The Tennessee Triennial: Positioning Nashville as a Global Arts City
We are delighted to take an active part in supporting the first-ever Tennessee Triennial. And we're especially pleased that our Vanderbilt colleague, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, is the consulting curator and organizer for the numerous venues and exhibitions throughout the state. TN TRI promises to be a full and enriching multicity event, bringing together local and international artists. It's a momentous step for the university and Nashville's dynamic arts community as we position ourselves as a global arts city.
Tracy D. Sharpley-Whiting
Vice Provost Arts & Libraries
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María Magdalena Campos-Pons
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María Magdalena Campos-Pons: Consulting Curator
Tri-Star, the organization behind the Tennessee Triennial, tapped our very own Cornelius Vanderbilt Endowed Chair of Fine Arts María Magdalena Campos-Pons to be the triennial’s consulting curator. She has spearheaded this inaugural triennial and collaborated with a distinguished list of international and local artists, curators, and scholars to showcase the diverse perspectives of the contemporary art scene in Tennessee.
On the theme of the triennial “Re-Pair,” Campos-Pons explains that it centers around rethinking, restructuring, and mending. It focuses on art as a tool of healing, an opportunity for good, and a reflection on the complexities of humanity. “Re-Pair” is also about coming together, which is representative of the Tennessee Triennial involving four cities across the state—Knoxville, Chattanooga, Nashville, and Memphis—coming together for this event. No one city serves as a focal point, but each experiences a highlight week.
Campos-Pons’s prior experiences at global biennials and triennials are numerous, making her well-equipped to actualize this visionary Tennessee Triennial. Her experiences include being an exhibiting artist at the 2001 Venice Biennale and the 2015 Documenta 14, among other biennials; the Founder Director of Intermittent Rivers in 2019; and a member of the International Biennials Association (IBA). She views biennials and triennials as having transformative cultural and economic significance for cities, as exemplified by the Venice Biennale.
She envisions that the Tennessee Triennial will similarly elevate Nashville, a city known for its musical arts, to be equally recognized for its visual arts. This triennial will foster collaboration of organizations, artists, curators, and scholars across the city and state, just as it has brought countless individuals together to organize this inaugural event, for whom she expresses her sincere gratitude.
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Nashville Participants
Our city's rich arts community is represented in exhibitions across Middle Tennessee. Participating Middle Tennessee organizations include:
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Left to Right: The Frist's exhibition of Otobong Nkanga; artwork in the Parthenon's exhibition of Houston Cofield, Desmond Lewis, and Lakesha Moore; artwork in Fisk University Galleries' exhibition of Alicia Henry
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Vanderbilt Fine Arts Gallery: Triennial Space on Campus
The Vanderbilt Fine Arts Gallery is one space representing Middle Tennessee in the Tennessee Triennial through their Spring exhibition Revive | احیا, curated by Raheleh Filsoofi. When asked about the triennial's presence in Nashville, Amanda Hellman, the gallery’s director, stated, “Programs like the Tennessee Triennial enhance the Nashville arts community because they bring new voices into the city while amplifying the work of local artists and arts organizations across the state. Additionally, the Tennessee Triennial strengthens the statewide arts infrastructure because the arts organizations themselves are connecting with colleagues and partners across Tennessee.” Hellman hopes the triennial will foster artistic collaborations throughout the state.
Revive | احیا asked writers to select and describe an object from the collection of Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery. These were given to seven Middle Eastern artists who created a new work based on the description. These women, artists and writers, some of whom immigrated to the United States, and others who were born of immigrant parents, are expressing their complex identities through this work, creating something new that is intimately connected to the past. In this way, artists not only mend splintered legacies but also advocate for the history of the object and celebrate its unique beauty. This exhibition fits within the triennial’s theme of "Re-Pair", which explores intellectual and creative investigations into how objects, memories, cultures, and identities can be fractured and reconstituted.
The next event at the gallery will be ART + FEMINISM & Contemporary Iranian Women Artists Wikipedia Edit-a-thon. This event will provide an intro to editing so that participants can learn how to improve online coverage of female artists, specifically Iranian women artists. It will take place on March 7 at 11:30 am in Cohen room 134, bring a laptop.
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Vanderbilt Faculty Involvement
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Vesna Pavlović, Perfect MemoryZeitgeist Gallery
Opening March 4, 12 - 6 pm
Reception 3 pm - 6 pm
Vesna Pavlović’s 4th solo show at Zeitgeist, Perfect Memory, showcases a body of photographs that represents a return to still image and documentary themes, which gained her attention as a young artist. While Pavlović’s work, after her time as a student at Columbia University and her arrival to Nashville in 2009, emphasized image reproduction, projection, and installation, Perfect Memory echoes her visual exploration of aesthetic, social, and historical phenomena found in her legacy series, such as the iconic “Hotels.” Perfect Memory integrates three bodies of photographs shot recently in former Yugoslavia, Cuba, and the US. These works—“Sites of Memory,” Jardines de Hershey,” and “Searching for the Perfect Sunset”, are connected by questions of memory and the politics of place, with a focus on a photographic representation of political and cultural histories of the Cold War era.
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Raheleh Filsoofi
Listening: The Fourth String and Introduction to Shah Tár
Public Performance: March 2, 6 pm - 8 pm in Ingram Hall, Blair School of Music
Listening: The Fourth String is a project that will introduce an interactive and experiential instrument and platform ShahTár (شه تار) through public performances that re-imagine the silenced existence of the Iranian musician and Sufi, Moshtagh Ali Shah (18th century Iran), and emphasizes his historic contributions to the Iranian music. The project addresses the concept of sound, suggesting the act of listening can power community engagement, promote social change, and foster a better future.
Performance by Reza Filsoofi, Raheleh Filsoofi, and Isi Miranda with special guests Michael Hix, Charlie Gilbert, and Carlos Duran. The audience will be welcome to interact with the instrument and patriciate in the performance at the end of the event.
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EADJ Opens New Arts Spaces
Engine for Arts, Democracy & Justice (EADJ) is the trans-institutional initiative that explores creative approaches to living together in the South(s). For the triennial, it serves as a key organizer, managing multiple exhibitions and events and coordinating the participation of over thirty global artists.
EADJ has spearheaded two new exploratory exhibition spaces for the triennial: Begonia Labs, located on West End Ave, and 80/20 Lab, located in East Nashville. These exhibition labs are attempts to energize parts of the city with non-commercial, exploratory art experiences. Each lab introduces international voices to Nashville in an intimate setting. These exhibitions hinge on the juxtaposition of place-keeping and place-making in a way that helps reimagine vacant commercial real estate in the city.
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Events Around Nashville
The Nashville Highlight weekend takes place throughout the city this week, March 1-4. EADJ organized this weekend in partnership with numerous venues and community partners.
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Pre-Texts Workshop with Doris Sommer
March 1, 2, 3, 4, 9 am - 12 pm
E. Bronson Ingram Studio Arts Center, 208
Pre-Texts is an arts education program teaching how to employ close reading and critical thinking skills by making art based on challenging texts. This program encourages creative interpretation and will be run by Doris Sommer, Faculty Director of Pre-Texts and faculty at the Harvard Kennedy School.
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Future of Museums Panels
Part 1: March 1, 11:30 am - 12:30 pm
Vanderbilt Divinity School
Part 2: March 4, 11 am - 12:30 pm
Zeitgeist Gallery
Each panel will explore how the museum experience is evolving to be more interactive and self-directed, considering new methods for audience engagement. Panelists include museum leaders, artists, and gallery professionals.
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Fisk Galleries: Way of Revolution Workshop
Saturday, March 4, 11 am - 2:30 p
Appleton Room in Jubilee Hall, Fisk University
This performance is an in-person art workshop, led by artist Helina Metaferia. It is specially designed for women-identifying BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) who are students, staff, faculty, and community members at Tennessee universities. The workshop investigates how histories of protest inform our present-day moment, and the powerful, yet often overlooked, role that BIPOC women (both cis and trans) play in them.
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WEHO Art Crawl
Saturday, March 4
12 pm - 6 pm
On the first Saturday of each month, the galleries in the Wedgewood-Houston Neighborhood host an art crawl. The exhibition opening at Zeitgeist Gallery features Vanderbilt faculty Vesna Pavlović and Alex Blau with Claudia Padrón Gómez.
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