Mobilizing Citizenship: Spring 2022
Project
June – July 2022
From workshop with Delali Ayivor, summer 2022. The semester was curated by Lee Heinemann.
Mobilizing Citizenship (MC) is an educational and research project. A small group of youth age 12-16 work with Norwegian and international artists at Kunsthall Stavanger during one semester.
The overall focus of MC is to investigate how young people can use tools and methods from contemporary art to express themselves and be heard in today's society. The curator for the Autumn semester is the American artist Loni Johnson. She will be working with artist Chire "VantaBlack" Regans (US).
The focus of this workshop series is to empower and amplify the voices of the youth. It is to inspire them to begin to consider the role of art and artists within the framework of Social Justice and how they define Social Justice for themselves. Once they begin to think about what Social Justice means to them personally, they can reimagine what their roles are and consider what concerns them in
Mobilizing Citizenship (MC) is an educational and research project. A small group of youth age 12-16 work with Norwegian and international artists at Kunsthall Stavanger during one semester.
The overall focus of MC is to investigate how young people can use tools and methods from contemporary art to express themselves and be heard in today's society. The curator for the Autumn semester is the American artist Loni Johnson. She will be working with artist Chire "VantaBlack" Regans (US).
The focus of this workshop series is to empower and amplify the voices of the youth. It is to inspire them to begin to consider the role of art and artists within the framework of Social Justice and how they define Social Justice for themselves. Once they begin to think about what Social Justice means to them personally, they can reimagine what their roles are and consider what concerns them in their communities and start to create ways to impact and confront these issues. They can consider art as a tool to activate change.
The overarching focus of MC is to explore how young people can use tools and methods from contemporary art to express themselves and be heard in today's society. MC is not a talent development programme, but rather an investigation into how contemporary art can be a relevant contribution in young people’s lives.
MC is made possible with generous support from Arts Council Norway.
Loni Johnson
Loni Johnson is a multi-disciplinary visual artist born and raised in Miami, FL. As an artist, educator, mother and activist, Ms. Johnson understands that as artists, there is a cyclical obligation to give back and nurture our communities with her creative gift and it must be utilized to better our world. Through movement and ritual, the artist creates healing spaces for Black women and explores how ancestral and historical memory informs how, when and where we enter and claim spaces. Ms. Johnson graduated in 2003 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from SUNY at Purchase College School of Art and Design.
Selected exhibitions include: The Front Room, New World School of the Arts, Miami (2022), In The Company of Women: At Large, LnS Gallery, Miami (2022), Remnants, Locust Projects, Miami (2021), Introspective: A Reckoning of The Soul, Art and Culture Center Hollywood (2021), Making Visible: The Studio Archives of Chire Regans and Loni Johnson, WAAM at Dimensions Variable, Miami (2020). Selected performances include: 3:33: A Procession (Reprise), Bakehouse Art Complex, Miami (2021), Say Their Names, Chire Regans/Vanta Black Memorial Mural Project Unveiling, Bakehouse Art Complex, Miami (2020); Performans Fanm/Global Borderless Caribbean XII: Focus Miami, Little Haiti Cultural Arts Center, Miami (2020); Homegoing, NADA Art Fair, Miami (2017); Offerings III, Bas Fisher Invitational and O’Miami, Miami (2017); Offerings II, Common Field Convening, Miami (2016).
Ms. Johnson is a Coordinator/Teaching Artist at Perez Art Museum Miami and Chairperson for the National Visual Arts Selection Panel for National YoungArts Foundation. She was the recipient of the 2022 Wavemaker Grant. She was the recipient of Oolite Arts’ Social Justice Award in 2021. She received a Knight Champion Award in 2019 and is a frequent guest speaker, lecturer, facilitator, and performer.
Chire “VantaBlack” Regans
Artist Chire “VantaBlack” Regans’ art practice exists at the intersection of social justice and storytelling. Her work responds to urgent societal concerns and functions as a critical platform to amplify the voices of community members who are often silenced. Over the past decade, Chire has focused primarily on community advocacy and depicting social narratives without distortion in various mediums. As a Saint Louis native, the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement triggered a sense of urgency in her art practice. Her work continues to evolve, allowing for broader social accessibility and creative scale. In South Florida, Chire continues to marry her artistic practice with community-led activism, emphasizing the art of storytelling as a means of engaging with communities with radical empathy and transparency.
Mobilizing Citizenship
Mobilizing Citizenship (MC) is an educational project where Norwegian and international artists and designers are invited to work with a small group of young people aged 12-16 at Kunsthall Stavanger during one semester. The overall focus of MC is to investigate how young people can use tools and methods from contemporary art to express themselves and be heard in today's society. MC is not a talent development programme, but rather an investigation into how contemporary art can be a relevant contribution in young people’s lives.
Since its inception in 2018, MC has developed into a practice-based research project. During the period 2022–2024, the project will focus on building more knowledge about how we can create good meetings between contemporary art and young people. As part of this, we are collaborating with institutions and cultural workers from around the world who have expertise in this area. The result of the project will take the form of reflections and documentations, made accessible to artists, curators, cultural workers and institutions who want to create relevant offerings for young people.
Previous Themes and Participants:
Autumn 2022
Sharing is caring
With: Walk of Shame
Spring 2022
DRAMA
With: Lee Heinemann (curator), Delali Ayivor, Lex Brown, Ingela Ihrman
Autumn 2019
Unpacking the Visual Norms
With: Benedetta Crippa, Toxic Waste Face, Jennie Bringaker, Lee Heinemann
Spring 2019
Movement and Body Representation
With: WALK OF SHAME, Sidsel Christensen, Zinzi Minott, Trojan Horse (Kaisa Karvinen, Tommi Vasko)
Autumn 2018
Public Space in the Context of the Digital
With: Clara Balaguer, Eglé Kulbokaité and Dorota Gawęda, Laurel Schwulst, Andreas Knag Danielsen and David Lamignan Larsen
Spring 2018
Activism as Artistic Tool
With: Hardworking Goodlooking (Clara Balaguer, Kristian Henson), Synnøve Sizou G. Wetten, Hans Edward Hammonds, Nicole Killian and Benjamin Hickethier
Loni Johnson. Photo by Morel Doucet.
From a project by Loni Johnson.
From a project by Loni Johnson.
Vanta Black. Photo: Jayme Gershen.
Vanta Black, Say Their Names (2020), Endof Wall.
