Celebrated English-Jewish artist Tanya Ury will give two presentations at UBC Okanagan this March.
On March 25, Ury presents a video about her Avant Garde Dating art project, with discussion to follow. On March 26, Ury will present her artistic lecture Self-portrait of a Self-hating Jew. Referencing her own self-portraiture on themes of Jewish and female identity, Ury discusses taboo zones and censorship in Great Britain and Germany.
“Tanya Ury deals extensively with forms of Jewish identity and self-representation, but communicates it from an artist’s perspective – not an academic perspective — which is quite unique, because she reverses the trend of exile from Germany,” says Claude Desmarais, Reichwald Professor in Germanic Studies. “She’s very current and quite political, addressing many issues through her work — yet the politics don’t overtake the art.”
Ury’s Avant Garde Dating is the result of a week-long, Internet-matched collaborative performance and residency with Laurel Jay Carpenter, a performance and installation artist and assistant professor of fine arts at Alfred University in New York.
On March 26, Ury will present her artistic lecture Self-portrait of a Self-hating Jew. Referencing her own self-portraiture on themes of Jewish and female identity, Ury discusses taboo zones and censorship in Great Britain and Germany. Parallels are drawn between the Jewish school quota of Britain in the 1960s and the female artist quota today regarding exhibition representation. Comparisons are also made between England and Germany in their representation of Jewish culture in relation to Jewish cultural days, Jewish museums and exhibitions on Jewish themes.
“Tanya Ury deals extensively with forms of Jewish identity and self-representation, but communicates it from an artist’s perspective – not an academic perspective — which is quite unique, because she reverses the trend of exile from Germany,” says Claude Desmarais, Reichwald Professor in Germanic Studies. “She’s very current and quite political, addressing many issues through her work — yet the politics don’t overtake the art.”
An active curator and author, Ury has produced video, performance and lectures for exhibitions, festivals, and universities. She has made photographic and holographic art, created objects, audio texts and installation, showing her work extensively around the world in more than a dozen countries.
“Anyone who is in the artistic community or is interested in Jewish identity and the questions surrounding it should come out and see these presentations,” says Desmarais.
Avant Garde Dating takes place at 6 p.m. in the Student Service Centre theatre, room SSC 026. Self-portrait of a Self-hating Jew will be held at 3:30 p.m. in the Arts Building ART 203. Presented by Creative and Critical Studies at UBC Okanagan, both events are free and open to the public.
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