Despite losing her shop and archive of books to the CZU Lightning Complex Fire in August, internationally renowned book artist Felicia Rice remains committed to creating works exploring and commenting on some of the most tangled issues of our time, from questions surrounding identity to the sustainability of our planet. At this event, some of Rice’s collaborators, including UC Santa Cruz professors T.J. Demos and Jennifer González, will join Rice in conversation about her work, the process of collaboration, and the power of artists’ books to fuel our collective imaginations as we work to cultivate futures of social justice.
Moderated by Rachel Nelson, director of the Institute of the Arts & Sciences
Hosted by the University Library in partnership with the Institute of the Arts & Sciences
FREE and open to the public
Register here
* * * * *
About the Speakers
Felicia Rice is an internationally known book artist who collaborates with visual artists, performing artists, and writers to create book structures in which word and image meet and merge.
In June of 2020, Rice completed her most recent work, The Necropolitics of Extraction. This accordion-fold book is made up of one long print—over 17 feet long. Rice's work comments on the rapacious aspects of extraction and resolves in a call-to-action by T. J. Demos, who writes: “The greatest urgency is to build social movements of mutual aid and collective organizing dedicated to a shared political project of justice and radical equality, on the basis of solidarity—the political form of belonging most opposed to relations of extraction.”
Two months later, that book, along with Rice's studio, was destroyed by the wildfires that ravaged the Santa Cruz Mountains. The only extant copies are those that had already found homes in various institutions across the country. Despite this massive loss, Rice's work begins anew as Moving Parts Press, her creative home since 1977, begins to rise from the ashes.
Rice’s creative endeavors continue and currently focus on her 30 year editorial work featuring Chicano/a/x artists and writers. Those works are featured in the exhibit, The Califas Legacy Project: The Ancestral Journey/ El Viaje Ancestral, currently on view at the Monterey Museum of Art as part of a greater Monterey Bay Crescent celebration of Latinx art.
T. J. Demos is an award-winning writer on contemporary art, global politics, and ecology. He is a professor in the History of Art and Visual Culture Department at UC Santa Cruz, and founder/director of the Arts Division's Center for Creative Ecologies.
Jennifer González is a professor in the History of Art and Visual Culture Department at UC Santa Cruz who writes about contemporary art with an emphasis on installation, digital, and activist art. She serves as faculty co-director of UCSC’s Institute of the Arts & Sciences.
Image credit: Felicia Rice and Moving Parts Press