Occidental College will launch the 2024-25 season of its Oxy Live! speaker series with a conversation featuring visual artist Tavares Strachan on Tuesday, September 24, at 7 p.m. in Thorne Hall.
Tavares Strachan will speak about his award-winning work, including his sculpture “The Encyclopedia of Invisibility,” which features thousands of entries focused on historically marginalized individuals. The sculpture will be on display at OXY ARTS as part of the gallery’s collaboration with Getty’s PST ART: Art and Science Collide, Southern California’s landmark arts event. Free tickets for Strachan’s Oxy Live! conversation are available on the Oxy Live! website.
Strachan’s artistic practice activates the intersections of art, science, and politics. Themes of invisibility, displacement, and loss are central to his work, which questions historically canonized narratives that exclude or obscure others. His ambitious, open-ended practice has included collaborations with numerous organizations and institutions across the disciplines.
Strachan was born in 1979 in Nassau, Bahamas, and currently lives and works between New York City and Nassau. He received a BFA in glass from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2003 and an MFA in sculpture from Yale University in 2006. He has exhibited internationally and his numerous awards include a 2022 “genius” fellowship from the MacArthur Foundation.
Beginning September 17, Strachan’s sculpture will be part of OXY ARTS’ PST ART exhibition Invisibility: Powers and Perils, which highlights the work of artists and scientists striving to render visible the people, histories, and planetary conditions that have been erased within the cultural mainstream. The exhibition will run until February 22, 2025.
Oxy Live! is Occidental’s flagship event series, open to the public and showcasing a diverse lineup of cultural luminaries at the forefront of their fields. Each thought-provoking speaker’s event is hosted by acclaimed interviewer and cultural interlocutor Paul Holdengräber, founder and director of the New York Public Library’s Live From the NYPL cultural series. In addition to Strachan, this season includes journalist and podcast host V Spehar, visual artist Ed Ruscha, boundary-breaking artist Miranda July, and theoretical physicist and writer Kip Thorne.
Oxy Live! is made possible by a generous gift from Occidental trustee Lisa Coscino ’85 and ongoing support from the Occidental Class of 1974. Previous speakers have included artist and activist ALOK, writer Rebecca Solnit, visual artist Julie Mehretu, and artist Laurie Anderson.
