The OSUN Center for Human Rights and the Arts at Bard College (CHRA) is pleased to announce its Fall 2023 public programming. The new lineup, listed below, includes online and in-person talks by artists and activists from around the globe: Guadalupe Maravilla, New Red Order (co-hosted with Studio Arts at Bard), and Fehras Publishing (co-presented with the Vera List Center…
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded Bard College $2,000,000 to support the research, artistic production, and curatorial practice of Tania El Khoury. The funding will allow the OSUN Center for Human Rights and the Arts at Bard (CHRA), the Fisher Center at Bard, and El Khoury to implement a new model in which the college provides infrastructure to support…
The OSUN Center for Human Rights and the Arts at Bard College (CHRA) announces the appointment of filmmaker and scholar Argyro Nicolaou and curator Juliana Steiner as its 2023–24 resident research and teaching fellows. This year’s applicant pool was competitive and diverse, featuring over ninety six candidates from sixteen countries, demonstrating the richness of the contemporary landscape of research on…
A new article in Al-Monitor looks at MA graduate Adam HajYahia’s recent thesis project, Carnal Politics: Sex, Desire, and Anti-Colonial Deviance in Mandate Palestine. The work aims to re-imagine new possibilities for Palestine’s future by linking today’s struggle to a long history of “deviance”, liberation, and resistance. During the thesis exhibition in May 2023, Carnal Politics offered the public a…
Recommended in the Art Newspaper’s Book Club, Through the Ruins: Talks on Human Rights and the Arts 1, brings together activists, scholars, and artists working at the intersection of human rights and the arts. Through the Ruins is based on the first year of public talks at CHRA by Ashmina Ranjit, Border Forensics, Cassils, Emily Johnson, Faustin Linyekula, Hamed Sinno, Mark…
CHRA is delighted to share its first publication, Through the Ruins: Talks on Human Rights & the Arts 1. This is the inaugural volume of an annual series, created as an educational resource for all. The book is based on talks presented at CHRA by choreographer Faustin Linyekula, art critic duo The White Pube, visual artist Cassils, activist and choreographer…
Artist and CHRA Director Tania El Khoury was recently announced as one of ten recipients of the 2023 Herb Alpert Award in the Arts. The annual award recognizes risk-taking mid-career artists in each of the fields of dance, music, film/video, theater, and visual arts. The award includes an unrestricted prize of $75,000 and the invitation to design and take part in…
This April 27 through May 7, the OSUN Center for Human Rights and the Arts at Bard College (CHRA) presents ten capstone projects of its inaugural class of the MA Program in Human Rights and the Arts. Each of these projects is based on original research by a graduating student, carried out during their second year in the program. Projects…
CHRA graduate student Adam HajYahia is curating Footnotes on the Fictive Present, a public program series at The James Gallery and The Graduate Center, City University of New York from March 21 through June 4, 2023. The series explores political imagination of the past and speculations of an emancipatory future through scholarly talks, film screenings, and art practices. The program…
Artist and CHRA Director Tania El Khoury has been awarded Special Mention for the 2023 Sharjah Biennial Jury Prize, presenting two interactive installations at the Sharjah Biennial 15: Cultural Exchange Rate and The Search for Power. Both shows opened with the biennale on February 7, and her award was announces that evening at the Awards Gala. El Khoury is also presenting the live lecture-performance…
The OSUN Center for Human Rights and the Arts at Bard College (CHRA) is pleased to announce its Spring 2023 public programming. The new lineup, listed below, includes online talks, in-person film screenings and discussions, and workshops with artists, activists, and OSUN colleagues and their local communities. This semester also includes the continuation of Common Ground: an international festival on…
Artist and CHRA Director Tania El Khoury participated in the Spring 2023 lineup of the University of Michigan Stamps School of Arts Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series. The event, on Thursday, January 26, at 5:30pm at the historical Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor, took the form of an interview conducted by writer, dramaturg, and curator Tom Sellar, editor of Yale’s…
Over the 2022–23 winter break, CHRA organized a field trip for MA students to the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Arts (Mass MoCA), situated on the ancestral homelands of the Muhheaconneok or Mohican people (People of the Waters That Are Never Still) and the Wabanaki peoples. Particular exhibits that students remarked on were those by EJ Hill, Marc Swanson, kellie rae adams, Yto Barrada, Louise Bourgeois,…
On view at the Clemente Center, Dear Alien, Dear Doppelganger features artists Jaguar Mary X, Taro Masushio, Luna Luis Ortiz, and Lisa Ross. The exhibition presents photographs and videos that explore queerness as performances of doubling. The four featured artists approach archives, representations of popular culture, family photos, and dominant constructs of race and sexuality by reworking and restaging them…
Tender Edges is a microfestival of live art projects created by the first year M.A. students in Human Rights & the Arts at Bard College (Class of 2024). These works-in-progress are part of The Politics of Interactive Live Art course taught by Tania El Khoury. The microfestival takes place at various times and locations on campus on Saturday 10 December…
Artist, community organizer, educator, and CHRA’s Programming Producer Polina Malikin presented work as part of a collaborative project called PRACTICAL ARTS at the Scope Art Fair in Miami Beach (November 29 – December 4, 2022). For this twenty-first edition, Scope Miami Beach brought together over 150 diverse contemporary exhibitors as well as various talks and installations throughout the week. PRACTICAL…
The OSUN Center for Human Rights & the Arts (CHRA) invites applications for two resident research and teaching fellowships in human rights and the arts. Scholars and/or artists with teaching experience and a research project are eligible to apply. The 2023–2024 fellowships cover a period of one year, i.e. two academic semesters, from July 1, 2023 through June 30, 2024….
In Fall 2022, our first-year M.A. students took a field trip to NYC to visit exhibitions and meet with curators at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) and MoMA PS1. The trip was part of the first-year students’ core course requirement (HRA 501: The Politics of Interactive Live Art), taught by CHRA Director, live artist Tania El Khoury. Second-year students…
The OSUN Center for Human Rights & the Arts is pleased to announce that we are now accepting applications for our third cohort for the MA in Human Rights and the Arts program, with a starting term of Fall 2023. The MA Program in Human Rights & the Arts offers a graduate-level two-year interdisciplinary curricular experience that takes stock of…
The Fisher Center LAB Biennial is a thematic festival that invites and commissions artists to create new works that grapple with some of the most pressing questions of our time. The 2022–23 edition, Common Ground, is a year-long international program focusing on the politics of land and food and taking place on four continents. Tania El Khoury and Gideon Lester have curated a…
CHRA Director Tania El Khoury recently co-curated (with Bochra Triki) Tashweesh 2022: a festival on feminist practices in Southwest Asia, North Africa, and Europe. The program took place across the three cities of Tunis, Brussels, and Vienna (September 23 through October 15, 2022) and was hosted by L’Art Rue, beursschouwburg, and Tanzquartier Wien, respectively. Tashweesh curated a new commission by artist…
This October, as part of their Politics of Interactive Art (HRA 501) course with Tania El Khoury, first-year M.A. students participated in a special workshop at Eureka!, an arts center based in Kingston, NY. Eureka! hosts an artist residency program as well as a variety of events and workshops, all of which focus on supporting practitioners working at the intersection…
The Margarita Kuchma Project Award selection committee has named two final winning projects: “The Columbia Project” and “Project MA3: Masanse Na Mayouthman (From Violence to Co-existence).” “The Columbia Project” is a multimedia arts mentorship collective where incarcerated artists are given the opportunity to define their own voices. The project is led by Bard Annandale students Anna Schupack ’22 and Sarah…
The OSUN Center for Human Rights and the Arts at Bard is pleased to announce its Fall 2022 lineup of webinar talks, in-person panels and a film screening. Tuesday, September 6, 5:30pm ET In-person panel: Out of Place: Three Writers on Fiction, Language, Exile, and Utopia Nuruddin Farah, Ilija Trojanow, and Aleksandar Hemon Wednsday, September 7, 5:30pm ET In-person lecture:…
CHRA’s Adrienne Truscott recently showed and performed in MASTERCLASS, a collaboration between her and Dublin theatre-makers Brokentalkers, at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The work received a Fringe First award which recognizes outstanding new writing premiered at the festival. Established in 1973, the Fringe Firsts are recognized all over the world and are the most prestigious theatre awards at the festival….
The OSUN Center for Human Rights and the Arts at Bard College (CHRA) announces the appointment of Sabine El Chamaa and Lara Fresko Madra as its 2022–23 resident research and teaching fellows. This year’s applicant pool was competitive and diverse, featuring over fifty candidates from sixteen countries, demonstrating the richness of the contemporary landscape of research on and practice in…
In Spring 2022, our first cohort of MA students traveled to the Fusebox International Performing Arts Festival in Austin, Texas. The trip was part of the student’s first-year core course requirement (HRA 504: Collaborations & Community), taught by CHRA Director, core faculty, and artist Tania El Khoury. Over the span of four days, MA students attended eleven different shows that…
In loving memory of our MA student Margarita Kuchma, who was a Smolny College graduate, a PIE student at Bard, and part of CHRA’s inaugural cohort in the OSUN M.A. in Human Rights and the Arts, the inaugural Margarita Kuchma Project Award was announced by the Human Rights Project at Bard College in February, 2022. Margarita was a talented artist…
Read our latest newsletter here.(Copied below). To sign up to our newsletters, please add your register here. TALKS Our public program began with choreographer Bhenji Ra reflecting on her body-centered practice to approach community, prison abolition, permaculture, and radical trans love. Omar Al-Ghazzi (London School of Economics) moderated the event. Friday, Feb. 25, 12pm EST via Zoom Taking (A)part: Human…
This January 2022 CHRA completed selections for our 2021–22 Faculty Research Grants and Student-led Initiative Grants competitions, two of our annual grant competitions. We are pleased to announce that CHRA has awarded a total of twenty-three grants to faculty and students across nineteen OSUN institutions in these two most recent grant competitions. Awardees will use their grants during Spring and…
The OSUN Center for Human Rights and the Arts at Bard is pleased to announce its Spring 2022 lineup of in-person and webinar talks, digital commissions launches, film series, and a virtual activists panel. Friday, February 11, 4pm EST Webinar talk: Everything at Once: Permaculture, abolition, and trans love Bhenji Ra Friday, February 25, 12pm EST Webinar talk: Taking (A)part:…
As our Center begins to accept applications for our second cohort for the M.A. in Human Rights and the Arts program (Deadline: 10 January 2022), we will be holding several virtual info sessions throughout the month of November 2021. This announcement will be regularly updated to reflect news sessions. The following virtual information sessions are open to the public: Tuesday,…
We are pleased to announce that all four of our first season of CHRA Digital Commissions are now available for online viewing. This Spring 2021 series included four artists from around the world [Leil Zahra Mortada, Marikiscrycrycry (Malik Nashad Sharpe), Emilio Rojas, and Sethembile Msezane] using a variety of media to reflect on the notion of “invisibilities.” Each artist selected…
The OSUN Center for Human Rights and Arts at Bard College is pleased to announce that Nadine Fattaleh and Oscar Humberto Pedraza Vargas have been selected as the inaugural (2021-22) recipients of the Center’s fellowship in human rights and the arts. The fellowship aims to support outstanding engagement in human rights and the arts by scholars, artists, and activists. Fellows…
The online arts publication Hyperallergic recently featured CHRA core team members Tania El Khoury and Ziad Abu-Rish. In conversation with Katie Kheriji-Watts, they discuss their relocation from Beirut to Bard College and how their previous art and research projects inform CHRA’s overall vision, including its flagship MA in Human Rights and the Arts Program. The interview highlights the duo’s shared…
The OSUN Center for Human Rights and the Arts announces today the launch of a pioneering M.A. program in Human Rights and the Arts, and looks forward to welcoming its inaugural class in Fall 2021. Designed by the Center’s core faculty team of Tania El Khoury, Thomas Keenan, Gideon Lester, and Ziad Abu-Rish, the interdisciplinary program will bring together scholars,…
The OSUN Center for Human Rights and the Arts at Bard College is pleased to announce the inaugural (2020–21) recipients of grants supporting faculty research and student-led initiatives at the intersection of human rights and the arts. The grants were awarded after an open call for proposals for faculty and students across member institutions of the Open Society University Network…