Venice Biennale Event: In Conversation with Kymberly Pinder and Aki Sasamoto

Join the Yale School of Art and the Yale Alumni Art League for a reception and talk in celebration of alumni and faculty featured in the 59th Venice Biennale.

Kymberly Pinder, Stavros Niarchos Foundation Dean of the Yale School of Art, and exhibiting artist Aki Sasamoto, Assistant Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in Sculpture, will have a conversation about art, the Biennale exhibition, and the Yale School of Art.

Register for the event here.

See you there!

Thursday, April 21, 2022
Reception 2:30-5:00pm
Talk 3:00-3:45pm CET
Hotel Monaco & Grand Canal
P.za San Marco, 1332, 30124 Venezia VE, Italy

Bios:

Kymberly Pinder, Ph.D. ‘95, became the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Dean of the Yale School of Art in July 2022. Prior to this appointment she was the acting president of MassArt where she had also served as its provost and senior vice president of academic affairs. Dean Pinder was also dean of the College of Fine Arts at the University of New Mexico for six years— two of those years she was also the interim director and curator of the University’s Art Museum. She served as professor of art history, theory and criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for sixteen years. Her scholarship and teaching examine race, religion and representation. Her most recent book, Painting the Gospel: Black Public Art and Religion (2016,) explores how Black imagery in the public sphere empowered communities in Chicago for the last century. Working with different artists and local officials, she has taught courses that have led to the creation of murals in Chicago and Albuquerque. Pinder is also the editor of Race-ing Art History: Critical Readings in Race and Art History (2002.)

Aki Sasamoto works in sculpture, performance, video, and more. In her installation/performance works, Sasamoto moves and talks inside the careful arrangements of sculpturally altered objects, activating bizarre emotions behind daily life. Her works appear in gallery spaces, theater spaces, and odd sites. Her works were shown at SculptureCenter, the Kitchen, Chocolate Factory Theater, Whitney Biennial 2010, MOMA-PS1, New York; National Museum of Art-Osaka, Hirosaki Museum of Contemporary Art, Yokohama Triennale 2008, Japan; Gwangju Biennial 2012, South Korea; Shanghai Biennale 2016, China; Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2016, India; Kunsthal Rotterdam, Netherland; and numerous other international and domestic venues. Sasamoto has received grants and fellowships from Guggenheim Foundation, Calder Foundation, Pollack-Krasner Foundation, United States Artists, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, The New York Foundation for the Arts, The New York Community Trust, The Rema Hort Mann Foundation, the Agency for Cultural Affairs of the Japanese Government. Sasamoto graduated from United World College of the Atlantic, received a BA in Dance and Studio Art from Wesleyan University, and an MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University. She has collaborated with musicians, choreographers, mathematicians, and scholars. Aki likes food.