Intersection and Fluidity: Identity and Nikki S. Lee’s Projects

Friday, October 12
12:15–1:30 p.m.
Payne Room, Tang Museum

A conversation led by Rachel Seligman, Janet Casey, Mehmet Odekon, and Bernardo Ramirez Rios 

This brown bag lunch will situate six photographs by Nikki S. Lee, many from the Tang Museum’s collection, at the center of a discussion about socioeconomic class and its intersections with race, gender, ability, and other ways of understanding identity. Inspired by the Tang’s 2013 exhibition Classless Society, which included two of Lee’s photographs, the event aims to facilitate a group exploration of how one might think about identity in the current social, economic, and political context. The artworks (from her Punk, Hip Hop, Ohio, and Senior Projects) are from a body of work that Lee made between 1997 and 2001, in which she assumed the outward aesthetic and some of the observable behavioral mannerisms of a subculture, ethnicity, or demographic from within the United States. She first researched a group, then immersed herself in it for several months, before asking another person to take snapshots of her within the group. The resulting images raise complex and nuanced issues around identity.

The conversation is led by an interdisciplinary group of Skidmore staff and faculty: Rachel Seligman, Tang Assistant Director for Curatorial Affairs and Malloy Curator; Janet Casey, Skidmore Professor of English; Mehmet Odekon, Skidmore Emeritus Professor of Economics (all cocurators of Classless Society); and Bernardo Ramirez Rios, Skidmore Assistant Professor of Anthropology.

Boxed lunches are available on a first-come, first-serve basis. Please feel free to bring your own lunch as well!

This event is free and open to the Skidmore community. Visit the Tang's event calendar for more information.