Unarchiving Woven Histories: Artist Talk + Workshop

AT THE SELF-TAUGHT GENIUS GALLERY
LONG ISLAND CITY, QUEENS

Natalia Nakazawa is a Queens-based artist working across multiple disciplines, including painting, textiles, and social practice. In conjunction with Handstitched Worlds: The Cartography of Quilts, Natalia will present “Unarchiving Woven Histories,” an artist talk, exhibition walk-through, and collaborative quilt-making workshop that explore the stories embedded in everyday materials and things.

This three-part program begins with a presentation on Natalia’s practice, touching on Orhan Pamuk’s “Modest Manifesto for Museums.” Her current traveling tapestry project, Our Stories of Migration, reconsiders objects from the collections of major institutions as tangible and intimate textiles for individuals to engage with through personal mapping and hand sewing. In the gallery, Natalia and exhibition curator Sarah Margolis-Pineo will unpack a selection of works on view, examining what material, pattern, and motif can reveal about quilts and the women who stitched them. To wrap up the program, participants will be invited to create a quilt square using materials brought to the workshop for their history and personal significance. Completed quilt squares will be cataloged and digitized to create a zine that will be distributed to participants and entered into the American Folk Art Museum archive. Following the program, light refreshments will be served.

Free; registration recommended. Capacity is limited for the workshop component.

Natalia Nakazawa received her MFA in studio practice from California College of the Arts, a MSEd from Queens College, and a BFA in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design. Her work has been exhibited at the Children’s Museum of Manhattan (New York, NY), Wassaic Project (Wassaic, NY), Museum of Arts and Design (New York, NY), The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY), The Noyes Museum of Art (Atlantic City, NJ), Old Stone House (Brooklyn, NY), Project for Empty Space (Newark, NJ), The Space for Public Art (New York, NY), Blackburn 20|20 Gallery (New York, NY), Casa de la Ciudad (Oaxaca, Mexico), Queens Museum of Art (Queens, NY), Topaz Arts Inc. (Queens, NY), and ISE Cultural Foundation (New York, NY).

Image credit: Our Stories of Migration (installed at the Old Stone House in Brooklyn); 2017; jacquard woven tapestry and yarn; 71 x 106 in. Photo by Etienne Frossard.

 6:30 pm–9:00 pm

 Free; registration recommended

Artist Talk in Jackson Heights

I will be giving an artist talk tomorrow, Wednesday night, March 14, at 8 pm at Espresso 77, along with artist Maria Liebana. This is part of an ongoing local artist talk series.

The event is free and open to the public.
Address: 35-57 77th St, Jackson Heights, NY 11372

Our Stories of Migration @MAD on March 4th, 2018

Sunday, March 4, 2018 - 10:00 am to 1:00 pm
Free with Museum Admission
6th floor - classroom at MAD

In this special iteration of Studio Sunday, visitors are invited to work with artist Natalia Nakazawa for her project Our Stories of Migration. After drawing their ancestral, present, and future paths on a world map, participants will embroider their personal paths onto the surface of a collaborative tapestry. The workshop also includes a scavenger hunt in the exhibitions Derrick Adams: Sanctuary and La Frontera: Encounters Along the Border around the question: “What does it mean to be a global citizen?”

At 10:30 am, join us for MADreads, which combines interactive story time and visual exploration to bring books to life. This week’s program welcomes kids and their families for a reading of The Keeping Quilt, by Patricia Polacco. The book tells the story of a quilt passed down through four generations, serving variously as a Sabbath tablecloth, a wedding canopy, and a blanket that welcomes babies into the world.

Artist Presentation for ArtXchange @Brooklyn Museum

ArtXchange
Thursday, January 25th, 2018
5 - 7pm

Developed for visual art educators by visual art educators, ArtXchange is a forum for art teachers to share and explore ideas about teaching, make art, and learn from contemporary artists and leaders in art education.

Our Stories of Migration @The Met

World Culture Festival
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Saturday, Nov 4, 2017
12 - 5pm

Our world has been shaped by people on the move. Discover connections between art and culture that travel beyond borders. Celebrate your family's own journey through performances, storytelling, interactive gallery activities, and artist-led workshops. 

Our Stories of Migration: World Map Project  
12–5 pm
Artist Natalia Nakazawa invites the public to sew their personal migration stories into a collaborative tapestry while exploring important textiles from across The Met collection. 
Ground floor, Carson Family Hall West, Uris Center for Education

Artist/Life: Intersecting Identities in the Art World

Session 1:
Moderated by Natalia Nakazawa, Sarah Thibault, Pablo Cristi
Thursday, April 6th, 7 - 9pm
Minnesota Street Projects

Session 2:
Moderated by Natalia Nakazawa, Nanci Amaka, and Billie Lee
Saturday, April 15, 4:30 - 6:30pm
The Hub
Honolulu Biennial

Artists often have the difficult task of negotiating multiple identities and roles in the art world and beyond. Yes, we are artists, but we are also expected to be administrators, educators, activists, students, parents, and somehow support ourselves financially, socially, and intellectually.

How do we manage these intersecting identities? What is possible when imagining a layered practice? What are some ways that we can push back against reductive forces that would limit our potential? How can we train ourselves and major institutions to embrace plurality?
During this meeting, we will discuss making art, making money, and managing the time to do it all. We will also try to find those precious moments - when all of our practices seem to converge. Activities will span mind-mapping, mantra-writing, and small group discussions.

This workshop is intended for any artist with questions about maintaining multiple practices and sustaining a fully realized artist/life.

Multilocational @ The Old Stone House

Exhibition Dates: March 10-June 25, 2017
Opening Reception: March 10, 2017. 6 - 8pm
Hours: Fridays 3-6 p.m. or by appointment.

Artworks by Natalia Nakazawa & Cecile Chong
A contemporary art exhibition at the Old Stone House & Washington Park
Katherine Gressel, Curator

Multilocational is defined as “of, pertaining to, or being present in more than one location.” It subtly plays on the words multicultural or multinational, or of mixed ancestry or residence. For those who have migrated from one location to another--in some cases by force-- ”multilocational” also conveys the struggle (or joy) of holding on to memories of an original home while embracing a new one. As the United States currently balances the ideals of isolationism and homogenization against openness and diversity, it is important to consider how our immigrant nation has historically accommodated multiple peoples and perspectives--and the role of artists and art institutions in presenting and preserving their stories. 

Artists Cecile Chong and Natalia Nakazawa have made such questions central to their practice, layering disparate materials, narratives, and appropriated cultural images in works that invoke the personal and political. Their art embodies Marshall McLuhan’s notion of “the supplanting of the linear perspective by a multi-locational mode of perception.” 

Presented in the Old Stone House’s (OSH’s) Great Room gallery, Multilocational exhibits bodies of work inspired by the artists’ hybridized cultural backgrounds, OSH’s history (as a reconstructed Dutch colonial farmhouse and Revolutionary War battleground) and surrounding communities, and current events. Both educators in the NYC public schools, Chong and Nakazawa will also each present collaborative work created with local students related to the exhibition theme, and public programs to engage the larger community.

Old Stone House: http://theoldstonehouse.org/exhibitions/

Artist/Admin: Doing Both @ CUE Foundation

During this meeting of Artist/Admin, we will share ideas about imagining a double practice as both institution-builders and art practitioners. Activities will span mind-mapping, mantra-writing, and small group discussions.

Facilitated by Natalia Nakazawa, this session is intended primarily for administrators in arts organizations who also are pursuing an independent artistic practice, but is also suited for people who are simply interested in both administrative work as well as artistic creativity. We will discuss the many ways these two practices can be fused or separated, both from a practical and philosophical perspective. 

• Artist/Admin • 
is a monthly meeting of artists and administrators to discuss + create new forms of the cultural institution. Readings and/or viewings will be circulated beforehand.

• Natalia Nakazawa •
is an artist, educator, and arts administrator. She is currently the Assistant Director of EFA Studios, a program of The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, which provides subsidized studio space to over 100 artists in midtown Manhattan. Additionally, she implements educational programming and young artist mentorship for NYC public school students through the Museum of Arts and Design.

This event is a public program as part of "The Visible Hand," an exhibition on art and managerialism at CUE Art Foundation, open until February 15.

Visual Heteroglossia: In Absentia opening Nov 26, 2016

Please join me for an opening reception on Saturday, November 26th, from 5 - 7pm in the lobby of 1 Main Street in Brooklyn. We will be celebrating the large-scale installation, "Visual Heteroglossia: In Absentia", which is currently on view through January 13, 2017.

"Visual Heteroglossia: In Absentia" is a large-scale installation juxtaposing contrasting styles of pattern making: geometric patterns from jacquard woven textile, and intuitive orthographic architectural forms. Inspired by the multi-locational visual storytelling methods used in miniaturist and manuscript paintings, the installation allows multiple views to be included in a single plane. The result is a visual echo-location that transports the viewer to another way of seeing, asking the question "where do you place yourself?"

Lecture: Voice of a Woman Festival, Nov 5

THE VOICE OF A WOMAN FESTIVAL NYC
SATURDAY NOVEMBER 5TH

11AM - 12PM

SPRING STUDIOS
50 Varick Street
Tribeca, NYC

Join Saya Woolfalk in conversation with Natalia Nakazawa - along with film screenings

Saya Woolfalk (born in Japan, 1979) is a New York based artist who uses science fiction and fantasy to re-imagine the world in multiple dimensions.  With the multi year projects No Place, The Empathics, and ChimaTEK, Woolfalk has created the world of the Empathics, a fictional race of women who are able to alter their genetic make-up and fuse with plants. With each body of work, Woolfalk continues to build the narrative of these women's lives, and questions the utopian possibilities of cultural hybridity.

She has exhibited at PS1/MoMA; Deitch Projects; Contemporary Art Museum, Houston; Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati; the Brooklyn Museum; Asian Art Museum, CA, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Studio Museum in Harlem; the Frist Center for the Visual Arts; The Yerba Buena Center; The Newark Museum; Third Streaming; MCA San Diego; MoCA Taipei; and Performa 09; has been written about in the New Yorker, Sculpture Magazine, Artforum, ARTNews, The New York Times, Huffington Post and on Art21’s blog; and has also worked with Facebook and WeTransfer.  Her first solo museum show The Empathics was on view at the Montclair Art Museum in the Fall of 2012.  Her second solo museum exhibition ChimaTEK Life Products was on view at the Chrysler Museum of Art in the fall 2014.  She recently completed a new video installation commission for the Seattle Art Museum, and is a recipient of a NYFA grant in Digital/Electronic Arts.  She is represented by  Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects, NYC and teaches in the BFA and MFA programs at Parsons: The New School for Design.