SCAD announces deFINE ART 2018 honorees and featured artists

International artists Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller to be honored at 9th annual event

Time Magazine's "Instagram Photographer of the Year" & SCAD alumna Melissa Spitz will exhibit

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Jan 31, 2018, 08:30 ET

SAVANNAH, Ga., Jan. 31, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) today announced the 9th annual SCAD deFINE ART honorees, Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, along with featured artists: Tom Burr, Pia Camil, Mariana Castillo Deball, Yang Fudong, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Paola Pivi, Melissa Spitz, Lily van der Stokker and Wendy White. SCAD deFINE ART is one of the university's annual signature events featuring exhibitions, lectures, performances and public events that highlight emerging and established artists and visionaries. SCAD deFINE ART runs February 20-23, 2018 at award-winning museum and university locations in Savannah and Atlanta, Georgia.

Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, "Opera for a Small Room," detail, mixed media with sound, record players, records and synchronized lighting, 2005. Courtesy of the artists and Luhring Augustine Gallery, New York.

For more information, visit scad.edu/defineart2018

EXHIBITING ARTISTS

Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller
Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller are internationally known for their immersive multimedia sound installations and innovative audio/video walks. Their SCAD Museum of Art exhibition includes two major installations, "Opera for a Small Room" and "Experiment in F# Minor." These two works are examples of Cardiff and Miller's collaborative practice and their interest in creating emotive, transformational experiences for audiences through theatrically charged environments and evocative, layered soundscapes. The artists live and work in Grindrod, British Columbia, Canada.

Tom Burr
Tom Burr draws contextual links to urban aesthetics and subcultures, minimal art and avant-garde film, using spare, enigmatic mixed media sculptures and installations. For "No Access," a large-scale, public art installation on display outside the SCAD Museum of Art, Burr assembled 18 highly-polished, darkened mirrors inspired by "Claude Glasses" used by the 18th-century-landscape painters to select views in nature. Concurrently, Burr will be presenting "Sedimental," a survey of the last two decades of his work, focusing on projects which discuss urban development, the tensions between specificity and abstraction and the regulation of civic life within the context of an ever-changing metropolis.

Pia Camil
In her paintings, sculptures, performances and installations, Mexico City-based artist Pia Camil draws inspiration from the urban landscape of Latin America and engages with the history of modernism. "Fade into Black," her new work for the SCAD Museum of Art, is a single, monumental work that comprises hundreds of castoff T-shirts in an expansive installation that is both artwork and a wearable performative garment.

Melissa Spitz
SCAD alumna Melissa Spitz (M.F.A., photography, 2014) records the struggles and complexities of her mother's life — and the artist's tumultuous relationship with her — through photography. The ongoing project "You Have Nothing to Worry About" spans eight years of documentation in which Spitz' mother, Deborah, who struggles with mental illness and substance abuse, is pictured in moments of sorrow, joy, boredom, chaos and pain. Spitz was recently named TIME's Instagram Photographer of the Year for 2017.

Mariana Castillo Deball
Berlin-based Mexican artist Mariana Castillo Deball uses installation, sculpture, photography and drawing to explore the role objects play in our understanding of identity and history. For her SCAD Museum of Art exhibition, Castillo Deball will create a large-scale interactive work based on the history of the date Feb. 20 — the opening date of SCAD deFINE ART 2018.

Yang Fudong
Yang Fudong is an important figure in the contemporary art scene and independent cinema movement in China. His films and photographic work, often derived from traditional Chinese painting, examine tensions between urban and rural, historic and present, worldliness and intellectualism. This exhibition will feature the U.S. premier of his most recent film, "Moving Mountains."

Toyin Ojih Odutola
"Testing the Name" is an exhibition of new drawings by Toyin Ojih Odutola that continues her ongoing exploration of the merger of two fictional aristocratic Nigerian families through the marriage of two men. Through her virtuosic handling of her materials, she creates detailed, rich, layered surfaces that seduce and compel.

Paola Pivi
Italian multimedia artist Paola Pivi works in many international contexts. For her exhibition, Pivi engages with the language of window displays as public art by creating site-specific vignettes within the SCAD Museum of Art's Jewel Boxes, a series of glass enclosures located along the historic museum's northern facade.

Lily van der Stokker
Lily van der Stokker's multifarious approach to artmaking embraces the joys and foibles of domesticity and relationships. Through painting, sculpture and installation, as well as a blurring of these distinct categorizations, van der Stokker immerses viewers in an environment of saccharine happiness.

Wendy White
SCAD alumna Wendy White (B.F.A., fibers, 1993) explores the boundaries of painting through the combination of traditional painted canvas surfaces and nontraditional materials like vinyl signs, mirrors and deconstructed denim jeans. In the exhibition "Loves," featured at Gallery 1600 in Atlanta, the artist examines the oil and gas industry.

About SCAD deFINE ART
Contemporary art elevates our everyday world, recasting familiar objects and experiences in ways that challenge perceptions, raise complicated questions and inspire creative responses to a complex and evolving world. Every year, SCAD celebrates contemporary art through deFINE ART, a series of exhibitions, lectures, panel discussions and more, all centered around the work of internationally acclaimed artists. Past deFINE ART honorees include Carlos Cruz-Diez, Carrie Mae Weems, Xu Bing, Alfredo Jaar, Shirin Neshat, Fred Wilson, Marina Abramovic, along with artists and guests such as Jane Alexander, Theaster Gates, Nari Ward, :mentalKLINIK, Corinne Wasmuht, Margery Arent Safir, Ph.D., Beau Geste, Madame Gandhi, José Parlá and many more.

About the SCAD Museum of Art
Housed in the oldest surviving antebellum railroad depot in the country, the SCAD Museum of Art is a teaching museum that features emerging and established voices in the contemporary art world through commissioned artworks and temporary exhibitions. In 2016-2017, the SCAD Museum of Art welcomed nearly 44,000 visitors and hosted an ambitious roster of 32 exhibitions.

The museum has presented world-renowned artists including Jane Alexander, Radcliffe Bailey, Subodh Gupta, Alfredo Jaar, Sigalit Landau, Liza Lou, Ebony G. Patterson, Robin Rhode, Bill Viola, Carrie Mae Weems, Kehinde Wiley and Fred Wilson, as well as site-specific installations by artists such as Daniel Arsham, Kendall Buster, Jose Dávila, Michael Joo and Odili Donald Odita. The SCAD Museum of Art features the work of prominent artists in fashion and design like Oscar de la Renta, Vivienne Westwood, Dakota Jackson and Steven and William Ladd. Permanent collections at the museum include the Walter O. Evans Collection of African American Art, the Modern and Contemporary Art Collection, the Earle W. Newton Collection of British and American Art, the 19th- and 20th-century Photography Collection and the SCAD Costume Collection.

Since opening its doors in October 2011, the renovated museum has been celebrated for its inspired architecture and design, world-class exhibitions, and visionary community outreach and education programs that enrich art enthusiasts, educators and students of all ages. The SCAD Museum of Art is proud to be recognized by the American Institute of Architects Honor Award for Architecture; Congress for the New Urbanism, Charter Award; Historic Savannah Foundation, Preservation Award; and National Trust for Historic Preservation, National Preservation Award.

The university offers award-winning curriculum guides, free of charge, aligned to National Core Arts Standards and other standards for K-12 teachers and students.

SCAD: The University for Creative Careers
The Savannah College of Art and Design is a private, nonprofit, accredited institution conferring bachelor's and master's degrees at distinctive locations and online to prepare talented students for professional careers. SCAD offers degrees in more than 40 majors, as well as minors in more than 75 disciplines across its locations in Savannah and Atlanta, Georgia; in Hong Kong; in Lacoste, France; and online through SCAD eLearning. With more than 35,000 alumni worldwide, SCAD demonstrates an exceptional education and unparalleled career preparation. The diverse student body, consisting of nearly 14,000, comes from across the U.S. and more than 100 countries worldwide.

In 2017, the prestigious Red Dot Design Rankings placed SCAD as the top university in the United States and in the top two universities in the Americas and Europe. Career preparation is woven into every fiber of the university, resulting in a superior alumni placement rate. In a study of Spring 2016 SCAD graduates, 98 percent were employed, pursuing further education, or both within 10 months of graduation. For more information, visit the official SCAD blog.

SOURCE Savannah College of Art and Design