Join us for an enriching conversation on the power of art during times of illness. Learn how artists Panteha Abareshi, Susan Silton, and Margaret Lazzari have utilized their creative expressions as a form of healing and self-discovery. Moderated by Suzanne Hudson, professor of Art History and Fine Arts at the University of Southern California. The conversation will take place in the Margaret Lazzari: The Cancer Series exhibition. Followed by a Q&A and light refreshments.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:

Panteha Abareshi was born in Montreal, Canada, and currently lives and works in Los Angeles. They received a BFA from the University of Southern California’s Roski School of Art and Design. Abareshi has previously performed and exhibited at MMK Frankfurt, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Human Resources, Los Angeles; and the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, among others, and was exhibited at Kunsthaus Zürich in summer 2022. Their work is rooted in their experience with sickle cell zero beta thalassemia, a genetic blood disorder that causes debilitating pain, and bodily deterioration that both increase with age. It examines and dismantles our current definitions of “body” and “health,” definitions that rely on standards of able-bodiedness that are ultimately impossible to achieve.

https://www.panteha.com/

Susan Silton resides in Los Angeles. Her interdisciplinary projects respond to the complexities of subjectivity in a given moment—often through poetic combinations of humor, discomfort, subterfuge, and unabashed beauty. These works take form in performance, participatory projects, photography, video, installation, text/audio, and print-based works. Her work has been presented at MoCA, Los Angeles; SFMOMA, San Francisco; Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects; LAXART, Los Angeles; Hammer Museum; ICA/Philadelphia; MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles; and Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, among others. Projects include the commissioned site-specific performance Quartet for the End of Time, produced by LAND (Los Angeles Nomadic Division); the site-specific opera, A Sublime Madness in the Soul; and the book project Who's in a Name? In 2015, Silton’s Whistling Project was included in SITE Santa Fe’s year-long series of exhibitions, SITE 20 Years/20 Shows, which included a commissioned performance by Silton’s women’s whistling group, The Crowing Hens.

https://www.susansilton.com/

Margaret Lazzari is a painter, writer, and Professor Emerita of Art at the University of Southern California’s Roski School of Art and Design. Lazzari has had numerous museum and gallery exhibitions, including her 2022 exhibition, Breathing Space, at Billis Williams Gallery LA and her 2015 solo exhibition at the Fresno Art Museum as Distinguished Woman Artist. Her works are included in several permanent collections, including the Cathedral Collection of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles; Kaiser Hospitals, California; Huntsville Museum of Art, Alabama; Azusa Pacific University, California; among many more. Lazzari has written several innovative textbooks, both as the sole author of Practical Handbook for the Emerging Artist and also as co-author of Art and Design Fundamentals; Exploring Art: A Global, Thematic Approach, published by Cengage; and two drawing text/sketchbooks published by Oxford University Press. The third edition of the Practical Handbook was published in 2021 by Thames and Hudson. Exploring Art is a revolutionary approach to art appreciation, based on the concept that understanding world art is essential to becoming a responsible world citizen.

https://www.margaretlazzari.net/

Suzanne Hudson received her Ph.D. from Princeton University and is currently a Professor of Art History and Fine Arts at the University of Southern California. She is an art historian and critic who writes on modern and contemporary art. Her research spans the nineteenth through the twenty-first centuries with special emphasis on the history, theory, and conventions of painting within art schools and alternative pedagogical institutions, which include spaces of care work and medical and psychological services. She is co-founder of the Contemporary Art Think Tank and the Society of Contemporary Art Historians, an affiliate society of the College Art Association. She was a recent member of the Editorial Board of CAA. Reviews and the Advisory Board of the Archives of American Art Journal. She is the author of books including Robert Ryman: Used Paint (MIT Press, 2009; 2011), Agnes Martin: Night Sea (Afterall/MIT Press, 2017), and Contemporary Painting (Thames & Hudson in the World of Art series, 2021), and is the co-editor of Contemporary Art: 1989–Present (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013) and Modernism, Art, Therapy (forthcoming, Yale University Press).

https://dornsife.usc.edu/profile/suzanne-hudson/

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION:

Created between 2003 and 2004, Margaret Lazzari: The Cancer Series documents the physical and psychological fallout—and recovery—of the artist’s experience with breast cancer. Consisting of over thirty paintings, drawings, and videos, these works are an intimate and emotional look at the link between our bodies and our sense of self; the trauma experienced when this connection is altered; and the steps taken to reestablish this connection. Lazzari’s work maps the extreme emotions and energy swings that accompany such moments of irrevocable change.

The exhibition is curated by Danielle Sommer, Assistant Curator at USC Fisher Museum of Art.

Individuals with disabilities who need accommodations to attend this event may contact Maria Galicia at (213)740-5549, galiciam@usc.edu. It is requested that individuals requiring accommodations or auxiliary aids such as sign language interpreters and alternative format materials notify us at least 10 days before the event. Every reasonable effort will be made to provide reasonable accommodations in an effective and timely manner.