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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

This seminar consists of weekly studio visits, discussions, and small group critiques. 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

1241

Credits

3

Description

Over the course of each six-week summer residency period, all students in the Low- Res MFA program engage with a series of world renowned artists and scholars to expand our collective conceptual frameworks and discourses. Invited speakers participate in our Visiting Artist & Scholar Lecture Series. They deliver a public lecture open to the entire SAIC and Chicago community and the general public, and then participate in a Colloquium the next day exclusively for Low-Res MFA students. Each Colloquium takes place with the artist present, and is a space where the artist¿s work and concepts (direct or adjacent) are discussed, questions are raised, and topics are debated. Colloquium asks for consensus, but rather a dynamic and in depth discursive exploration of ideas. This form allows for a multiplicity of voices to build on concepts through questioning, contributing, challenging, and listening to each other. The colloquium is considered a Gift anchored with the presence of the visiting artist. This Gift is generated by enacting full attention to the concepts present in the artist or scholar¿s work. In the spirit of Lewis Hyde, the Gift is an exchange which generates or propagates further attention and exchange in culture. Thus, the Colloquium is a Gift meant to propagate further exchange in the world, as artists and citizens.

Class Number

1318

Credits

1.5

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

2107

Credits

3