Artist Talk by CASSILS: The Art of Protest

Tuesday, March 5, 2024 at 1:30pm
Frank Center for Public Affairs, Room 100 (238 Church Street, Middletown)

FREE! Talk on Zoom with in-person audience

CASSILS is a transgender artist who makes their own body the material and protagonist of their performances. Cassils's art contemplates the history(s) of LGBTQI+ violence, representation, struggle and survival. For Cassils, performance is a form of social sculpture: Drawing from the idea that bodies are formed in relation to forces of power and social expectations, Cassils’s work investigates historical contexts to examine the present moment.

Cassils has upcoming solo exhibitions at SITE Santa Fe, Walter Philips Gallery, and Banff Center for Art and Creativity. They had recent solo exhibitions at HOME Manchester, Station Museum of Contemporary Art, Perth Institute for Contemporary Arts, Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, NYC; Institute for Contemporary Art, AU; Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts; Bemis Center, Omaha; MU Eindhoven, Netherlands.

They are the recipient of the National Creation Fund, a 2020 Fleck Residency from the Banff Center for the Arts, a Princeton Lewis Artist Fellowship finalist, a Villa Bellagio Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, a United States Artist Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Creative Capital Award. Cassils is an Associate Professor in Visual Studies at the University of Toronto.

Co-sponsored by Wesleyan’s Center for the Arts Creative Campus Initiative; Center for the Humanities; and Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department.

Image: Cassils (photo by Richard Jupe)