Recent UArts graduate Heet Lee had her first solo museum show in Leipzig, Germany earlier this month and Artblog correspondent Olivia Jia, who visited her friend’s exhibition, tells us about it. Lee’s energetic and aggressive compositions draw imagery from a dizzying array of sources, both public and private.
Read MoreOlivia Jia doesn’t just write about art, she is also a painter in her own right who is deeply curious about the fate of contemporary painting and its potential to tell new stories. Here she tells us about a painter and University of the Arts alum, Stephen W. Evans, whose works confound the deeply-rooted nationalism of the American landscape tradition. If there was ever a time to rethink our relationship to history and the land, that time is now!
Read MoreOlivia Jia spent time in China earlier this year, visiting with family and touring some of the country’s major archaeological sites and cultural museums. In this, her travelogue from Shanghai and Xi’an, past, present and future collide.
Read MoreOlivia Jia visits Marginal Utility’s current two-person show, “#WEHAVENOPRESIDENT,” featuring work by Sarah McEneaney and LeRoy Johnson. Here she admires the devotional diligence of their projects and explains why all anti-Trump art is not created equal.
Read MoreArtists James Bouche, Jared Rush Jackson and Devin N. Morris explore individual experience through the prism of mass culture in Punctual Reality, a group show currently at High Tide gallery. Contributor Olivia Jia praises all three artists for handling the subject of identity with the subtlety it so urgently requires. Punctual Reality is on view through March 17th.
Read MoreOlivia Jia profiles two women who are deeply invested in local art criticism: writer Julia Clift and editor Samantha Mitchell. Both women are also artists in their own right, with serious studio practices and the multiple day jobs it takes to keep it all going. Here Jia speaks with them about the challenges associated with wearing multiple hats, and reflects on the vital service they provide to the Philadelphia arts community at large.
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