Vail Visiting Artists Hilja Keading
Keading came to Denison as a Vail artist-in-residence on November 5th through 9th, 2007. She spent the week working with the students and faculty and gave a slide lecture the evening of Wednesday, Nov. 7, in Chamberlin Lodge. Her presentation was free and open to the public and was co-sponsored by the McGregor Connection Initiatives whose theme this year is “Hum/an/imal: Where We Meet.”
Most recently Keading has begun creating videos with humans and animals. “Fascinated by the ways in which we consciously and unconsciously deceive ourselves and others,” says Keading, “I began working with live animals to hold a mirror to internal and external manifestations of human fear and desire, the construction of the self, and the inadequacies of language.” “The Bonkers Devotional,” a five-channel video installation, portrays Keading and a live black bear interacting in a small cabin, surrounded by quaking aspen trees.
Keading has been producing single- and multi-channel video installations since 1987. Her work has been broadcast on television and exhibited nationally and internationally in galleries and museums, including at the Lyon Biennale, The Los Angeles County Museum, The Henry Museum in Seattle, The Geffen Contemporary Museum in Los Angeles, and at the PPOW Gallery in New York City. The J. Paul Getty Museum and the Getty Research Institute are organizing “California Video,” a historical exhibition of artistic video emerging from California since the 1960s. Keading, one of 58 artists represented in the show, will display a new nine-channel installation.
A graduate of the University of California at Los Angeles, Keading’s upcoming projects also include a permanent video installation at the Tom Bradley International Terminal at the Los Angeles airport.
