Mishkin Gallery curator to hold talk in Manila

Alaina Claire Feldman, the director and curator of the university art museum, Mishkin Gallery, in New York, will discuss the significant role of visual technologies in critical animal studies in a free public lecture. Organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design of the De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde, the dialogue will offer glimpses of Feldman’s work.

The talk will present “Staging the Ocean: The Emergence of the Aquarium in Victorian England,” an investigation of the constructions and representations of nature through the apparatus of the saltwater aquarium. “Who Speaks for the Oceans?” proposes new and challenging ways to shift the understanding and relationships of whales with other animals. It is an exhibition composed of over 15 interdisciplinary artworks which analyzes epistemological and historical knowledge on life in the ocean.

“Taxonomies of Power: Photographic Encounters at the State Silk Museum Tbilisi,” co-curated with art historian and cultural practitioner Mariam Shergelashvili, features a selection of black and white photographs from the State Silk Museum in Tbilisi, Georgia. It will be shown alongside the film Raised in the Dust (2022) by Georgian artist Andro Eradze, together with 47 images which detail the life cycle of the silk moth.

Feldman, who holds degrees in Social and Environmental Justice Studies from the Graduate Center and Art History/Critical Visual Studies at Pratt Institute in New York, is an adjunct professor in the Fine and Performing Arts Department of Baruch College, City University of New York. She has curated over 20 exhibitions worldwide and edited numerous publications. Her current research is concerned with visual technologies that have contributed to the production of nature, the history of natural history, aquariums, critical animal studies, and the act of collecting and various collections. 

Feldman was awarded a Curatorial Research Fellowship from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, together with interdisciplinary scholar and author Macarena Gómez-Barris. In January 2025, she will assume the inaugural chief curator position at the University of California Irvine’s Jack and Shanaz Langson Institute and Museum of California Art.

She is likewise slated to serve as a guest curator for the up-and-coming Kim? Contemporary Art Centre’s annual festival in Riga, Latvia, and guest curator for an inaugural exhibition for the new Taichung Art Museum in Taiwan.

The talk is scheduled for 22 November, at 3:30 p.m. It will be held on the 12th floor, The Loop at the Benilde Design + Arts Campus. Interested participants may register through forms.gle/XDFzxPNNNpySKGDc6. For more information, visit facebook.com/MCADManila or mcadmanila.org.ph/.