Ithaca College

Please join us at the Handwerker Gallery for the final two events in conjunction with the current exhibition, STRANGE BEDFELLOWS, which closes this weekend.  Performance and media artist Tara Mateik will give a public lecture and discuss his Oz-inspired creative practice on Thursday, April 10, at 6pm. The following day, during the noon hour of Friday, April 11, Mateik will collaborate with artist Guadalupe Rosales and writer Savannah Knoop to produce a 1915-era silent film of a reenactment of the Declaration of Sentiments from the Seneca Falls Women's Suffrage movement with the help of a cast and crew comprised entirely of IC students. Both of these events are free and open to the public and will occur at the Handwerker Gallery.

• THURSDAY, April 10, 6.00 p.m.: Artist talk with Tara Mateik
• FRIDAY, April 11, 12.00 p.m.: ARMY OF REVOLT!, public performance and filming

Events funded with support from the Women's Studies Program & the Diversity Awareness Committee

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TARA MATEIK is an artist and educator living in New York City. In his videos and performances he typecasts himself as theoretical and cultural transvestites from pop music, competitive sport, and weird science. His recent project featured in the current exhibition at the Handwerker Gallery, STRANGE BEDFELLOWS, is Friends of Dorothy, a body of work deconstructing the myths of home and identity through investigating The Wizard of Oz and The Wiz.  Collaborating with impersonators of queer icons Diana Ross and Judy Garland, Mateik’s performances play with personification and identification of heroine Dorothy Gale.

Mateik’s work has been exhibited at venues that include The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Roebling Hall and Reena Spaulings in New York, the Black Maria Film Festival and LACE in Los Angeles. Mateik’s writing and work has been published in Felix: A Journal of Media Arts and Culture, LTTR, a queer feminist art journal, North Drive Press #2, and Art Fancy. His awards include a three-year fellowship at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, a grant from the Creative Capital Foundation in film/video,  an Electronic and Film Art Grant from the Experimental Television Center, and a BCAT/BRIC Rotunda Gallery Video Residency.

In 2002 Tara Mateik founded The Society of Biological Insurgents (SBI), an embryonic cell organization that wages strategic operations to overthrow institutions of compulsory gender. In addition to his own work he has collaborated with collectives and artists including Paper Tiger Television video collective to produce short videos that demystify and democratize the media. In 2000 he co-founded Dykes Can Dance with Emily Roysdon and JD Samson. Mateik graduated from Hampshire College in 1997 with a BA in Video and from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in 2004 with an MFA in Integrated Electronic Arts. Currently he teaches at CUNY Staten Island in the Media Culture Department and runs the Education Department at Art in General.

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All Handwerker Gallery events are free and open to the public. Gallery hours are Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 10.00 a.m. to 6.00 p.m.; Thursday, 10.00 a.m. to 9.00 p.m.; and weekends, noon to 5.00 p.m.. The gallery is closed to the public on Tuesdays unless otherwise specified for an event but can accommodate group or class visits by appointment.

For further information or individuals with disabilities requiring parking accommodations, please contact Mara Baldwin at mbaldwin@ithaca.edu or 607.274.3548. Please make requests for accommodations as far in advance as possible.