Mellon Indigenous Arts Program

Decolonizing the Digital Humanities: Indigenous Arts, Histories, and Knowledges from the Material to the Screen

REGISTER HERE

Invited guests include Maria José Afanador-Llach (Facultad de Historia, Universidad de los Andes), Miranda Belarde Lewis (Zuni/Tlingit Nation; Information School, University of Washington), Élika Ortega Guzmán (Department of Cultures, Societies and Global Studies, Northeastern University y Red de Humanidades Digitales), Kasey Keeler (Potawatomi/Tuolumne Me-Wuk Nation, Department of American Indian Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison), Kent Morris (Barkindji Artist and Curator and Kluge-Ruhe Artist in Residence, Spring 2019), and Janet Chávez Santiago (Zapotec; Biblioteca de Investigación Juan de Córdova).

The keynote address will be delivered by Margaret M. Bruchac (Department of Anthropology and Coordinator of Native American and Indigenous Studies, University of Pennsylvania) in the Rotunda, from 5:00-6:30 pm on April 5. A reception will follow the keynote address.

This symposium is sponsored by the Page-Barbour Fund for Interdisciplinary Scholarship, Institute of Humanities and Global Cultures, Center for Global Inquiry and Innovation, McIntire Department of Art, and Center for the Americas/Centro de las Américas. The event recognizes the place of Indigenous scholars and Indigenous studies at UVa, and UNESCO's declaration of 2019 to be the Year of Indigenous Languages.

For more information, please contact the organizers, Allison Bigelow (Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese) or Douglas Fordham (Art History). John Unsworth (UVa Library), Karenne Wood (Monacan Nation, Virginia Foundation for the Humanities), Henry Skerritt (Mellon Indigenous Arts Iniative), and Adriana Greci-Green (Mellon Indigenous Arts Iniative) serve on the program committee.

Full Conference Schedule

Xhosa activist artist Xolile Madinda will be in residence at UVA between Monday November 5th and Sunday November 11th for a full week of performances, workshops and class visits. The residency will culminate with a performance at the Bridge as part of the Telemetry music series.

Xolile (‘X') Madinda is a hip-hop artist, social activist, community educator and entrepreneur based in Grahamstown/ Makhanda in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. A fiercely talented artist and rapper, X - together with Mxolisi Bodla (aka Biz) -  is  one of the founding members of Defboyz, one of the most influential hip hop groups in the Eastern Cape. Biz and X combine hip hop, poetry and beats with social messages and community activism to forge social cohesion. X is also one of the founding members of the Youth Art group Fingo Revolutionary Movement and Fingo Festival, a  week-long annual event now in its ninth year and part of the National Arts Festival . X programmes and organizes an ambitious roster of artists and speakers, blending cutting-edge South African DJs, beats and rhymes with discussions, live art, lectures and children’s activities.

X is also founder and CEO of Around Hip Hop, an organization that is currently building The Black Power Station, a pioneering arts space within the re-emerging industrial area of Grahamstown/ Makhanda. Alongside his artistic career, X has spearheaded a range of community and social education groups ranging from Khulumani community journalism to Save our Schools and Community Association. A visionary artist whose life is dedicated to community education and organisation, X has already made a lasting impact on the artistic and social life of the Eastern Cape and further afield. In 2014 he was invited to tour the US as part of the artists as social change movement, and he returns to the US in November 2018 for a week's residency at UVa. 

Sound curator and ethnomusicologist Noel Lobley has been collaborating with X for more than a decade, and in August they co-hosted a live event in the Black Power Station, titled 'Graham's Legacy, Makhanda's Future'. 

X's residency will build on long-term collaborative projects between South Africa and UVA, and is generously sponsored by the African Urbanism Humanities Lab. 

For further information please contact noel.lobley@virginia.edu.

Dance Workshop with Amrita Hepi

Friday, September 21  |  3:00 - 5:00 pm  |  free  |  UVA Culbreth Stage

This workshop focuses on how to acknowledge the land you are on while dancing. It will include a discussion about cultural dance and how dance is created collaboratively, tuition in phrasing and gestures, and peer presentation. It is open to anyone, regardless of dance experience. 

Amrita Hepi is an award winning choreographer and dancer with Bundjulung (Australia) and Ngapuhi (New Zealand) Indigenous heritage. Her mission as an artist is to push the barriers of intersectionality and make work that garners multiple access points through allegories. Her practice at present is interested in the perpetuation of culture, tradition 

and a ‘decolonial imagination.'

Space is limited to please register here.

Artist Talk | Teri Greeves

Wednesday, October 24, 6pm

Campbell Hall, Room 153

Enrolled with the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma, Teri Greeves began beading at eight years old. After growing up on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming where her mother ran a trading post, she eventually graduated from UC Santa Cruz. Greeves began her career as a beadwork artist after winning Best of Show at Santa Fe Indian Market in 1999. She has won awards and honors at Indian Market, the Heard Museum and, in 2003, she received the Dobkin Fellow at the School of American Research.  In 2009 she was featured in the PBS television series, Craft in America and in 2016 she was selected as the USA Distinguished Fellow in Traditional Arts.  Her work has been exhibited in Changing Hands 2 at the Museum of Art and Design; at the Brooklyn Art Museum’s Tipi: Heritage of the Great Plains; in State of the Artat the Crystal Bridges Museum; and recently in Native Fashion Nowat the Peabody Essex Museum. Greeves' work is also included in the collections of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, the British Museum, the Heard Museum, the Brooklyn Art Museum, the Museum of Arts and Design and the Portland Art Museum among others. Greeves lives with her husband and two sons in Santa Fe, NM.

Greeves' work is featured in the exhibition Reflections: Native Art Across Generations.  This exhibition is curated by Adriana Greci Green, Curator of Indigenous Arts of the Americas, and brings together historic Native American art drawn from the collections of The Fralin Museum of Art with the work of several distinguished contemporary Native artists. Greeves is a 2018 Mellon Indigenous Arts Visiting Fellow and will be in residence in Charlottesville from Oct. 22-26, 2018.

DIRECTIONS to Campbell Hall: http://www.virginia.edu/webmap/popPages/15-campbellhall.html

FREE PARKING available in Culbreth Garage http://www.virginia.edu/webmap/popPages/194-culbrethRoad_garage.html

Aboriginal artist Jennifer Kemarre Martiniello (Arrernte) will give a lecture about her artistic practice over the last fifteen years as a glass artist, poet, writer and photographer. Refreshments will be provided at 6:00 pm and the lecture will begin at 6:30 pm. Space is limited and registration is required.

Martiniello’s work is currently on view in a solo exhibition at Kluge-Ruhe titled Freshwater Saltwater Weave.

Space is limited, so please register for this event here.