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Join us for an intimate conversation between prolific artist, designer, and educator Marianetta Porter and guest curator Juana Williams. Together, they will discuss how Porter transforms the overlooked, discarded, and/or ephemeral into vessels of memory, meaning, and connection. Drawing from African American histories and experiences, Porter’s work invites us to reconsider absence — not as a void, but as an active force that shapes how we inhabit the present. Through everyday objects such as tea towels, ironing boards, church fans, paper fragments, and found materials, she illuminates how memory resides in the body and in ordinary things, making visible the traces of lives and experiences that might otherwise be erased. A brief audience Q&A will close this presentation. Limited space available, reservations are requested. Register here:https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/stamps-gallery/marianetta-porter-talk.
Marianetta Porter is a visual artist and product designer whose research and creative practice are grounded in the study of African American history, culture, and representation. Through the language of visual art, she draws connections between historic memory and contemporary African American life, giving voice to the history of the African diaspora while acknowledging its central influence on the birth and flourishing of American culture.
Her work has been exhibited nationally at institutions such as the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, the Spoleto Festival, the Harriet Tubman Museum, and the Hampton University Museum of Art.
She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Hampton University and her Master of Fine Arts from the University of Michigan. The recipient of numerous awards, Porter is Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan’s Stamps School of Art and Design.
https://stamps.umich.edu/events/artist-curator-conversation-absence-as-presence-memory-material-and-time-in-the-work-of-marianetta-porter
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Event Venue
201 S Division St, Ann Arbor, MI 48104-2259, United States
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