Red Bull Arts Detroit Announces 2019 Exhibitions and Public Programs

Red Bull Arts Detroit is announcing a calendar of free public programming for the year, initiating new series of readings, screenings, and discussions to accompany the 2019 fellowship and residency cycle. Red Bull Arts Detroit's public programs are anchored by quarterly exhibitions featuring the work of resident artists and curators, and will be supplemented with four new initiatives: Viewfinder, The Slideshow Series, Reading Room, and Offsite Programs & Partnerships. The roster of public programs will additionally be joined by the work completed by recipients of Red Bull Arts Detroit's Micro-Grant Program, a need-base initiative committed to the support and development of the Detroit arts community by providing financial resources for local artists.

The public programs welcome artistic and institutional partnerships for Red Bull Arts Detroit, including an ongoing friendship with the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD), and the creation of the Red Bull Arts Detroit Global Curatorial Initiative, a new curatorial partnership and expansion of EXPO CHICAGO's Curatorial Exchange program.

"Red Bull Arts Detroit has expanded its toolkit to celebrate all aspects of Detroit's thriving arts community," says Matthew Eaton, Red Bull Arts Detroit Program Manager. "Detroit is a breeding ground for creativity, and with our new public programs, we hope to find new ways with which a global community can engage with the particularities of a place. At Red Bull Arts Detroit, we embrace our locale and its history, but we also recognize that it doesn't prevent us from participating in a global dialogue, it gives us perspective."

The Artist Residency program has always been central to Red Bull Arts Detroit's commitment to the needs of emerging and established artists, providing artists the space, time, and resources necessary to push their practices forward. Three times a year, artists at different stages of their careers are brought to Detroit for a three-month residency at Red Bull Arts Detroit. They are provided housing, studio space, and a $12,000 stipend. Over the course of the residency, artists engage with the local arts community and create new bodies of work for exhibition. The first resident exhibition will be on view from April 12-June 2, and will feature work made by Patrick Quarm, Miatta Kawinzi, and Tiff Massey during their residency cycle; the second resident exhibition will open during Detroit Art Week, and will be on view June 19-August 30, featuring resident artists Kearra Amaya Gopee, Pamela Council, and Claire Lachow; and the third and final resident exhibition will be on view November 22 to early 2020, and will feature residents Holly Bass, Hui Ying Tsai, and Michael Polakowski.

Red Bull Arts Detroit is committed to enriching the arts in Detroit, and nationwide. As such, it is necessary to support the network of curatorial practices which connect local community to the international art world. This year, Red Bull Arts Detroit launched their Curatorial Fellowship, which offers independent curators a flexible way to engage with the arts community in Detroit. The Curatorial Fellowship invites a curator for ten monthly visits to research, conceptualize, develop, and execute a contemporary art exhibition in Detroit. The Fellow receives financial, production, and marketing support in the execution of their curatorial project, and access to the 12,000 square foot gallery on-site for the project. Travel, accommodations, and a $10,000 stipend are provided. From September 20-November 2, Red Bull Arts Detroit's 2019 Curatorial Fellow Taraneh Fazeli will present the next iteration of her ongoing project Sick Time, Sleepy Time, Crip Time: Against Capitalism's Temporal Bullying, an investigation into social and embodied learning around the politics of health, and how care for the body in states of debility and disability can help us re-imagine collective structures for support.

Viewfinder is a recurring series of dialogues with the Resident Artists at Red Bull Arts Detroit. Three times annually, Red Bull Arts Detroit welcomes a group of three artists to participate in the Residency program, where they share a studio and living space. The Residents are chosen on their own merit, but often within the groups commonalities exist or emerge from the proximity of the Residency. The Viewfinder series introduces the work and practices of the Residents and opens a conversation amongst the group based on these points of convergence and interaction. These talks can be wide-ranging in nature and provide context to our audience on the Artist's practice in advance of their group exhibition at the culmination of the Residency. Red Bull Arts Detroit invites the public to join us in conversation with their Residents about the ideas and practices at work in their studio. The first Viewfinder was held on February 21, and featured a conversation between Resident Artists Miatta Kawinzi, Tiff Massey, and Patrick Quarm, moderated by Michael Stone Richards, a Detroit-based scholar on biopolitics and African diasporic cultural theory.

The Slideshow Series is a programming format shared between Red Bull Arts Detroit and New York that invites artists, curators, community activists, technologists, scholars, musicians and others, to present an area of interest or expertise. Employing the customary format of the slideshow as an educational tool to share ideas with an audience, Red Bull Arts Detroit asks each participant to rethink how they can best engage the public on a topic of importance to them, and to consider how the shape of that presentation has the potential to ignite dialogue. Slideshows are intimate in nature and take the form of performative lectures, research presentation, poetry readings, sound performances and more.

The first three Slideshow Series are Creative Choice Making Embodied with John Michael Schert (March 14), a choreographic exploration of how artists can mobilize systemic change in their organizations, communities and cities; "Practicing for the Not Yet" with Laura Raicovich (April 16), a presentation on how the myth of neutrality manifests in cultural institutions and museums; and Sugar or Salt In Your Grit with Marcellus Armstrong (May 12), a performative lecture incorporating communally shared brunch, personality quizzes, and various examples of how narratives and archetypes can be easily commodified within today's visual culture.

The Red Bull Arts Detroit Reading Room series invites artists, writers, curators, community organizers, scholars, and more to present on a text of particular importance to them. Red Bull Arts Detroit asks the presenter to bring the text to a public who might have never encountered it before, and to find a way to translate the importance or meaning of the work to the audience. Following the presentation, the text will be added to the permanent collection of the Red Bull Arts Detroit Library, alongside an artifact created by the presenter. The first Reading Room session will be held on April 23 with presenter Carleton Gholz, Founder and Executive Director of Detroit Sound Conservancy.

Building upon a pilot program initiated in 2013 by EXPO CHICAGO, the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in Chicago and the Institut français, EXPO CHICAGO officially launched the Curatorial Exchange program, an unprecedented international initiative developed by the exposition in partnership with foreign consulates and cultural agencies. The Curatorial Exchange offers a select group of mid-career and established curators based around the world the opportunity to engage closely with their peers, convening as part of a four-day program, including access to exhibitions, top private collections, artist studios, museums and institutions.

Over the four day program, invited curators had the opportunity to engage with the more than 135 international exhibitors and organizations participating in EXPO CHICAGO, fostering new insights on gallery programs and artists' practices from around the world. In 2019, the Curatorial Exchange will include a group of international curators practicing/working/based in countries including Canada, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and South Africa.

This year, EXPO CHICAGO is expanding upon the Curatorial Exchange program, by introducing the inaugural Red Bull Arts Detroit Global Curatorial Initiative, a multi-city, fully funded curatorial initiative taking place surrounding the eighth annual exposition (September 18 - 23, 2019). Conceived as a two-part professionalization and cultural immersion program engaging Chicago and Detroit, the fellowship provides 2-4 international curators the opportunity to participate in EXPO CHICAGO's 2019 Curatorial Exchange program, followed by the opportunity to visit Detroit and engage the city's artists, galleries and institutions. The program, supported by Detroit-based Red Bull Arts alongside EXPO CHICAGO's consular partners, places an emphasis on the artistic and cultural contexts of both Chicago and Detroit. The program will allow the exposition to expand its reach, securing a more in-depth opportunity for dialogue between global cultures and the Midwest.

Red Bull Arts Detroit is also excited to continue and strengthen its friendship with the Museum of Contemporary Arts Detroit (MOCAD), a non-collecting contemporary art museum located in Detroit's cultural center, dedicated to showcasing the most visionary achievements in contemporary visual, literary, music and performing arts. Currently, two of MOCAD's exhibition feature past and present Red Bull Arts Detroit Resident Artists: 2018 Resident Joiri Minaya is included in Parallels and Peripheries, curated by MOCAD's Senior Curator Larry Ossei-Mensah, and 2019 Resident Tiff Massey is included in Useless Utility, curated by MOCAD's Ford Curatorial Fellow Jova Lynne. In October of 2018, on the occasion of MOCAD's exhibition Standing Still, Lying Down, As If, MOCAD and Red Bull Arts Detroit jointly curated two off-site public art installations by artists Iman Raad and Mieke Gerritzen, which are currently on view through the spring of 2019. Throughout the year, MOCAD and Red Bull Arts Detroit will continue to develop a dialogue between the two institutions, and will collaborate on select exhibition tours and events in celebration of each program's creative endeavors.

Red Bull Arts Detroit is committed to the support and development of the Detroit arts community. As such, we're dedicated to providing financial resources for local artists. Our Micro-Grant Program is designed to enable artists at all stages of their careers with the ability to continue their practices. This hyperlocal, need-based program provides direct support to local artists in the form of $1,000 grants given regularly throughout the year.

Red Bull Arts Detroit's January 2019 Micro-Grant Winners are Rashaun Rucker and Sarah Blanchette, and the February 2019 Winner is Arturo Herrera and his project Barbed Magazine. On April 27, Red Bull Arts Detroit will host a launch party for Barbed Magazine Issue 7.

Red Bull Arts Detroit is an experimental, non-commercial arts space offering an artist residency, curatorial and writing fellowships, and local micro-grants. With physical locations in New York and Detroit, Red Bull Arts focuses on extending the boundaries of exhibition making; supporting the production of new work by emerging and established artists; participating in and responding to the needs of local arts communities; and contributing to ongoing dialogue around contemporary issues and thought. The organization is dedicated to the cultivation and advancement of the arts.

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