Pablo Helguera, a pioneer of socially engaged artistic practice, is working with CVPA students this semester on a project that focuses on the reimagining of social conventions. The project will result in a publication that Helguera describes as “a manual to learn and perform new forms of cultural behavior.”

Helguera will visit the campus on April 7th and 8th to meet with students in person and to present a public artist talk. The talk will be on April 7th at 5:30 pm in the Weatherspoon Art Museum Auditorium followed by a cookout in the courtyard.

This artist visit is made possible by the Victoria and Ron Milstein Fund for Interdisciplinary Art and Social Practice. The fund provides support to bring an eminent artist within social practice to campus each year for a multi-day residency to provide public lectures, interactive workshops in the classroom, and an exhibition on campus or at Greensboro Project Space created in collaboration with students in the Interdisciplinary and Social Practice Minor. The fund also includes selected scholarships for students within the Interdisciplinary Art and Social Practice minor.

Professor Lee Walton says: “We are so fortunate to be able to bring this visiting artist to campus through the generosity of the Milsteins. Pablo Helguera is one of the most prominent and influential Social Practice artists in the field. It’s been a really enlightening and enriching experience for the students thus far, although the project is in the early stages.”

Based in New York, Helguera’s work spans drawing, performance, pedagogy, theater, and creative writing. His project “The School of Panamerican Unrest,” a nomadic think-tank that physically crossed the continent by car from Anchorage, Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, covered almost 20,000 miles and engaged over 40 towns, cities, and communities along the way.

Helguera is a Guggenheim Fellow and has received the Creative Capital, Art Matters, Franklin Furnace and Blade of Grass fellowships, as well as the First International Award of Participatory Art from the Region Emilia Romagna (Bologna).

Read more about the Interdisciplinary and Social Practice Program here.

Register for Artist Talk 

Story by Terri W. Relos