Contemporary Collage Conversations

Fragmenting, juxtaposing, and assembling media, collage touches a variety of artistic mediums and genres. Contemporary collage artists, Aimée Beaubien, Cydney Lewis, Victoria Martinez, Mary Lou Zelazny, and moderator Dana Boutin discuss the meaning and contemporary relevance of collage as an art form. Panelists will also be invited to respond to collagist extraordinaire, Alice Shaddle’s work, and share insights into their own process of collecting materials and techniques. Exhibition catalogs will also be available for purchase.

Aimée Beaubien

Aimée Beaubien transforms photographic experience into immersive installations, collages, and artist books, exploring the medium’s potential of infinite reproduction. Her crafted assemblages mirror the interconnectedness of the ecological realm through networks of competing images, capturing the sensorial overload of a media-saturated world. Beaubien's work, exhibited and published nationally and internationally, intricately navigates the complexities of interpreting photographs and experiencing nature. Aimée Beaubien is an Associate Professor of Photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, IL where she has taught since 1997.

Mary Lou Zelazny

The School of the Art Institute of Chicago has a significant place in her career where she has been a faculty member since 1990 and is currently Full Professor Adjunct in the Department of Painting and Drawing. While valuing her academic associations, she remains principally a studio artist and has a record of consistent production over four decades. Zelzany has had numerous one-person exhibitions since the 1980s and is represented by the Carl Hammer Gallery. She was the subject of a comprehensive retrospective at the Hyde Park Art Center in 2009. Her work has been exhibited in various galleries and museums throughout the United States. She has been included in many survey exhibitions, including What Came After: Figurative Painting in Chicago 1978-1998 at the Elmhurst Art Museum in 2019; Surrealism: The Conjured Life at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago 2015-2016. She is in numerous public and private collections. Zelazny has curated three major recent exhibitions and is currently working on the group exhibition Because It Feels So Good When I Stop. Zelazny continues to add to her catalog of mixed media paintings and exhibitions with her most recent solo show, Whistling in the Dark, at Carl Hammer Gallery Chicago, 2022. Recent ventures include Women on the Verge, curated by Lisa Wainwright at Rhona Hoffman Gallery, in the autumn of 2023.

Victoria Martinez

Victoria Martinez is an artist who honors her Mexican-American ancestry through abstraction. She creates textile-based projects including installation art, painting, and sculpture. Her work is inspired by murals, graffiti, ancient sites, architecture, and the urban environment. She has exhibited at venues including the Yale University Art Gallery, the National Museum of Mexican Art, Museo Universitario del Chopo in Mexico City, Perrotin Gallery, and Sotheby's Institute of Art in New York City. Her work has been supported by The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library Research Fellowship at Yale University, the Actos de Confianza Grant through the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures (NALAC), and a travel grant through the Theaster Gates Rebuild Foundation. Martinez holds a BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and an MFA from Yale University School of Art in Painting and Printmaking. Her solo exhibition Victoria Martinez: Braiding Histories will be presented at The Chicago Cultural Center from April 6, 2024 to July 28, 2024. Martinez was the inaugural artist selected through the Climate Engagement through Art in Cities fellowship at Yale University, her work was recently collected by the De La Cruz Collection, and she will be participating in the Fountainhead Residency in Miami, Florida in July 2024.

https://www.victoria-martinez.com/ IG @victoria_martinez_studio