“Call & Response” Artist Talk: Mara Trachtenberg, Molly Kaderka & Saberah Malik
November 22, 2020 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Third in our series of “Call & Response” conversations with exhibiting artists, join us for this glimpse into the Museum’s permanent collection through the fresh eyes of regional artists working in an array of media, and learn more about their selections and evocative responses.
Joining us for this talk are artists Mara Trachtenberg, Molly Kaderka and Saberah Malik. New media artist Trachtenberg’s video work is inspired by an oft overlooked oil on canvas called Bounty from 1914 by Howard Gardiner Cushing, typically on display over the entryway into the historic Cushing Gallery. Similarly, Kaderka’s large graphite drawing reimagines the surface of a marble topped table about which not much is known, also normally on view in the Cushing Gallery. Saberah Malik has chosen to respond to a glorious color woodblock print titled Three Black Birds by Amano Kunihiro with a delicate, light as air, fabric sculpture. Join us for an intriguing discussion with these three artists who chose works that are understated, even hidden in plain sight.
Talk will be delivered Live on Zoom, and link will be sent directly to registrants.
Members Free
General Admission $10
About the Artists
Mara Trachtenberg
Mara Trachtenberg is a lens-based artist who works in photography, animation and sculpture. She was born in Queens and raised in Long Island, New York.
She holds BA in English and Women’s Studies, a BS in Art Education and an MFA in art with a concentration in Photography. After the birth of her daughter in 2006, she began experimenting with cake makers media to make sculpture, and began working on her current body of work, A Decadent World. Mara is the RISCA (Rhode Island State Council for the Arts) 2020 and 2016 Photography Fellow and has exhibited her work in solo and group exhibitions nationally. Her work can be found in private collections throughout the country. Mara lives with her husband, daughter and dogs in Wakefield, RI and is an adjunct professor of Photography and Digital Art and at the Community College of Rhode Island, and Photography and Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Rhode Island.
Molly Kaderka
Rock and wood are keepers of time; both cosmic and organic time are inscribed on their surfaces. This evidence of their formation continually announces itself even after they have been harvested as materials and fitted together into a functional object like this marble table.
The table’s concentric rings of both wood and stone suggest the idea of permanence, and the complicated symbol of the segmented circle reminds us of the sealed window, the compass rose, or the illusion of an eternally central self.
This piece is part of a larger body of work that investigates and rethinks the traditional format of landscape painting. Questioning the relevance of perspective in the depiction of land and sky, these works collapse the horizontal horizon line to form an image without a beginning or vanishing point.
Molly Kaderka is an interdisciplinary artist working across printmaking, drawing and painting. Kaderka’s work is inspired by her deep interest in natural phenomena and in human and earth history.
Kaderka holds a BFA in Painting and Art History from the Kansas City Art Institute and MFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design. Her work has been shown nationally including solo exhibitions at the Haw Contemporary in Kansas City and Jamestown Art Center, and in group shows at Morgan Lehman Gallery, Asya Geisberg Gallery, Attleborough Museum of Art, and Utah Museum of Contemporary Art .
Recent 2019 awards include the Walter Feldman Fellowship issued by Arts and Business Council of Boston, Visual Arts Artist Fellowship Grant issued by the Somerville Arts Council, and Inspiration Grant from Kansas City Artist Alliance. Kaderka currently is the Visiting Assistant Professor of Painting at Massachusetts College of Art and Design.
Saberah Malik
We have been stealing light since we became human by striving to capture its magic and power through worship of sun, moon and stars, or using light emitted by fire to dispel the unknown, unseen dangers of darkness. I access light around me and within me to create luminous works that transcend everyday chaos into calm meditation, works that ignore our tutored vocabulary of named objects into a joyful suspension of disbelief. I create works whose foundation is the discovery of light, light that harks back to our becoming human and continues and fosters in us a mindful humaneness.
Unlike painting, where suggestion of light is a static state, or photography where it is a photochemical process, I focus on capturing the kinetic physicality of light, and the magical wonder of its playful transmutations as it filters through and around my transparent fabric forms. Light diffuses, defines and distorts shapes, color, rhythms and shadows, making it an integral part of my work.
In tracing my Sufi lineage to the inventor of Ikat weaving, Khawaja Bahuddin Naqshbandi, I follow his dictum “Believe with your heart, work with your hands”. I also find validation in his ability to move between flat and formed work, as I too navigate between surface and dimensional work. In understanding fiber manipulation and variations within shibori, I have evolved a process for molding cloth into sculptural forms. Use of fragile fabric only allows my process to replicate small artifacts; I repeat these in the hundreds to create larger installations. Exploring diversity of surface and form, static geometry in mass production or subtle gesture and fluidity in natural shapes, I create rhythms of calm and quietude amidst global death, disease and destruction.
This talk is one of five upcoming events featuring the exhibiting artists from "Call & Response."