Sunday, Oct 13, 2024
In Conversation: Moko Fukuyama & Jean Shin moderated by Alyson Baker
About
Lighthouse Works is pleased to invite you to a discussion between Moko Fukuyama, the artist behind this year’s public art commission, and acclaimed artist Jean Shin.
In a conversation moderated by Alyson Baker, Executive Director of the River Valley Arts Collective, Moko and Jean will discuss the process of creating an artwork meant for the public, the ecological concerns at the intersection of human activity and the environment that are explored in both their works, and reflect on how art, especially public art, can foster a deeper connection to the natural world around us.
Artists
Bio
Moko Fukuyama is a Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary artist whose diverse practice spans sculpture, filmmaking, performance, and installation. She immigrated to the United States from Japan in her early twenties and has pursued her version of the American Dream ever since. While living in locales ranging from Ames, Iowa to Memphis, Tennessee to Boston, Massachusetts to New York City, she has closely observed nuanced versions of modern political and cultural factions in the United States. Art has become a means for her to interpret and contend with social challenges that impinge on her life, and the American way of life at large.
Fukuyama’s projects have been supported by prominent non-profit institutions, such as Lighthouse Works, Recess, The Shed, Socrates Sculpture Park, Franconia Sculpture Park, River Valley Arts Collective, Al Held Foundation, LongHouse Reserve, Smack Mellon, and The Kitchen. Her work has been recognized with grants from the Rema Hort Mann Foundation, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and the Jerome Foundation. Fukuyama has held residencies at MacDowell, Stoneleaf Retreat, Art Omi, and Yaddo. From 2020 to 2022, Fukuyama participated in the Ground Floor Program at the International Studio & Curatorial Program where she was celebrated as their studio honoree. In 2022, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, and she recently received the 2024 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship for her interdisciplinary work. Currently, she is creating a large-scale sculpture that will debut next month at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. In 2025, she will collaborate with the Public Art Fund to develop a public artwork to be installed at Rockaway Beach.
Website
http://motokofukuyama.comBio
Jean Shin is known for her sprawling and often public sculptures, transforming accumulations of discarded objects into powerful monuments that interrogate our complex relationship between material consumption, collective identity, and community engagement. Often working cooperatively within a community, Shin amasses vast collections of everyday objects—Mountain Dew bottles, mobile phones, 35mm slides—while researching their history of use, circulation, and environmental impact. Distinguished by this labor-intensive and participatory process, Shin’s creations become catalysts for communities to confront social and ecological challenges.
Born in Seoul, South Korea, and raised in the U.S., Shin works in Brooklyn and Hudson Valley, New York. Her work has been widely exhibited and collected in over 150 major museums and cultural institutions, including solo exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington DC, and the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, where in 2020 she was the first Korean-American woman artist featured in a solo exhibition. Shin has received numerous awards, including the Frederic Church Award for her contributions to American art and culture. Her works have been highlighted in The New York Times and Sculpture Magazine, among others.
Her body of work includes several permanent public artworks commissioned by major agencies and municipalities, most recently a landmark commission for the MTA’s Second Ave Subway in NYC. She is a tenured Adjunct Professor at Pratt Institute and holds an honorary doctorate from the New York Academy of Art.
Website
https://www.jeanshin.com/Bio
Before establishing River Valley Arts Collective in 2018, Alyson was the executive director of The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. There, she significantly advanced both the Museum’s mission and its overall operational capacity while overseeing its acclaimed exhibition and education programs; strengthened its reputation as an artist–centric institution; and increased its base of support through highly effective partnerships and fostering a community of committed and enthusiastic patrons. Under her leadership, the Museum was accredited by the American Alliance of Museums, undertook an institutional assessment and rebranding campaign, and celebrated its fiftieth anniversary.
Prior to her position at The Aldrich, she served for over eleven years as Executive Director of Socrates Sculpture Park, an internationally acclaimed outdoor museum and artist residency program located along the East River in New York City.
Alyson was Director of Pat Hearn Gallery (1987–1992), an Associate Director of Gagosian Gallery (1992–1997), Curatorial Assistant in the Contemporary Art Department at the Carnegie Museum of Art and Assistant to the 1999 Carnegie International exhibition (1998–2000).
With over thirty years of experience in the arts, she has worked on more than 300 exhibitions with over 800 artists including both emerging artists and world-renowned figures such as Mark di Suvero, Kiki Smith, Chris Burden, Damien Hirst, Richard Serra and Wendell Castle.
As a Curator and Project Coordinator, Alyson has authored and edited numerous publications on contemporary art, writing about artists such as Andrea Zittel and topics including public art and artist workspaces. She was the co-editor and a contributing writer for the first major publication about Socrates Sculpture Park – a book that chronicles the Park’s remarkable history of artistic innovation and community engagement.
She has lectured on subjects such as cultural models for community development, non-profit management, and curatorial practice at institutions across the country including the Museum of Modern Art, the Rhode Island School of Design, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Brown University, The Noguchi Museum and Cranbrook Academy of Art and has served on juries, panels and committees for such institutions as Yale University School of Architecture, PS1 Center for Contemporary Art, the International Studio and Curatorial Program, the College Art Association, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and New York City Department of Cultural Affairs Percent for Art Program.
Alyson is a co-founder and former President of the Long Island City Cultural Alliance. She was on the Executive Committee of the Guggenheim Museum’s Young Collector’s Council; a charter member of the New York Public Art Network; and served on the community board for Long Island City, Queens, NY and as an ex officio member of New York State Artist Workspace Consortium. She recently served as Vice President for Programs on the national board of ArtTable.
In 2009, she founded the craft and design fair called Makers Market and, in 2011, she established ‘Folly’—a studio residency and exhibition program for architects at Socrates Sculpture Park in collaboration with The Architectural League of New York.
Born in Newport, Rhode Island, she graduated magna cum laude from Brown University, and attended classes and summer sessions at the Rhode Island School of Design, earning a dual degree in Art History and Studio Art.
