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    Translating Spaces: Translating Law

    Sat, Mar 17, 2012, 4–5:30pm

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    SculptureCenter and Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts are proud to present the conversation Translating Spaces: Translating Law with LaToya Ruby Frazier, Sina Najafi, Huong Ngo, and Sean Raspet, moderated by Kristen Chappa and Sergio Muñoz Sarmiento. Panelists will discuss projects that are situated in between the physical and immaterial, the public and private, and the artistic and legal. Some projects enact discursive, conceptual gestures through enforceable agreements, while others raise legal issues in specific geographic spaces and virtual communities. Often co-opting and repurposing multiple spaces as a strategy, these artists destabilize notions of use, appropriation, and function in relation to property, particularly when considering the problematic of increasingly hybrid, interconnected sites, spaces, and loci.

    LaToya Ruby Frazier will discuss her performance, video, and photography work examining the impact of America's industrial revolution and specifically the politics in her hometown, Braddock, Pennsylvania. Sina Najafi will present on Gordon Matta-Clark's Fake Estates--irregular parcels of land purchased from the city of New York in the early 1970s--and Cabinet Magazine's subsequent exhibition Odd Lots (2005) that reanimated these ''gutterspaces'' in Queens and Staten Island. Sean Raspet will detail his most recent project, Untitled (Sublet), that establishes an expanding network of interconnected, re-possessed spaces among various arts and non-arts institutions. Huong Ngo will discuss her collaborative, interdisciplinary projects Fantastic Futures, Secret School and Pop-Up Studio that engage public space, online platforms, and educational space.

    SculptureCenter Curatorial Associate Kristen Chappa and Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts Associate Director Sergio Muñoz Sarmiento moderate the discussion and Q&A with audience members, discussing the practical and theoretical implications of these works.

    This program was organized in conjunction with SculptureCenter's 2012 In Practice program exhibition You never look at me from the place from which I see you, and presented in collaboration with Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts.

    LaToya Ruby Frazier is a graduate of the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program and she earned an MFA in photography from Syracuse University. Frazier is currently included in the 2012 Whitney Biennial, and she has previously exhibited at P.S.1 MOMA, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, and the Andy Warhol Museum. She is the Associate Curator for the Mason Gross Galleries in the Department for Visual Arts at Rutgers University, where she teaches photography.

    Sina Najafi is an independent curator and the editor-in-chief of Cabinet Magazine. His past curatorial projects include Philosophical Toys at Apex Art, Odd Lots: Revisiting Gordon Matta-Clark's 'Fake Estates' at White Columns and the Queens Museum of Art (with Jeffrey Kastner and Frances Richard), and The Paper Sculpture Show. Najafi holds advanced degrees in comparative literature from Columbia University and New York University. He has taught at The Cooper Union, Yale University, and the Rhode Island School of Design.

    Huong Ngo is an artist and educator based in Brooklyn, NY. She received her MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is currently a fellow at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. Ngo has received awards from Rhizome, F.E.A.S.T. and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. She has exhibited at The Kitchen, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Aldrich Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and The National Gallery of Prague. She currently teaches at Parsons The New School for Design.

    Sean Raspet received his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and is currently pursing an MFA at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has been included in exhibitions at Soci&eacutet&eacute (Berlin), The Kitchen, Museum 52, the Saatchi Gallery (London), and Daniel Reich Gallery. His work is currently on view at SculptureCenter as part of the 2012 In Practice exhibition You never look at me from the place from which I see you.

    Kristen Chappa is SculptureCenter's Curatorial Associate. She holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MA from Columbia University's Modern Art History: Critical and Curatorial Studies program. She curated SculptureCenter's 2012 In Practice program exhibition You never look at me from the place from which I see you, which includes the performance series Coda with Yve Laris Cohen and the panel discussion Translating Spaces: Translating Law. Before relocating to New York, Kristen was Co-Director of The Lab, an interdisciplinary arts space in San Francisco, from 2005-2009. She is a contributing writer for publications including Art in America and Frieze.

    Sergio Muñoz Sarmiento is an artist who practices art law. He received his BA in Art from the University of Texas-El Paso, and an MFA in Art from the California Institute of the Arts. He was a Van Lier Fellow at the Whitney Museum's Independent Study Program and received his J.D. from Cornell Law School. He is currently the Associate Director for Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts in New York City. In 2010, Sarmiento founded the VLA Art & Law Residency Program, the first residency of its kind, as well as the Law School for Visual Artists. Sarmiento has taught in a number of universities and art schools, including NYU, Harvard University, the University of Southern California, University of California-Irvine, CalArts, Brooklyn Law School, and Fordham Law School.