Artist Lauren Kalman will discuss her practice-led research that explores the intersection between craft, performance, and the situation of the female body. Artistic, practice-led research assumes that there are new understandings that can be gained through the making of art that cannot be discovered through other research approaches. Kalman will discuss how centering the performance of her body in her craft-based practice shifted and reframed an object-oriented or product-oriented output often assumed by the craft discipline. Kalman will also share her recent work, which focuses on the use of craft objects and video as performance documents.

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Lauren Kalman is a visual artist based in Detroit whose practice is rooted in craft, sculpture, video, photography, and performance. Kalman completed her PhD in practice-led research from the School of Art and Design at the Australian National University. She earned an MFA in art and technology from the Ohio State University and a BFA with a focus in metals from Massachusetts College of Art.

Her work is in the permanent collection of the Françoise van den Bosch Foundation at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Renwick Gallery at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Detroit Institute of Art, Museum of Arts and Design, and the Korean Ceramics Foundation. In 2020 she received the Françoise van den Bosch Award for her career’s impact on the jewelry field, in 2022 she received the Raphael Founders Prize in Glass from Contemporary for Craft, and in 2023 she was named a Kresge Arts in Detroit Fellow.

She is currently a professor and the chair of the Department of Art, Art History, and Design at Wayne State University in Detroit.