Chico MacMurtrie: Border Crossers: Part 1

Special Event: Tuesday, January 23 at 7pm / Riverside Art Center, 76 N. Huron St, Ypsilanti, MI 48197

Chico MacMurtrie is an award-winning artist, renowned internationally for his large-scale sculptures, whose work combines materiality and robotics. As the Artistic Director of Amorphic Robot Works (ARW), an interdisciplinary creative collective located in Brooklyn, New York, MacMurtrie has received numerous awards for his experimental new media artworks, including five grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Andy Warhol Foundation Grant, the Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, VIDA Life 11.0, and Prix Ars Electronica. Chico MacMurtrie was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship in Fine Arts in 2016. MacMurtrie/ARW are currently focusing on the development of Border Crossers — a series co-created with U-M faculty, staff, and students — featuring lightweight robotic sculptures that will attempt to cross the U.S.-Mexico border and other borders around the world. The inflatable sculptures rise up to several stories high and extend across a given threshold. Their choreographed performance, originating on both sides of the border, would stage a symbolic connection.

This Penny Stamps Speaker Series event is presented in partnership with the Institute for the Humanities, with support from the Michigan Council for the Arts & Cultural Affairs and the Arts Alliance.