Join us for a virtual screening of work by Nicky Tavares! This event is second in a series featuring Iowa-based or connected media artists. A program of selected work by Tavares will be followed by a live Q&A.
Anaglyph 3D glasses are recommended. You can pick up a free pair on the porch of 229 N. Gilbert starting Sunday May 9!
Nicky Tavares is a multimedia artist whose work sheds light on systemic inequalities through personal storytelling. Her work has evolved through an array of media – photography, film, video, animation, sculpture, VR 360, as well as across film forms and presentation formats such as documentary, installation, GIFS, and moving image projections for live performance. This process of evolution has been intuitive; with each project she simply looks for the best creative tools that will serve the content. Nicky’s work has been shown internationally in both gallery and screening room contexts, including New Directors/New Films at the Museum of Modern Art and Lincoln Center, New York; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; TIE: The International Experimental Film Exposition; IMPAKT Festival; the Dallas Medianale Festival; Balagan Experimental Film and Video Series; and Other Cinema. Nicky is currently an Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies in the Department of Art at Grinnell College. nickytavares.com
This program is supported by a grant from the Iowa Arts Council, a division of the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs.
Program:
Untitled Bee Film, 2019 (5 min, 16mm film)
A medicinal visitation with backyard spiritual guides of earth. A coat of sugared violence reveals the energetic drain of varroa destructor, a parasitic mite. Untitled Bee Film is part of a larger multimedia body of work that explores both the history of apitherapy and the current phenomenon of bee colony collapse disorder.
Searching for Beauty in Student Loan Debt or at Least the Envelopes in Which It Comes, 2020
(7 min, screenprints on 16mm film for viewing in anaglyph 3D or not)
Don your 3D glasses, open your mind, allow the denial of questionable financial decisions made by an aspiring young artist to dissolve on your tongue, and take a trip over 10 years to a delusory destination where the student loan debt crisis and one advanced art degree converge. Lean into the darkness of capitalized interest or remove your glasses and dream in color of solvency that may never come. Energetically steeped in student loan pay-off balances that exceed original borrow amounts and dedicated to all artists who understand but cannot bear to speak of it.
“Nicky Tavares’s Searching for Beauty in Student Loan Debt or at Least the Envelopes in Which It Comes, an anaglyph 3D short made from screenprints on 16mm, is bedazzling in its patterned assortment of blue and red blots, and quietly bone-chilling in its sonic collage of credit-chasing voicemail harassment.” – Michael Pattison, Sight & Sound: The International Film Magazine, Winter 2020-21
Garfunkel Is Dead, 2019 (2 min, experimental animation)
When I was 10 years old my mom accidentally killed my cat. I never let her forget it.
Call Me by Heart, 2011/2015 (2.5 min, 16mm collage film with optical soundtrack)
A handmade film constructed out of the Boston White Pages and family mementos collected from estate sales, Call Me by Heart commemorates the publicly listed residential phone number while reflecting upon changing perceptions of public and private information.
Notes from the Lower Rungs on Being Chronically Tan and Enflamed, 2021 (work-in-progress)
A virtual pandemic baby grows up in a childrearing learning module as junior faculty reflect on their tumultuous journeys climbing the academic ladder.