No. 526: Maya Dunietz, Calder-Picasso

Episode No. 526 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features artist Maya Dunietz and historian Jordana Mendelson.

Maya Dunietz is currently in residence at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha in preparation for a 13,000-square-foot exhibition that will open May 5, 2022. Dunietz’s exhibition, which will be curated by Rachel Adams, will foreground the physicality of sound through a series of installations, including a 17-piano installation that builds on her 2021 work Five Chilling Mammoths and on 2016’s Trembling Piano. This segment was taped before a live audience at the Bemis.

Dunietz is a composer, performer, and sound artist whose work investigates the nexus of music, visual art, performance and technologies. She has created exhibitions, site-specific sound installations and performances for the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Reykjavik Arts Festival, the FRAC Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur, the Centre Pompidou and the Botanical Gardens in Jerusalem.

For works discussed on this week’s program, see Dunietz’s website:

Mammoths and Five Chilling Mammoths (2021);
Installation at the University Botanical Garden (2021) in Jerusalem;
The Turning Wheel (2010);
Air Sculpture 1 (2013);
Talking Wall (2016);
Trembling Piano (2016); and
Thicket (2016).

Mendelson discusses her essay, “The ‘Mild’ Manifesting of Pablo Picasso and Alexander Calder in Protest Ephemera and International Art Expositions during the Postwar” in the catalogue for “Calder-Picasso” which is at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston through January 30, 2022. Mendelson is the director of the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center at New York University. The catalogue is available from Indiebound.

Air date: December 2, 2021.