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Asha Iman Veal

Associate Professor, Adjunct

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Bio

​Asha Iman Veal is a contemporary curator of interdisciplinary and lens-based art (the Museum of Contemporary Photography) and an art school professor (School of the Art Institute of Chicago)​.

Her exhibitions “Beautiful Diaspora / You Are Not the Lesser Part” (2022) and “LOVE: Still Not the Lesser” (2023) brought together cross-diasporic conversations between global artists Xyza Cruz Bacani, Widline Cadet, Cog•nate Collective, Sunil Gupta, Kelvin Haizel, Ngadi Smart, and more; and celebrations of love and desire by Jorian Charlton, Jess T. Dugan, and Mous Lamrabat, among others. Her Chicago Architecture Biennial 2021 exhibition and public program series, “RAISIN” (vol. 1), commissioned several new artworks and generated community among more than 30 global artists, including Işıl Eğrikavuk, Amanda Williams, and Tintin Wulia. She has additionally curated exhibitions for the MSU Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum by Zaha Hadid, Hyde Park Art Center, Sullivan Galleries, and more.

Through her classes in the Department of Arts Administration & Policy at SAIC, Asha Iman expanded direct curricular links to global arts, culture, and multimedia discourses by inviting and hosting more than 100 virtual and in-person discussions with guests such as Yane Calovski and Hristina Ivanoska, 2015 International Venice Biennial – Pavilion of the Republic of Macedonia artists; the late Bisi Silva, CCA Lagos founder; and David Ennio Minor, ballet dancer and movement adviser for global science and robot technology. Her additional innovations include piloting and co-teaching a full-semester graduate-level course between in-person and virtual classrooms in Chicago, US and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; piloting and leading a core professional development undergraduate course “Being a Woman of Color in the Arts”; co-developing and leading the "Spheres of Cultural Valuation" graduate-level course on comparative cultural policy and global arts ecosystems; and expanding the department’s undergraduate advanced curatorial theory and practice course.

Asha Iman has been invited as a distinguished jury reviewer for awards and residencies, including the East African Photography Awards, Earth Photo Award by Forestry England and the Royal Geographical Society, Terra Foundation/American Academy in Rome, Visual Studies Workshop NY, University of Chicago Arts + Public Life, Arts Work Fund Chicago, and more. She has been an invited portfolio reviewer and crit panelist for the FORMAT International Photography Festival UK, Rencontres d'Arles France, FotoFest Houston, University of Chicago DOVA, RISDI, Chicago Artist Coalition, and others.

Veal has been a guest lecturer and panelist for international cultural institutions such as GRAIN Projects UK, Pakhuis de Zwijger Amsterdam, Istituto Italiano di Cultura Chicago, Humanity In Action – Netherlands, San Diego State University, Midwest Art Historical Society, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and more.

She is a member of the ORACLE Conference of International Photography Curators, and Independent Curators International – Curatorial Forum and Chicago Assembly (2023 cohorts). Additionally, Veal bridges interdisciplinary relationships between the arts, government, corporate and nonprofit sectors through her role as a Senior Fellow of Humanity in Action (EU/UK/US), member of the BMW Foundation Responsible Leaders Network (Global Table), and a Chicago Council on Global Affairs’ Emerging Leader. She is a board member of Filter Photo (Chicago), and was a recent board member of Experimental Sound Studio and Audible Gallery. Previous grant supporters of her exhibitions include the National Endowment of the Arts, Andy Warhol Foundation, The Joyce Foundation; BMW Foundation, Humanity in Action/Alfred Landecker Foundation, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, and others.

Her publications include “Apsaalooke: Art & Tradition” (editor, 2006); “The Places We’ve Been: Field Reports from Travelers Under 35” (editor, 2013); “Ground Floor Biennial”  (co-editor, 2018); and “Dark Matter: Celestial Messages of Love in these Troubled Times” (editorial team and production administrator for exhibition catalogue and LP album, 2020).

Asha Iman began her career as the VOTE campaign staff and as a festival producer for playwright Eve Ensler’s V-Day global movement to end violence against women and girls (New York). She has separately worked on projects and/or arts research in New York, Tokyo, Havana, Vietnam, Edinburgh, Darby/London, Berlin, Juárez, and Chicago; and staff roles in New York and Chicago.

(BA, New York University Gallatin School; MFA, The New School, Creative Writing; MA, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Arts Administration and Policy.)

Courses

Title Department Catalog Term

Description

Curating today is a dynamic, many-facetted activity with open boundaries: artists, writers, historians, editors, event-, festival- and symposium organizers generate projects, configure actors and move objects across platforms. This course will trace pathways through the many options contemporary art worlds hold. It will explore curatorial rationales, outcomes and support materials by parsing examples through images, readings and site visits. Students are encouraged to develop curatorial prototypes. Both playful experimentation and the framing of more formal proposals will be supported.

Class Number

2281

Credits

3

Description

Curating today is a dynamic, many-facetted activity with open boundaries: artists, writers, historians, editors, event-, festival- and symposium organizers generate projects, configure actors and move objects across platforms. This course will trace pathways through the many options contemporary art worlds hold. It will explore curatorial rationales, outcomes and support materials by parsing examples through images, readings and site visits. Students are encouraged to develop curatorial prototypes. Both playful experimentation and the framing of more formal proposals will be supported.

Class Number

1201

Credits

3

Description

This course frankly addresses a critical and underserved niche in professional development?the necessity for young women of color to be able to self-direct their goals, and fully achieve those goals, regardless of environment. Subverting marginalization while growing a career and visioning oneself as a leader, without silencing yourself or burning out, remains a challenging reality for so many women of color. This is an experience many encounter early on, but which can be reframed so that the education and career processes do not point toward assimilation, or invisibility, or the anxiety of always being on guard. These concerns about combatting marginalization, which are shared among Latinx, Black American, Asian American, and international students at SAIC, have been brought privately to trusted faculty here and at art schools nationwide. In this class, we will work together to develop strategies for conquering these issues.

Course work will include readings from authors such as the following: Jhumpa Lahiri, bell hooks, Ifeona Fulani, Lisa Jones, Hettie Jones, Ana Castillo, Nicola Yoon, Suheir Hammad, Staceyann Chin, Erika L. Sanchez, Suzan-Lori Parks, Zadie Smith, ZZ Packer, Melba Pattillo Beals, Yuri Kochiyama, Deepa Mehta, Gina Prince-Bythewood, Barry Jenkins, Jon Chu, Caryl Phillips. Each student will produce a memoir as a key element of this class, responding to the readings and analyzing their own experiences as well as senior colleagues,? continuing to develop and trust their voice.

In addition to the memoir, each student will produce and develop an individual arts leadership project, or deepening of a specific skill set; and will work with classmates on a publication or resource that documents the group?s conversations with invited guests.

Class Number

1851

Credits

3

Description

This seminar consists of weekly lectures, colloquia, and studio visits. Students are expected to arrive with completed and semi-completed works and be prepared to make and re-make new works throughout the summer sessions. A wide variety of readings chosen by faculty will guide discussions that concentrate on problems concerning methods of artmaking, distribution, and interpretation. Readings will include examples drawn from the emerging category of conceptual writing as well as crucial art historical texts, literature, and poetry.

Class Number

1213

Credits

4.5

Description

Building on ARTSAD 5005, Activating Arts Administration: Key Frameworks, ARTSAD 6018, Spheres of Cultural Valuation, focuses on the exploration of cultural policy, projects, agencies, organizations and institutions that comprise global arts ecosystems, while also probing their foundational socio-political, economic and philosophical narratives, along with current and evolving rationales. Material will be developed through visiting speakers working with and for internationally operating cultural organizations; through readings in Arts Administration adjacent areas such as Anthropology, Critical Theory, Cultural Diplomacy, Gender Studies, Indigenous Studies, Performance Studies, Political Science and Sociology; and through individual and group research projects that explore student selected cultural policy examples across regions of the globe. Students will concurrently explore approaches to research and presentation modalities.

Class Number

1884

Credits

3

Description

Building on ARTSAD 5005, Activating Arts Administration: Key Frameworks, ARTSAD 6018, Spheres of Cultural Valuation, focuses on the exploration of cultural policy, projects, agencies, organizations and institutions that comprise global arts ecosystems, while also probing their foundational socio-political, economic and philosophical narratives, along with current and evolving rationales. Material will be developed through visiting speakers working with and for internationally operating cultural organizations; through readings in Arts Administration adjacent areas such as Anthropology, Critical Theory, Cultural Diplomacy, Gender Studies, Indigenous Studies, Performance Studies, Political Science and Sociology; and through individual and group research projects that explore student selected cultural policy examples across regions of the globe. Students will concurrently explore approaches to research and presentation modalities.

Class Number

1886

Credits

3

Description

The Graduate Projects course allows students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work and research from their home studio or mobile platforms. The continued development of ideas and approaches initiated during the summer Graduate Studio Seminar will be supported through in-person and online conversation with SAIC Program Mentors. These liaisons are intended to support the off-campus development of work while also providing personal connections to SAIC's vast global network of distinguished alumni. Open to Low Residency MFA students only.

Class Number

2356

Credits

3

Description

The Graduate Projects course allows students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work and research from their home studio or mobile platforms. The continued development of ideas and approaches initiated during the summer Graduate Studio Seminar will be supported through in-person and online conversation with SAIC Program Mentors. These liaisons are intended to support the off-campus development of work while also providing personal connections to SAIC's vast global network of distinguished alumni. Open to Low Residency MFA students only.

Class Number

2460

Credits

3