Oscar Palacio: American History, Re-Visited

Red, Blue and Grey Abstract pattern

American History, Re-Visited

Please join us for a talk & reception on Thursday, Apr. 6, 2017, with Oscar Palacio and Robin Kelsey, Dean of Arts and Humanities Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Shirley Carter Burden Professor of Photography. The talk will begin at 4:30pm in room K262 of the CGIS Knafel Building (1737 Cambridge St.), followed by a reception at 5:30 on the 4th floor of CGIS Knafel. 

CAPS is pleased to present the work of Oscar Palacio, the latest in an on-going series of collaborations with artists that reflect and spark conversations around American politics. This series of photographs investigates the construction of place and history in the United States by focusing on popular historic sites which have both embedded meanings and assumed historical narratives, as well as sites of more recent historical and political import.

Palacio: “For the past ten years, I have been photographing in and around historic sites where the dividing line between natural and constructed environments are apparent. Having been born in Colombia, I am very interested in the representational roles both site architecture and photography play in shaping and forming an American collective experience. What, when, how, where and why a nation chooses to memorialize, are many of the questions I address through my work.”

Oscar Palacio is a Colombian-born, Boston-based photographer whose work explores the role of photographic representation in relationship to history, memory, identity, and place. He became a U.S. citizen in 2015. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Addison Gallery of American Art among others. Recent books include American Places, published by The Arts at CIIS. Recent exhibitions include Walden, revisted, at deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, and Mapping Home: Global Crisis of Place, at Lesley University. For more information visit oscarpalacio.net

Co-sponsored by the Warren Center

Tubman Gravestone, Auburn, NY, 2008