A wide shot of a ceramics studio, featuring students working with pottery wheels and other tools.
SAIC faculty Nelly Agassi.

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Nelly Agassi

Lecturer

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Bio

Chicago-based artist Nelly Agassi (b.1973, Israel) is a multi-disciplinary artist who works with performance, installation, video, textile, sound and works on paper. Her work explores the relationship between the human body and architecture, through investigating sites and their histories, traumas and hopes. She weaves personal and collective stories to a universal fabric of new history.

She received her MFA from Chelsea College and her BFA from Central St. Martins, both in London. Her work has been shown internationally at institutions and galleries such as The Arts Club of Chicago, Aspect Ratio, Hyde Park Art Center, The Israel Museum, Poor Farm, Tate Modern, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, La Triennale di Milano, Zacheta Warsaw, Foksal Gallery Warsaw and upcoming show at Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen. Agassi is a cofounder of the nonprofit organization Fieldwork Collaborative Projects and a 2019 Graham Foundation Fellow, Pola Magnetyczne, Warsaw. She is represented by Dvir Gallery and Pola Magnetyczne, Warsaw.

Courses

Title Department Catalog Term

Description

This course introduces students to traditional and nontraditional materials and techniques used in water-based painting. Projects involve painting from observation and imagination, drawing inspiration from contemporary artists and historical masters. Explore a variety of subjects using materials like ink, acrylic, watercolor, and mixed media. You'll enhance your understanding of color, tone, volume, contrast, and temperature as you bring your ideas to life. Additionally, visits to the Art Institute of Chicago will provide further inspiration. Students should have previous drawing experience, but no painting experience is necessary. Note: Figure Drawing and Figure Painting use nude models hired by the School. Other painting and drawing classes may use them to a lesser degree.

Class Number

1277

Credits

1

Description

This course is an introduction to the materials, methods, and concepts of sculpture. We will investigate making in relation to material, time and space. We will consider aspects of sculpture such as meaning, scale, process, social engagement, ephemera and site; and explore the formal properties and expressive potential of materials including mold making and casting, wood, metal and experimental media. We will combine the use of materials and methods with ideas that reflect the history of contemporary sculpture. Demonstrations and authorizations will provide students with experience and technical proficiency in sculptural production while readings and slide lectures venture into the critical discourses of sculpture.

Class Number

1731

Credits

3

Description

Throughout the course students will focus on the idea of softness and develop projects framed with readings on affect, intimacy, ?radical softness?, touch, and ?soft? identities so as to tease out ideas on what it means to be soft. Students will be introduced and encouraged to experiment from texture to form with hand manipulated and machine techniques like reverse needle felting, latch hooking, tucking, stabilizing, boning, armature building, fabric heat manipulating, natural dyeing, flocking, and fringe crocheting.

Readings will include Sara Ahmed?s ?Happy Objects?, Alexander Thereoux?s ?Soft Balm, Soft Menace?, and Sianne Ngai?s ?The Cuteness of the Avant-Garde?.

Two experimentation samples will be required in order to manifest these conceptual underpinnings through a variety of techniques. These samples act as playful guides that leads to two major projects with written statements. This course also require artist and reading presentations.

Class Number

1408

Credits

3

Description

Taken every semester, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.

Class Number

2310

Credits

3 - 6

Description

Taken every semester, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.

Class Number

2282

Credits

3 - 6