RTS is excited to host our next artist talk at the SF Art Book Fair at Minnesota Street Project on July 21st at 4pm. Current RTS artist in residence, Macon Reed, and RTS member, Leila Weefur, will be presenting. See you there!
Macon Reed’s work seeks to expand the agency of our collective imagination in response to the growing apathy and isolation inspired by late capitalism. Motivated by human relationships within evolving queer and intersectional feminist frameworks- her projects recognize that aesthetic form and social engagement are not mutually exclusive but rather, deeply intertwined. Most recently, her practice has evolved towards creating immersive sculptural environments that serve as public sites for dynamic inter-community conversation and transformative ritual. She understands her work as an act of creative resistance. Reed’s work has shown at venues including PULSE NYC Special Projects, BRIC Media Arts, ABC No Rio, The Kitchen, Art F City FAGallery, Chicago Cultural Center, Mana Contemporary, Roots & Culture, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, ICA Baltimore, Athens Museum of Queer Arts in Greece, and Transmediale in Berlin. Reed completed her MFA at the University of Illinois at Chicago as a University Fellow in 2013 and received her BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2007. Additionally she studied Radio Documentary at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies and Physical Theater at the Dah International School in Belgrade. Recently, Reed was an artist in residence at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, a Research Fellow at Eyebeam Center for Art+Technology, and taught at Brown University. She will be a fellow at A.I.R. Gallery in Brooklyn and an artist in residence at Amherst College in 2018-2019.
Leila Weefur lives and works in Oakland, CA. Weefur received her MFA from Mills College in 2016. With a multidisciplinary practice, Weefur tackles the complexities of phenomenological Blackness through video, installation, printmaking, and lecture-performances. Using materials and visual gestures to access the tactile memory, she explores the abject, the sensual and the nuance found in the social interactions and language with which our bodies have to negotiate space. She is a recipient of the Hung Liu award, the Murphy & Cadogan award, and recently completed an artist fellowship at Kala Art Institute. Weefur has exhibited her work in local and national galleries including Southern Exposure and SOMArts Gallery in San Francisco, Betti Ono in Oakland, BAMPFA and Smack Mellon in Brooklyn, New York. She is the Audio/Video, Editor In Chief at Art Practical and the co-director of The Black Aesthetic.