Clarissa Tossin: Marva and John Warnock 2022 Artist in Residence Lecture

Los Angeles-based Brazilian artist Clarissa Tossin uses moving-image, installation, sculpture, and collaborative research to engage the suppressed counter-narratives implicit in the built environment and explore alternate narratives that come to define a place. She received an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 2009 and BFA at Fundação Armando Álvares Penteado, São Paulo, in 2000.

Recent solo exhibitions have been held at La Kunsthalle Mulhouse, France (2021); Harvard Radcliffe Institute, Cambridge (2019); 18th Street Arts Center, Santa Monica (2019); Galeria Luisa Strina, São Paulo (2018); Blanton Museum of Art, Austin (2018); Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles (2017); and Wesleyan University, Middletown (2017). Selected group exhibitions have been held at the Denver Art Museum (2021); Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York (2021); MASS MoCA, North Adams (2020); Dhaka Art Summit, Bangladesh (2020); New Orleans Museum of Art (2020); SESC Pompéia, São Paulo (2020); Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge (2019); Luhring Augustine, New York (2019); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2018); 12th Gwangju Biennale, South Korea (2018); KADIST, San Francisco (2017); and Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (2017).

Tossin is the recipient of a Graham Foundation Grant (2020), an Andy Warhol Foundation Grant (2020), a Foundation for Contemporary Art Grant (2019), an Artadia Los Angeles Award (2018), a Fellows of Contemporary Art Fellowship (2019), and a California Community Foundation Fellowship (2014). She has been in residency at LABVERDE Art Immersion Program (2019), 18th Street Arts Center (2019), Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University (2017-18), Fundação Joaquim Nabuco (2015), Artpace San Antonio (2013) and Core Program at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2010-12).

Tossin’s work is currently on view in The 8th Continent, a solo exhibition at Brochstein Pavilion, Rice University, Houston; ReVisión at the Denver Art Museum and Kissing Through a Curtain at MassMOCA. Upcoming solo exhibitions will be held at Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, opening June 3, 2022; Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (EMPAC), opening September 9, 2022; and Galeria Luisa Strina, São Paulo, opening November 2022.

The Marva and John Warnock biennial residency program has quickly become an important catalyst for dialogue encompassing contemporary issues of art-making, pedagogy, interdisciplinary and collaborative work, art in the community, and art as activism. The program aims to expose students to new, innovative, and diverse contemporary art practices while providing an opportunity for trilateral exchange amongst students, faculty, and the public at large. The artist-in-residence will lead a Master Class that takes the form of intensive workshops throughout the semester.

We are deeply grateful to the Warnock family for their generous support, allowing the department to have ongoing opportunities to engage with artists of this stature. We would also like to thank Dean Scheib, the Marriott Library, and the UMFA through their new ArtLandish series for continued support.