The Institute of Contemporary Art and the Stuart Weitzman School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania are pleased to present an artist lecture and conversation with Every Ocean Hughes, whose work spans across performance, photography, video, and text and interrogates the limitations placed on life and liveness and its expansive possibilities which can be embodied through queerness and collaboration.
This free public lecture is part of a series that gathers distinguished artists, activists, writers, and disruptors whose work engages with the social and cultural themes of our time.
Captioning will be available for this program via Zoom.
Registration
REGISTER TO ATTEND IN PERSON | REGISTER TO ATTEND OVER ZOOM
If you require any accessibility accommodations such as audio description or ASL interpretation, or have any questions about the program, please contact Brittany Clottey at bclottey@ica.upenn.edu.
About this series
The Institute of Contemporary Art and the Stuart Weitzman School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania are pleased to present a series of free public lectures and conversations that connect a group of distinguished artists, writers, activists, and disruptors to the Philadelphia public.
In their varied approaches and techniques, these individuals speak to ICA’s ethos of artistic experimentation and practice that engages with the social and cultural themes of our time. As artists, writers, and cultural producers, their artwork and criticism expand across themes of popular culture, queer life, kinship & community, and de/construction through the utilization of sculpture, performance, sound, collage, installation, and more.
In this lecture series, we invite you all to engage in conversation with our participants and become a part of an active dialogue that explores the stake of contemporary art in our society and culture.
About the artist
Every Ocean Hughes (formerly known as Emily Roysdon, born in 1977 in Easton, Maryland, lives and works between Easton and Stockholm, Sweden) is a transdisciplinary artist and writer. For over twenty years, she has shaped an artistic practice around her ongoing interrogations of life and liveness, reimagining their terms, conditions, and possibilities for connection. Addressing these elemental concerns has required a fluid, rather than fixed, set of approaches, which Hughes embodies through her prolific collaborations, expansive takes on queer life and communities, and use of mediums such as performance, photography, video, and text.
Hughes has served as editor and co-founder of the queer feminist journal and artist collective LTTR and has written lyrics for several bands and designed costumes for choreographers.
Hughes has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Studio Voltaire, London (2022), Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2022), Secession, Vienna (2015), and PARTICIPANT INC., New York (2015). She has been commissioned to create work for the Tate Modern, London (2012, 2017), Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2014), and The Kitchen, New York (2010). Group exhibitions include the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2023, 2014); Hammer Museum and Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2021); Future Generation Art Prize at the 55th Venice Biennale (2013), the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (2010), and the Whitney Biennial (2010).
Hughes was a 2019–2020 fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. From 2013 to 2021, she was professor of fine art at Konstfack University College of Art, Craft, and Design in Stockholm. Currently, she is the 2021–23 Sachs Visiting Professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
Support
Programming at ICA is made possible in part by the Emily and Jerry Spiegel Fund to Support Contemporary Culture and Visual Arts and the Lise Spiegel Wilks and Jeffrey Wilks Family Foundation. Public and Student Engagement at ICA is supported by the Bernstein Public Engagement Fund, Suzanne Weiss Doft & Jacob W. Doft, Hilarie L. & Mitchell Morgan, and by Dana McDonald Strong & Mark W. Strong.
The Master of Fine Arts program at Penn is focused on the professional development of visual artists. Through workshops, seminar courses, international residency opportunities and interactions with curators, writers and artists, the program provides an open intellectual framework to foster independent methods of artistic research.