The University of Michigan School of Social Work is pleased to present NYC-based artist, DJ and poet Juliana Huxtable on the occasion of the 2018 Martin Luther King, Jr. Symposium. Huxtable's work probes the perception and presentation of identity, history and online communities. Huxtable will present a new iteration of her performance work highlighting her compelling use of language, and collaborations in music, projection, and lighting design. Featuring instrumental performances by her frequent collaborators, the pianist, percussionist, and composer Joe Heffernan, Detroit-based harpist Ahya Simone with lighting design by Michael Potvin. Huxtable’s explorations invite us to contemplate the power and powerlessness of the body as well as its dispossession in relation to technology, violence, and blackness. Her performance marks Michigan Social Work’s first commissioned artist in over 20 years, as a part of the Social Justice Art Collection.
Huxtable’s work is included in Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today on view at the University of Michigan Museum of Art from December 15, 2018 to April 7, 2019. Organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, the exhibition examines the radical impact of internet culture on visual art since the invention of the web in 1989. This exhibition presents more than forty works across a variety of media—painting, performance, photography, sculpture, video, and web-based projects. It features work by some of the most important artists working today, including Judith Barry, Juliana Huxtable, Pierre Huyghe, Josh Kline, Laura Owens, Trevor Paglen, Seth Price, Cindy Sherman, Frances Stark, and Martine Syms.
Huxtable will also give a Penny W. Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series Lecture at 5:10 p.m. on February 7, 2018 at the Michigan Theater.