EventsCommon Ground

Second Shift Studio Space of St. Paul

Featuring Chris Larson, Jennifer Newsom, Tina Tavera, Kriss Zulkosky, Roshan Ganu, Shen Xin, and Andrew Woolbright

Thursday, September 16, 2021 1 p.m. Eastern / 10 a.m. Pacific

These free events are produced by The Brooklyn Rail.

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Second Shift Studio Space board members Chris Larson, Jennifer Newsom, Tina Tavera, and Kriss Zulkosky join resident artists Roshan Ganu and Shen Xin for a conversation with artist, critic, and curator Andrew Woolbright. We conclude with a poetry reading by John Latta.

In this Talk

Second Shift Studio Space is a nonprofit residency program and art space serving people marginalized due to gender identity. Find out more about their programs here →

Chris Larson

Multimedia artist, fourth generation resident of East Saint Paul, and cofounder of Second Shift Studio Space, Chris Larson is an Associate Professor of Art at the University of Minnesota and publisher of INREVIEW, a print publication presenting critical responses to art in the Twin Cities. Solo exhibitions include the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN, Katonah Museum of Art in Katonah, NY and the 2014 Whitney Biennial. In 2018, Larson’s work was included in the 11th Bienal do Mercosul in Porto Alegre, Brazil and a solo 10-year survey exhibition at the Contemporary Art Center in Cincinnati, OH. He received his MFA from Yale University in 1991 and is a 2018 Guggenheim Fellow.

    Jennifer Newsom

    A photo of Jennifer Newsom on The Brooklyn Rail's New Social Environment
    Courtesy of Martin Szabo
    Architect Jennifer Newsom, alongside Tom Carruthers, is cofounder of [Dream The Combine (http://www.dreamthecombine.com/), a creative practice based in Minneapolis, MN. Newsom earned both her BA and M.Arch. at Yale University, and is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Minnesota School of Architecture. Recent projects include public art installations in the Twin Cities, Vancouver, Canada, and at MoMA PS1 in New York, NY as winners of the 2018 Young Architects.

      Tina Tavera

      A photo of Tina Tavera on The Brooklyn Rail's New Social Environment
      Multimedia artist, independent curator, and activist Maria Cristina Tavera’s work is influenced by her dual US–Mexico citizenship. Her artwork examines cultural signifiers regarding constructions of race, ethnicity, gender in national and cultural identities. Tavera has a Master’s in Public Administration – Leadership in the Arts from the University of Minnesota and is director of McNair Scholars at Augsburg University. Tavera has received awards from the McKnight Visual Arts, Bush Foundation, Smithsonian Latino Museum Studies program, MOMA-New York, Metropolitan Regional Arts Council (MRAC), Minnesota State Arts Board, and Institute of Mexicans Abroad (IME).

        Kriss Zulkosky

        A photo of Kriss Zulkosky on The Brooklyn Rail's New Social Environment
        Courtesy of Daniel del Castillo
        Cofounder of Second Shift Studio Space, Kriss Zulkosky was born in Minnesota and currently resides in Saint Paul. She has a Bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Minnesota and a Nursing degree from the College of Saint Catherine. Since 1999 she has worked as a Certified Registered Nurse in the Birth Center at Regions Hospital. Her experiences working with women, and in particular with exploited women, have led her to get involved with various women-focused organizations in the Twin Cities.

          Roshan Ganu

          A photo of Roshan Ganu on The Brooklyn Rail's New Social Environment
          Multimedia narrative artist originally from Goa, India, Roshan Ganu is now based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She is the recipient of grants from the Minnesota Opera, the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, as well as the Artists Respond: Combating Social Isolation grant from Springboard For The Arts. Interviews and reviews of her work have been published in The Star Tribune, MinnPost, MPLSArt, and SOTA podcast. Ganu is currently a 2021–22 Artist in Residence at Second Shift Studio Space, where she is working on her upcoming show at the Duluth Art Institute.

            Shen Xin

            A photo of Shen Xin on The Brooklyn Rail's New Social Environment
            Chengdu-born, Minnesota-based artist Shen Xin’s practice uses films and video installations, as well as performative events, to examine and fabricate techniques and effects of how emotion, judgment, and ethics circulate through individual and collective subjects. By focusing on interpersonal complexity and political narratives, her films often aim to generate reflexiveness to dismantle dominant power structures. Xin is currently a 2021–22 Artist in Residence at Second Shift Studio Space

              Andrew Woolbright

              A photo of Andrew Woolbright on The Brooklyn Rail's New Social Environment

              Artist, curator, and critic Andrew Woolbright is based in Brooklyn, New York, and is an MFA graduate from RISD in painting. Woolbright is the founder and director of the gallery Below Grand located on the Lower East Side in New York. In addition to curating, he is an Editor-at-Large at the Brooklyn Rail. In 2021, Woolbright curated the show Density Betrays Us with Angela Dufresne and Cash Ragona at the Hole; and curated shows at Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center and Hesse Flatow in the summer of 2022. He currently teaches at School of Visual Arts and Pratt Institute and is a 2021–2022 resident at the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program in Dumbo.

              The Rail has a tradition of ending our conversations with a poetry reading, and we're fortunate to have Dao Strom reading.

              Dao Strom

              A photo of Dao Strom on The Brooklyn Rail's New Social Environment
              Artist Dao Strom works with three “voices”—written, sung, visual—to explore hybridity and the intersection of personal and collective histories. She is the author of Instrument (Fonograf Editions, 2020) and its musical companion Traveler’s Ode (Antiquated Future Records, 2020); a bilingual poetry-art book, You Will Always Be Someone From Somewhere Else (AJAR Press); a memoir, We Were Meant To Be a Gentle People, and song cycle, East/West; and two books of fiction, The Gentle Order of Girls and Boys and Grass Roof, Tin Roof. Born in Vietnam, Strom grew up in the Sierra Nevada foothills of California and lives in Portland, Oregon. She is co-founder of two collective art projects, She Who Has No Master(s), and De-Canon.

              We’d like to thank The Marion Boulton Kippy Stroud Foundation and Teiger Foundation for making these conversations possible, and for their support of our growing archive 🌈✨

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