Fall 2016 Exhibition at Rutgers-New Brunswick, Laura Anderson Barbata: Collaborations Beyond Borders

New Brunswick, NJ – The Center for Women in the Arts and Humanities (CWAH) is pleased to announce that Laura Anderson Barbata has been named the 2016 -17 Estelle Lebowitz Endowed Visiting Artist at Rutgers University. Born in Mexico City and based in New York, Laura Anderson Barbata’s work focuses on participatory art initiatives that document communities and traditions, using storied art forms as platforms for social change, contemporary performance, group participation, and protest. Her collaborative and ongoing transdisciplinary works have been initiated in places such as the Amazon of Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago, Norway, the U.S., and Mexico. Her practice intertwines traditional and contemporary mediums, so-called “fine art” and popular art, and craft and folk customs forging links between the past and the present, as well as the individual and the community. Among her most well-known projects are: Transcommunality, a decade-long project with communities in Trinidad and Tobago, Mexico, and Brooklyn highlighting the moko jumbie stilt walking tradition; Intervention: Wall Street, a collaborative performance with the Brooklyn Jumbies that took place during 2011’s Occupy Wall Street protests; and The Repatriation of Julia Pastrana, a project involving the return of Ms. Pastrana (a woman born with hypertrichosis terminalis and gingival hyperplasia who was exhibited in the 19th century as the ugliest woman in the world) for burial in her homeland of Mexico. Barbata’s work is included in numerous private and public collections, among them, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City; and Landesbank Baden-Wϋrttemberg, Stuttgart, Germany. She is a member of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores, FONCA-CONACULTA, México; and the Julia Pastrana project is supported by the Sistema Nacional de Creadores, FONCA-CONACULTA, México.

Her solo exhibition at Rutgers entitled, Laura Anderson Barbata: Collaborations Beyond Borders, contains selected highlights of textile, sculptural, 2-dimensional, and video works from the traveling exhibition Transcommunality. The exhibit will be on view in the Mary H. Dana Women Artists Series Galleries in the Mabel Smith Douglass Library, Rutgers University (8 Chapel Drive, New Brunswick, NJ 08901) from September 6 – December 16, 2016. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday 9am – 10pm.

There will be a reception in honor of the artist at 5pm and a free public artist lecture on Tuesday, November 1st from 5:30-6:30pm in the Mabel Smith Douglass Room at Douglass Library. On Wednesday, November 2nd from 10:30am-12pm at Alexander Library (169 College Ave, New Brunswick, NJ 08901) in the Scholarly Communication Center, Barbata will present La Extraordinaria Historia de Julia Pastrana, a performance work in progress.

The exhibition and events are free and open to public. RSVP requested by not required for the events: womenart@rci.rutgers.edu. Further information about the exhibition, events, accessibility, and parking can be found at cwah.rutgers.edu. To accompany the exhibition, CWAH will publish a comprehensive online catalog with an artist interview by Dr. Tatiana Flores, Associate Professor in the Department of Latino and Caribbean Studies and the Department of Art History at Rutgers University.

The Mary H. Dana Women Artists Series is a program of CWAH in partnership with Rutgers University Libraries (RUL). CWAH is a unit in the Office of the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and a consortium member of the Institute for Women's Leadership at Rutgers University. The Estelle Lebowitz Endowed Visiting Artist exhibitions and events are funded in part by the Estelle Lebowitz Memorial Fund.

Rutgers University co-sponsors include: Art Library-RUL; Center for Cultural Analysis; Center for Women and Work; Centers for Global Advancement and International Affairs (GAIA); Department of Anthropology; Department of Art History; Department of Fine Arts-Camden; Department of Spanish and Portuguese; Department of Visual Arts-Mason Gross School of the Arts; Department of Women’s and Gender Studies; Douglass Residential College (DRC); Global Village-DRC; Institute for Research on Women; Institute for Women’s Leadership; Margery Somers Foster Center-RUL; Paul Robeson Galleries-Newark; Zimmerli Art Museum. Additional co-sponsor: New Jersey State Council on the Arts.