Light Work’s Urban Video Project (UVP) presents two different film programs, both featuring the work of multimedia artists Sofía Gallisá Muriente and TJ Cuthand.
Program 2 will also be available to view online in a live steam on Thursday, May 25, at 6:30 p.m ET. RSVP required.
In the work of Muriente and Cuthand, we meet the inhabitants of lands scarred by legacies of toxic colonialism and violent extraction. Here, survival is a mode of resistance, and it is done by making space for grief, fear, and doubt but also moments of humor, intimacy, care, and, in the words of Sofía Gallisá Muriente, “obstinate joy.”
(Please note that the films in these programs include discussion or depictions of sexual situations and natural disasters. Please contact info@urbanvideoproject.com with any questions about content.)
Puerto Rican artist, Sofia Gallisa-Muriente, poses for a portrait in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on Sept. 24, 2021. (Photo by Erika P. Rodriguez for The Great Discontent)
Sofía Gallisá Muriente is a Puerto Rican visual artist whose work resists colonial forces of erasure and claims the freedom of historical agency, proposing mechanisms for remembering and reimagining. She has been a fellow of the Smithsonian Institute and the Flaherty Seminar. She has exhibited in the Whitney Biennial, the Queens Museum, ifa Galerie in Berlin, and Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico. From 2014 to 2020, she co-directed the artist-run organization Beta-Local. She is currently a fellow of the Puerto Rican Arts Initiative and the Cisneros Institute at MoMA.
TJ Cuthand
TJ Cuthand makes short experimental narrative videos and films about sexuality, madness, Queer identity and love, and Indigeneity, which have screened in festivals internationally, including the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City, Mix Brasil Festival of Sexual Diversity in São Paulo, ImagineNATIVE in Toronto, Ann Arbour Film Festival, Images in Toronto, Berlinale in Berlin, New York Film Festival, Outfest, and Oberhausen International Short Film Festival. His work has also been shown at The National Gallery in Ottawa, the Whitney Museum of American Art and MoMA in New York, and The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis among other venues. He is a trans man who uses he/him pronouns. He is of Plains Cree and Scots descent, a Little Pine First Nation member and currently resides in Toronto, Canada. He is at work on his first feature.
Program 1 and 2 are co-presented with the Puerto Rican Student Association (PRSA), Give Us the Camera (GUT-C) through a Wege Grant, the Indigenous Students at Syracuse and the Native Student Program and University Union Cinemas at Syracuse University.
Program 2 is co-presented with Canary Lab and the Visiting Artist Lecture Series of the School of Art in the Syracuse University College of Visual and Performing Arts, and the Everson Museum of Art.
UVP exhibitions and events are supported by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature and by the County of Onondaga through the Tier Three Program administered by CNY Arts.
