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Visiting Artist Lectures

Noa Yekutieli

02/01/23

Please join us for a lecture with artist Noa Yekutieli.

Date: Wednesday, February 15, 4:15 PM - 5:15 PM
Location: Via Zoom, https://us06web.zoom.us/j/86098743582

Meeting ID: 860 9874 3582
Passcode: oxbow

Noa Yekutiele (b. 1989 USA) lives and works in Tel Aviv and Los Angeles. Engaging various mediums, including installation, sculpture, and a signature manual paper-cutting technique, she explores personal narratives and multi-hyphen identities within the context of immigration, assimilation, and conflict. Coming from a multicultural family, she draws from her personal non-singular background and incorporates inconsistent narratives of longing for unknown origins and fractured notions of a home.

As a Japanese-American-Israeli, Yekitiele combines objects, crafts, and traditional techniques from her heritage that nurtures her own sense of belonging. Simultaneously, they create a context to consider immigration and destruction as natural human patterns that coincide with change and renewal. Unable to define a singular identity or place she calls home and feels where she belongs, she includes overlapping narratives that highlight the many contexts of her past. By doing so, she creates a new whole that manifests complexity, inconsistency, and what is missing. Through her practice, she attempts to reconcile what can be seen as odds. Often merging flora patterns and imagery of destruction to consider the emotional camouflage mechanisms we develop as individuals and as a society, especially around conflict and loss. She explores how camouflaging the painful reality can both help and harm us, pushing us to surpass and survive while allowing us to overlook what should not be ignored.

In the year leading up to Oxbow, I became obsessed with the program, I was entranced with reading testimonials and researching interdisciplinary learning styles. When I arrived at Oxbow I was never disappointed, despite my endless expectations. I will forever cherish the time I spent at Oxbow and the connections I made there. Through Oxbow I was able to hone into the ideas I was thinking about, to refine my artistic process and to see the world in a new light every day of my life. I'm not going to say that without Oxbow I wouldn't be the person I am today, but I will say that without Oxbow it would have taken me at least four years to become who I am after one Oxbow semester.

— Phoebe Dubisch, Fall 2018

It's been a whirlwind week, but also a time when I sang the praises of Oxbow to my colleagues. I've been thinking much about how Oxbow is an exemplar of true education. That art centers the curriculum is hardly surprising, and for those of us who work within the traditional educational mold Oxbow offers a gold standard of focused project based learning. Beyond the school's approach to immersive experience are the intangibles which make Oxbow different. The sense of community and of working together, even as each student retained their strong individual presence is palpable. The feeling of warmth and trust between the adults and the nearly adults in the Oxbow community could be felt throughout the campus. The openness of the architecture and interconnectedness of the three studios in themselves speak of the Oxbow philosophy and identity. More than form follows function, the physical attributes of Oxbow have a distinct warmth and invite exploration.

I'm sure that the ongoing challenges of leading and reinventing your school might sometimes keep you from having the time to see Oxbow with the fresh eyes of a visitor, but your steady presence and vision are really visible in every detail. Thank you for inviting me to one of the most profound experiences in my career.

— Ken Rush, Visual Arts Department, Packer Collegiate Institute

At Oxbow, the eye and the hand are inseparable from the mind and because their peers are also artists, students adopt fresh attitudes toward their work.

— Charles Altieri, Rachel Anderson Stageberg Chair, Professor of English, University of California, Berkeley

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