Yale Schwarzman Center, TSAI City Present Online Artist Series

Press release from Yale Schwarzman Center:

March 24, 2021

Yale Schwarzman Center (YSC) and the Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale (Tsai CITY) are reworking what it means to dive deep into an artist’s work and what motivates them to create with its new online series Beyond the Studio. Featuring artists whose practices spill into media outlets, social justice platforms, marketplaces, startups, and cultural institutions, this series of talks, workshops, and discussions continue to break boundaries and bridge the gap between artists and art lovers.

Beyond the Studio allows each featured artist to add their own layers of meaning to their work, aiming to empower and teach young entrepreneurs to fearlessly develop their own professional ambitions. The business of art is the art of business, and Beyond the Studio showcases how these creatives charted their paths in insightful and innovative ways.

“The artists featured in Beyond the Studio cultivate visions and voices by forging connections and building artistic movements that possess enough gravity to grow into something greater,” said Ye Qin Zhu, Innovation Fellow at YSC and Tsai CITY responsible for developing the Beyond the Studio series. “These sessions unveil how creative leaders expand their networks, contribute to civic engagement, work with local organizations, and leverage creativity as a strategy.”

Beyond the Series features the following internationally acclaimed artists and activists:

• The series launched on March 3 with Alaina Simone, an artist liaison, curator, gallerist and producer, who focuses on the intersection of power, identity, race, gender and the environment in the U. S., Caribbean and abroad.
• The March 17 episode highlights Victor Wang, the artistic director and chief curator of the M WOODS museums in Beijing, as well as founder of the ‘Institute of Asian Performance Art.’
• Amar C. Bakshi, who will be featured in the March 21 episode, aims his attention at how to integrate technology into environments and across pronounced distances to create new forms of digital-physical public spaces that challenge and subvert existing norms.
• April 14 highlights the partnership of Hangama Amiri, a MFA graduate from Yale University with a background in painting and printmaking, and Muheb Esmat, a curator and researcher in Brooklyn, NY, who concentrates on displaying the visual and digital culture in contemporary Afghanistan.
• April 28 will feature Devin Kenny, who combines his talents and shares his experiences as an artist, writer, musician, and independent curator out of Queens, NY.

• May 5 will present New York Times bestselling author, Sharon Salzberg. Salzberg’s life’s work focuses on meditation and mindfulness, often finding new ways to incorporate these ideals into mainstream American culture.

All installments are recorded and made virtually available in the Replay section of the Yale Schwarzman Center website. For more information, follow the YSC on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

This press release was produced by Yale Schwarzman Center. The views expressed here are the author's own.