2019 ahFest Lecture ‘Helina Metaferia: By Way of Revolution’

Helina Meteferia, an Andrew W. Mellon Gateway Fellow and Assistant Professor at Brown University, will discuss her artwork in a lecture titled “Helina Metaferia: By Way of Revolution” on Wednesday, Oct. 23, in Muskegon Community College’s Stevenson Center Room 1300.

Her talk, which is free and open to the public, begins at 6 p.m. and is part of the Muskegon Arts and Humanities Festival (ahFest), whose 2019 theme is “Hope.” Her appearance is also sponsored by the MCC Student Life Office and the MCC Visual Arts Program.

“I am interested in using art as an excuse to have meaningful conversations about time, space, and belonging,” said Metaferia, an interdisciplinary artist working in performance, video, installation, and collage. “A large part of my creative inquiry is devoted to asserting the black body into sites of systemic oppression — including institutional spaces, art history, gentrified communities, or land marked by historic trauma.”

“Throughout my work, I am constantly reflecting on the notions of ‘home’ and how our racial and gendered body complicates this. Formally, my art exists as an interdisciplinary synthesis of performance, video, installation, photography and mixed media collage. I often use my own body in my practice, and sometimes work with the bodies of members of my community through participation and collaboration.”

Metaferia, who lives in New York City, has exhibited her work venues across the U.S., including Museum of African Diaspora (San Francisco), Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), and Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (Detroit). She completed her MFA in 2015 at Tufts University’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.

Her artist residencies include Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Ox-Bow, MASS MoCA, and NARS Foundation, among others. Metaferia has taught in the BFA and MFA programs at the San Francisco Art Institute, Michigan State University, and Parsons Fine Arts.

For more information on the lecture, please contact MCC Art Instructor Erin Hoffman at (231) 777-0399.