Keisha Scarville lecture at Penumbra Foundation this Wednesday
This Wednesday, International Center of Photography & Parsons professor and artist Keisha Scarville will be speaking at Penumbra Foundation in Midtown.
Keisha Scarville lecture at Penumbra Foundation (36 East 80th St.)
Wednesday, 4/26 7pm
As part of Penumbra’s on-going Artist Series, Spring 2023 lecture series, Scarville will be speaking this week. I’ve been following her work for the last 7 years, since she was my photography teacher in high school. Her work was my introduction to an artist’s navigation between fine arts, memory, home, and objectivity. It didn’t fall into simple documentary or conceptual categories— it was a balancing act. As I got older, I would learn more about her work and our paths continued to cross. In 2017, my friends Lola Lafia, Ellis Shaprio-Barnum, and I— all students of Scarville— went to see her work at the since-closed Lesley Heller Gallery in Chinatown, at the Spring/Summer group show, “The Photo Show.” To our surprise, Scarville was there and walked us through her work. Later, I would learn that she was a professor at the International Center of Photography where I took an intro darkroom class in my senior year of high school. While in college, I continued to follower her work on Instagram and saw a flier for her Fall 2022 solo exhibition “Hot/Slow/Step” at Huxley-Parlour in London; I sent it to my friend Isis Pinheiro who was coincidentally in London as part of her Watson Fellowship. Pinheiro had also taken Scarville’s photography class. This was the first time they saw each other since that class. Having graduated myself, I saw Scarville was included in Justine Kurland’s curated and edited issue of Speciwomen, and so I got my copy signed by her at Dashwood downtown. Needless to say, it’s been a trip following and returning to Scarville’s work again and again.