David Winton Bell Gallery

Event Details





Tuesday, November 14, 2017

Opening Reception and Artist Conversation | Melvin Edwards | Festivals, Funerals, and New Life

5:30pm
List Art Center Auditorium

 

A conversation between Melvin Edwards and Tony Ramos on the occasion of the opening of the exhibition Festivals, Funerals, and New Life.

Opening reception to follow.

All welcome.

 

Melvin Edwards and Tony Ramos have been artist colleagues and friends for over forty years. Traveling to and working in Africa together many times, Ramos created important films documenting Edwards’s projects in Africa in the 1970s. The artists will share a conversation exploring their work, camaraderie, and themes emerging from Edwards’s exhibition Festivals, Funerals, and New Life at the David Winton Bell Gallery.

 

About Tony Ramos

Born in Providence, Tony Ramos is a performance and media artist, known best for using his art for political activism in the 1970s. He is particularly interested in African American identity, global crises, and the dissemination of news through television. He received an M.F.A. from the California Institute of the Arts where he was a graduate assistant to Allan Kaprow. Early in his career he received a National Endowment for the Arts Visual Arts Fellowship, a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, and an Aspen Fellowship from the Aspen Institute. During the 1970s and 1980s, Ramos traveled widely in Europe, Africa, China and the Middle East, notably documenting the end of Portugal's colonial rule in Cape Verde and in Guinea-Bissau. In addition to his artistic pursuits, Ramos has served as a video consultant to the United Nations and National Council of Churches.