Anina Major will give the first presentation in the 2024 Chautauqua Visual Arts Lecture Series at 6 p.m. tonight in Hultquist Center. The CVA Lectures, back this summer after last year’s hiatus, will feature a combination of exhibiting artists, faculty members and other makers and figures in the art industry to the Institution in the 2024 season.
Major was born and raised in the Bahamas but has since left her home country, resulting in an art practice that explores and investigates locationality and the relationship between self and site, according to her artist statement.
“By utilizing the vernacular of craft to reclaim experiences and relocate displaced objects, her practice exists at the intersection of nostalgia, and identity,” Major wrote in her statement.
The artist works primarily in ceramics and incorporates weaving practices into her work, combining the two practices to create installation work and sculptural pieces.
Her soda-fired stoneware ceramic pieces “Beach Tote I” and “Beach Tote II” are on view in “Holding Space: Woven Works,” which was curated by Associate Director of Galleries Erika Diamond and is located on the first floor of Fowler-Kellogg Art Center through Aug. 4.
Major’s lecture will focus primarily on her work and artistic process. For Diamond, Major’s work is particularly interesting in the context of the exhibition because it utilizes the process of weaving in a nontraditional medium: ceramics.
Diamond describes Major’s two pieces in the show as “pushing the boundaries of how we think about materials and how different they are or aren’t from each other.”
Diamond said she is excited to be able to include Major in the lecture series in part because she values the collaboration between the galleries and the School of Art.
“We’re just really excited to have her and to learn more about the work in its own context,” Diamond said.
