Cleveland Institute of Art to host talk by artist, design researcher and writer Sara Hendren

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 23, 2024

CLEVELAND—The Cleveland Institute of Art is pleased to announce that artist, design researcher and writer Sara Hendren will speak at the College to present Cyborgs, Misfits, and Makers: Art, Design, and the Future of the Human Body.

Prosthetics, adaptive technologies, and accessible architecture all bridge the gaps between our many bodies and the built world, while wheelchair dance and other disability artworks question the inheritance of "normal." In this talk, Hendren will uncover the surprising and generative places where disability shows up in artifacts of all kinds, helping us to ask: What is the future of the body, assisted by its many tools and extensions? How does disability shape all our lives, and the meaning we make in dependence?

Cyborgs, Misfits, and Makers: Art, Design, and the Future of the Human Body will take place from 7 to 8pm Thursday, November 14 in CIA's Peter B. Lewis Theater. This talk is free and open to the public.

Hendren is CIA's 2024–25 Bickford Visiting Artist. The Bickford Visiting Artist Endowment Fund was established by George P. Bickford in 1962 and is used to bring distinguished artists to the College to supplement the regular instructional program.

"I am thrilled to be this year's Bickford Visiting Artist!" Hendren says. "Nothing is more hopeful than seeing studio culture in its lively, restless state: students giving tangible form to ideas and questions of all kinds, including social and civic questions about the body. I look forward to joining this like-minded community in conversation."

Hendren's talk will cap a semester of intra-departmental collaborations related to themes grounded in her recent book, What Can a Body Do?: How We Meet the Built World (Penguin Random House). Programming organized by CIA faculty, Reinberger Gallery and the Jane B. Nord Center for Teaching + Learning included reading groups, course connections, student-led programs and teaching workshops. It's also tied to two upcoming CIA exhibitions, Possibility for Repair and Bespoke.

"I first encountered Sara Hendren in her interview for the podcast, On Being. I was touched by her description of the visual arts and design as joyful places for complicated ideas to be distilled and examined," says CIA Drawing Assistant Professor Amber Kempthorn, this year's Bickford Visiting Artist grantee. "This led me to read What Can a Body Do? How We Meet the Built World, which was powerfully illuminating and had me thinking immediately about our students and the work we do at CIA in the arts and design."

Kempthorn believes those who attend Hendren's talk at CIA will be "wowed by her intelligence, warmth and illuminating research on the intersection of art, design and the human body."

"Through her research and in her writing, Sara suggests that we approach the world with 'restless and generative questions,' which, from my perspective, affirms the role artists and designers play in the world," Kempthorn says. "I think this is a powerful offering that I'm very excited for our students and the broader community to hear."

What Can a Body Do?: How We Meet the Built World will be available for purchase at CIA before and after Hendren’s talk courtesy of Cleveland Heights-based bookstore Mac’s Backs–Books on Coventry.

Contact
Cleveland Institute of Art
Michael C. Butz, Director of College Communications + External Relations
mcbutz@cia.edu / 216.421.7404