Past Residents
Past Resident2015: Artadia
Ian Weaver
Ian Weaver’s work utilizes drawing, sculpture and film to act as metaphors for fracture. He is interested in the construction of identity and memory, and how individuals and communities use commemorations and their archived personal/communal objects to represent these constructions. His work centers on the now defunct “Black Bottom” section of the Near West Side of Chicago where African American residents once lived. For this, he has constructed a fictive history for this destroyed community utilizing elements such as museum vitrines, maps and documents, sculpture, and film. Recently, he has extended this construction to the creation of a fictional group, the Black Knights – part medieval knight, part Black Nationalist – who lived within the community during the 1940s.
Ian Weaver (born 1970, Chicago, IL) earned his M.F.A. from Washington University in St Louis in 2008. Recent solo exhibitions include a survey of his work (2004-2011) at the South Bend Museum of Art, as well as exhibitions at the Chicago Cultural Center (2015), the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art (2014), and the Saint Louis Art Museum (2009-10). Recent group exhibitions include the Kemper Art Museum and White Flag Projects, both in St. Louis, MO. He has been in residence at Yaddo and the Millay Colony and his awards include grants from Artadia and the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Illinois Arts Council, and the Department of Cultural Affairs, Chicago, IL.
Ian Weaver, Migration, 2015, Wood, rope, sand, aluminum, photographic transfer and film projection, Dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist
Residents from United States
Past Resident2015: ACC - Asian Cultural Council
Ishu Han
Ishu Han questions ideas belonging, civic duty and how such notions influence our voices as individuals. In his video practice, Han uses his own body and migration history to explore the notion of ‘identity’. A recent major work considered Australia’s immigration history, focusing on Asian immigration following the discovery of gold in Victoria. His work considers the exploration of how people of different nationalities, races, ethnicities and cultures coexist and how independent identities have been retained.
Ishu Han (born 1987, Shanghai, China) currently lives and works in Tokyo, Japan. Han’s works have been featured in a number of solo exhibitions, most recently, Life Scan, Tokyo Frontline, Japan, 2014; Study Country, VCA Gallery, Australia, 2013; Form of Sea, Kyoto Art Center North Gallery, Japan 2012; as well as groups shows such as In the Wake, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 2015; Whose Game is it?, RCA Gallery, UK, 2015; Asia Anarchy Alliance, Kuandu Museum of Fine Art, Taipei, 2014; Local Futures, He Xiang Ning Art Museum, China, 2013; 16th Japan Media Arts Festival, The National Art Center, Tokyo, Japan 2012; Local to Local, Openspace Bae, Busan, Korea, 2010.
Events & Exhibitions
Ishu Han: Memory of Each Other
July 8–October 2, 2015
Ishu Han, Neighbor, 2012, Video, 7:15 min
Past Resident2015: Joan Mitchell Foundation
Aaron Collier
Paint has the binary ability to summon and refuse, reveal and conceal, beautify and debase. Aaron Collier’s work attempts to revel in these manifold offerings, for in so doing, the resulting imagery is consonant with our tangled interaction with the world. Routine are encounters marked by disclosure and obstruction; we happen upon phenomena that we are seemingly able to know, grasp, and understand along with those we fundamentally cannot. Paint fittingly pictures this paradox, for painting itself is an in-between act, a simultaneous doing and undoing. Collier’s paintings, drawing and collage, thus traffic more in fragment than in chronicle. Images that indefinitely “suggest” allow him to situate the viewer and himself as deferential participants, adventuring with the image.
Aaron Collier lives in New Orleans where is an Assistant Professor at Tulane University. Solo exhibitions include Cole Pratt Gallery and Staple Goods, an artist cooperative in the St. Claude Avenue Arts District. His work has been included in group exhibitions at the Contemporary Arts Center and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art and has been featured in New American Paintings. Collier’s paintings are represented in collections such as the Boston Medical Center, Iberia Bank and New Orleans Museum of Art. He has participated in residencies at the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans, Ragdale Foundation and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.
Aaron Collier, Complications in the Pattern, 2012, Oil on canvas, 40 × 44 in. (101.6 × 111.76 cm). Courtesy of the artist