This is the fifth conversation in Acogedor’s Invisibility(ies) conversation series. The series explores the idea of being invisible in society, family, the world.
Each conversation will take place virtually via YouTube Livestream (https://bit.ly/acogedor-live)––that means that anyone interested in attending can connect from anywhere in the world with an (strong enough) internet connection.
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2021 @ 7:00 Pm PDT / 10:00 pm EDT
Tuesday’s conversation will be with artists Anu Annam, Jessica Oler, and Caleb Yee. They will be exploring disability as it relates to being an artist and their work. The conversation will be moderated by Acogedor founder and director, artist Nicole Rademacher.
Kindly RSVP: https://bit.ly/3RDyk21
participant bios
Anu Annam
Anu Annam is an acclaimed artist, educator, curator, and administrator. In their 30-year artistic practice, they explore psychology through watercolor, acrylic, oil, and collage weaving realistic depictions and abstractions of figures and faces creating an overall image of honest emotion. They are faculty at numerous institutions and have won multiple arts, teaching, and community grants from New York State Council on the Arts, New York Foundation of the Arts, and Suffolk County. Annam is the founder/director of the arts-based support and advocacy organization, SEA of Visibility, which provides robust, multi-disciplinary arts and education programs that center queer/BIPOC folx with invisible disabilities aiding in the integration of the disabled community into the cultural landscape of New York. Annam has curated one-day to season-long exhibitions, at institutions such as Queens Museum of Art, Islip Art Museum, Farmingdale State College, and Museum of Contemporary Arts of LI. They exhibit their own paintings globally: (select solos) Le Salon d’ Art, NYC, Shrishti Art Gallery, India, Islip Art Museum, NY. Their events, exhibitions, and classes are featured in Newsday, Fios 1, Canvas Magazine, The Hindu, and The Week Magazine. Annam earned their BA from Tufts University and Boston Museum School. Annam is on the Advisory Committees of the Patchogue Arts Council/MOCA of LI, the PEACE Project, and the Brain Injury Association of New York State. They believe that through kindness, community, arts programs, and advocacy, individuals can thrive as Annam has, through multiple marginalized experiences, to lead a meaningful life.
Jessica Oler
Jessica Oler is a Conceptual Artist. She holds her Master’s degree in Fine Arts, Bachelor’s
degree in Sociology, and three Associate’s degrees in Social Science, Liberal Arts, and Sociology. Post graduation she was accepted into the Chautauqua School of Art Visual Art Residency. Oler has received multiple invitations to present her work at the University of California Davis Betty Urvine School of Nursing. There she presented the girth of her artistic practice and research endeavors surrounding patient narrative. In 2021 she was invited by Harvard School of Medicine to be one of the three interviewees (patients) for The Healing Power of Stories: Narrative Theory and Narrative Practice. For this course each patient was matched with a medical student to “coach the students through the process of working with an individual facing illness to craft their story for a Healing Story Session.”
Through photography, social abstraction, and large photographic installation her practice centers around displacement, histories, and Black geographies. Her present work is involved with space, movement, and history. Oler utilizes socio-political research and patient narrative as a guiding force to work through larger racial, geographical, and social investigations. She continues to work through the concept of “unprotected Black female flesh” which was initially born from her lived experience with multiple sclerosis thus far. Through her practice the various offshoots of ingrained, systemic injustices are investigated.
Her work has been shown at California College of the Arts, Chautauqua and Brooklyn, New York; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Miami, Florida; Alameda, Oakland, and San Francisco, California; and Alexandria, New South Wales, Australia.
Caleb Yee
Korean born American raised adoptee grew up in Oxnard, California, USA. For many years, Caleb explored the adoptee experience locally in the US and internationally in South Korea, during which his experiences inspired an array of collective artwork penned by his own hand. He aspires to provide an honest portrayal of the adoptee experiences and has devoted many hours and art contributions to various exhibitions, books, magazines, and private commissions. Recently, Caleb has been focusing on the impact of his lifelong disability of being Hard of Hearing/Deaf and has been researching new ideas to illustrate these experiences on paper and through his artwork. Caleb hopes to finish Master’s degree in Clinical Psychology next Spring 2022 and will continue pursuing a career in Art Therapy.
MODERATOR
Nicole Rademacher
Nicole Rademacher is an artist and an Art Therapist & Associate Marriage and Family Therapist. The influence of her adoption and reunion (with her biological family) feature prominently in her studio practice where she explores concepts of intimacy, identity, and belonging through visual work as well as in community engagement works. She held an artist residency at La Cité Nationale des Arts and recently received an Artistic Community Engagement Grant from the Rema Hort Mann Foundation. Rademacher holds an MFA from Alfred University and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is a recent recipient of an MA in Marital & Family Therapy with specialization in the Marital & Family Therapy w/ specialization in Clinical Art Therapy from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. She has collaborated and shown work widely both nationally & internationally.