Curators-in-Residence: Ashley Stull-Meyers & Aurora Tang

CFAR is delighted to welcome 2023-2024 Curators-in-Residence Ashley Stull Meyers and Aurora Tang, who will co-present three two-person exhibitions at the University of Oregon’s 510 Oak Street building in downtown Eugene. A curatorial introduction to their series and details about the selected artists and upcoming programming will be announced in November.   

CFAR Director Colin Ives conceived the proposal “Solastalgia: The Climate Crisis, Countering a Sense of Powerlessness” for the Ford Family Foundation Exhibition + Documentation Grant, which supports these residencies and exhibitions. Solastalgia is a term coined by philosopher Glenn Albrecht to articulate a new form of emotional or existential distress caused by environmental change.

In conversation with the language and history of “Solastalgia,” Stull Meyers and Tang will interrogate the multivalent approaches with which Oregon contemporary artists and creatives confront the need for new states of being. The series of exhibitions will address notions of “climate” and “apocalypse” through broadened lenses of humor, unrest, and proposals for possible futures.

Ashley Stull Meyers (she/her/hers) is a writer and curator of contemporary art. In 2017 Stull Meyers was named Director and Curator of The Art Gym and Belluschi Pavilion at Marylhurst University. The following year she was named co-curator of the 2019 Portland Biennial. Currently, she serves as the Mary Jones and Thomas Hart Horning Chief Curator of Art, Science and Technology at PRAx (Oregon State University), and as a board member at Oregon Contemporary.  

Aurora Tang (she/her/hers) is a curator and researcher based in Los Angeles. She has worked with the Center for Land Use Interpretation since 2009, and currently serves as its program director. As an independent curator, Aurora has organized recent exhibitions at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, MOCA Tucson, and Armory Center for the Arts. She has also worked at organizations including the Getty Research Institute, Getty Conservation Institute, and High Desert Test Sites, where she was managing director from 2011–15. She is the recipient of an Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Curatorial Research Fellowship. 

These residencies are made possible by the University of Oregon Department of Art’s Center for Art Research (CFAR), by CFAR’s Critical Conversations Program, and by the Ford Family Foundation.

Image 1- Aurora Tang, Photo credit: Elon Schoenholz

Image 2- Installation image of Plein Air (detail of works by Susanna Battin and Paula Wilson), Armory Center for the Arts, July 21–December 10, 2023. Photo: Aurora Tang

Image 3- Installation image of Plein Air (detail of works by KB Jones, Sterling Wells, iris yirei hu, Hillary Mushkin, and Esteban Cabeza de Baca), MOCA Tucson, May 14, 2022–January 12, 2023. Photo: Julius Schlosburg

Image 4-  Installation image of Time Stamps: Revisiting California Through the Postcards of Merle Porter, Todd Madigan Gallery at Cal State University Bakersfield, March 10–May 7, 2022. Photo: Center for Land Use Interpretation