated for Bemis Center for Contemporary Art during her year as curator-in-residence, and traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, Blue Star Art Space, and Southwest School of Art in San Antonio, The Nerman Art Museum in Overland Park, Kansas.
Other exhibitions have been hosted by The Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; ArtPace, San Antonio; the Leslie Lohman Museum in New York City, and more. Puleo has Master’s degrees from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College and Hunter College and is a doctoral candidate in Northwestern University’s art history program. She teaches at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has written for Art in America, Art Papers, Art 21, Asia Art Pacific, Hyperallergic.com, Modern Painters and other art publications. Risa teaches art history at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
About Critical Conversations
The Ford Family Foundation, in partnership with the University of Oregon Department of Art’s Center for Art Research (CFAR), brings prominent curators and critics to Oregon to engage with artists statewide. This element of the program is a rotating collaboration with art organizations across the state to connect prominent national and international curators, critics, and writers with Oregon-based artists for in-depth studio visits Recent Critical Conversations visitors have included Jordan Amirkhani, Tina Rivers Ryan, Rashida Bumbrey, Prem Krishnamurthy, Natasha Ginwala, Aurora Tang, Christian Viveros-Fauné, Lumi Tan, Peter Eleey, Hamza Walker, Julie Rodrigues Widholm, Jamillah James, Julia Bryan-Wilson, Jan Verwoert, Michael Darling, Anne Ellegood, Steven Matijcio, George Baker, and Helen Molesworth, among others.
When
Where