“Once Upon a Dream” by second-year MFA Studio Art student Juana Rodriguez.

Visiting Artist

The  MFA in Studio Art program sponsors a Visiting Artist-Faculty program which brings to campus noted contemporary artists each year to teach Special Topics courses, work with students on Independent Study projects, plus give community lectures and student critiques.


2016-2016 Schedule

Alicia Candiani portrait visiting artist 2016

ALICIA CANDIANI | Self-Portraits Project [Session 9th] Montclair State University

Visual artist, curator –  In residence April 4 – 16, 2016

Made possible with support from the Global Education Center, Argentine artist Alicia Candiani is the Global Education Scholar and visiting artist for 2016.  Candiani launches a new session of the Self-Portrait Project at the College of the Arts, Department of Art and Design, with Professor Catherine Bebout, BA/BFA Director, as co-director of the project, Professor Andrew Atkinson, MFA Director and Assistant Professor of Digital Photography as an active participant, and MFA student Natalia Borisensko acting as coordinator with the interactive participants. The collaborative project is a tremendous opportunity for students at Montclair State, where they are invited to contribute to the global art project to work far beyond the frontiers of their local creative community, allowing their art practice to become a part of a global dialogue.

The Self-Portraits Project is an artwork-in-progress that Alicia Candiani has been developing since 2006 in which worldwide artists have been addressing controversial issues–including cultural and sexual identity, race, gender, clan and class–that deal with the self and the body. The aging and illness processes, the construction of gender and race through stereotypes as well as self-portrait art history’s images appropriation, among others fascinating inputs on the artists and their context, have also been explored along the project’s journey which spans 10 years. Today, it includes 90 artists with 11 citizenships, who speak five languages, and have produced 93 pieces during 8 sessions, hosted by major art institutions in six countries. University of Alaska in Anchorage and Kansas City Art Institute has been the two American institutions whose professors and students have previously joined this project.

The project has an ongoing output: a mural installation exploring participating artists and students common concerns. The mural installation is organized in nine main assemblages: Politics / Identities / Dreamland / Territories / Languages / Ironies / “Mise en Scène” / Wounds and Displacements. This piece, in the format of a traveling exhibition, is touring the world. It has been already exhibited in Alaska, Canada and Spain. The project has a web page |www.selfportraitsproject.org| and a digital book-catalogue |https://issuu.com/proyectoace/docs/self-portraits__autorretratos| that participants can refer for more information. The 9th Session that we are starting in Montclair State will be included in the webpage, the digital book-catalogue as well as in the traveling exhibition.

Alicia Candiani was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina where she lives and works. She is an international visual artist whose artistic practice consists of expanded print and digital media work, architectural interventions and collaborative art projects working with artists and communities all over the world. She is the founding director of Proyecto’ace, a 10-year-old artist-in-residence international program focused on expanded field contemporary printmaking practices, which is located in her home city. Recent appointments include a Visiting Professor at the Art and Design Institute in Shanghai, China; President of the International Selection Jury at the MTG 2015, Cracow International Graphic Arts Triennialin Poland; Visiting International Scholar/ Global Education Fellow at Montclair State University in the USA, Visitor Professor at the International Printmaking and Textile Art Summer Courses in the Sztuk Piknych Academy of Fine Art, Lodz, Poland and a member of the International Jury at the International Biennial Print Exhibit: 2016 ROC in Taiwan. Her works have received the Grand Prix and the First Prize in international print biennials/triennials in Bulgaria; Russia, Bosnia& Herzegovina, Germany, Puerto Rico and Spain as well as other prizes in India, Japan, Macedonia and Czech Republic. She has been awarded Janet Turner Prize Excellence in the Visual Arts by the Turner Print Museum, University of California in the United States.

“There’s no reason not to check out the beauty, the inquiry, the self-awareness, the reflection, the profundity, the whimsy of Self-Portraits: An International Project and Traveling Exhibition” –Self-Portraits Exhibition Press Review.

“Look at this catalogue, look at the exhibition if it comes your way or check it out on-line: you will find a world of rich ideas and possibilities, executed in an amazing variety of mediums, presented in a wide range of ways, and divided into nine thematic groupings. For all this richness and diversity, not to mention the high levels of imaginative, technical and contextual skills that are presented, what you are looking at (…) is completely remarkable, something that has never been done before, which would be difficult to repeat, and yet is capable of being continued and extended in any country in the world, in ways that are probably limitless”. Richard Noyce, British art writer, author of the trilogy “Printmaking in the Edge” (2006), “Critical Mass: Printmaking Beyond the Edge” (2010) and “Printmaking Off the Beating Track” (2013). wales,  2013. From an essay in the Self-Portraits book.

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The Global Education Scholar program is made possible by the Global Education Center.