Yoshua Okon to Speak at Hunter College, 11/13

Yoshua Okón will speak at Hunter College at 7:00pm on Wednesday, November 13 at 695 Park Avenue Hunter North Building, 15 Floor, Kossack Lecture Hall.

Currently living and working in Mexico City, Yoshua Okón strives to make work that approximates pseudo-sociological experiments executed in front of the camera, in the process blending staged situations with both the documented and the improvised image. Okón's aim is to challenge behavioral and perceptual societal norms, and in so doing, use the camera to call into question such culturally ingrained themes as reality and truth, and self-hood and morality.

Okón has received awards and grants from the Rockefeller Foundation (1998), the Mexican National Fund for Culture (2010-13), and Art Matters (2011). His work has appeared in exhibitions at the Hayward Gallery, London (2012); the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2011, 2007); MUAC (University Museum of Contemporary Art), Mexico City (2011); CCA Wattis, San Francisco (2008, 2005); and MoMA PS1, New York (2005), among many other institutions; and in biennials, including the Cuenca Biennial, Quito (2011); and the Mercosur Biennial, Porto Alegre (2007). Okón's work is in the collections of the Tate Modern, London; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; Colección Fundación ARCO, Madrid; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art); MALI (Museo de Arte de Lima), Peru; and the Colección Jumex and MUAC, both in Mexico City.

Yoshua Okón is a guest scholar of the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Visiting Artists and Criticsprogram. The program brings key figures from Latin America to Hunter College to address topics in contemporary art and scholarship through talks with students and the New York community. In addition to this forum, Cisneros Visiting Artists and Critics conduct studio visits and seminar discussions with Hunter M.F.A. and M.A. students during their residency.

RSVP to latinam@hunter.cuny.edu. For more information about related events organized by Hunter College's Department of Art and Art History and its initiatives supported by the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, visit: www.latinamericanartathunter.org.

Pictured: "Canned Laughter," 2009. Video. Still courtesy of Mor-Charpentier Galerie, Paris.