Wednesday, July 27, 2011

rendezvous with dara birnbaum

On July 27, CMU NY Alumni Chapter organized an evening rendezvous with Dara Birnbaum, a United States Artists Fellow Award winner and a CMU Alumna.

The press release for the Marian Goodman gallery can be found here. Her prime piece of Arabesque was very thoughtfully done. We got to meet with her Editor as well. The one video work missing a mention in the article but present in the South Gallery is 'Addendum: Autism', which is interesting and it caught my particular interest. I did get a chance to discuss it with her in person and she presented an interesting perspective to it.

She epitomizes the inter-disciplinary interests, which CMU alumni carry. She studied Architecture at CMU and later, moved to Arts and became a dignified personality in it.

Her seminal well-known work is:
  • Kiss the Girls: Make them Cry, 1979
  • Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman, 1978/79 (video) and



At the meet, there was a guest (with someone) who has a NYC foodie blog and he performed some instant magic tricks with people's business cards (such as floating them between his two palms).

Overall, it was a nice evening which was followed by a dinner at Brasserie 81/2.