SIDEBAR: Javier Tellez and W.J.T. Mitchell

 Apr 22, 2019, 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM
 Gray Center Lab

Midway Studios
929 E. 60th St.

Screening and Conversation
Monday, April 22
6:00-9:00 pm

Gray Center Lab at Midway Studios
929 E. 60th St.
Chicago, IL 60637

The event is free and open to the public. 
Food and drink will be served from 6:00-6:30.


Join us for a screening of artist Javier Téllez' recent film, NOSFERATU (The Undead), followed by a conversation with UChicago's W.J.T. Mitchell (Department of English and Art History). Téllez’ film was inspired by Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens, the expressionist silent masterpiece directed by F. W. Murnau in 1922. Téllez made the work in collaboration with people living with mental illness after a series of workshops that he conducted on the subjects of vampirism and the representation of psychiatric institutions in film. 

Javier Téllez (b. 1969 Venezuela; lives and works in New York City) is an artist recognized internationally for his sophisticated visual language drawn from the history of culture. Téllez has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the San Francisco Art Institute (2014); Kunsthaus Zürich (2014); Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent (2013); Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (2011); Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York (2005); and Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico City (2004). He has participated in group exhibitions at SITE Santa Fe, NM; MoMA PS1, Long Island City; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas; Castello di Rivoli, Torino; Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe, Germany; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; and Renaissance Society, Chicago, as well as dOCUMENTA, Kassel, Germany (2012); Manifesta, Trento, Italy; Sydney Biennial; and the Whitney Biennial, New York (all 2008); Venice Biennale (2001 and 2003); and Yokohama Triennial (2001). He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1999, and in 2016 the Global Mental Health Award for Innovation in the Arts from Columbia University, New York. Javier Téllez has lived and worked in New York since 1993.

W.J.T. Mitchell is the Gaylord Donnelley Distinguished Service Professor of English and Art History at the University of Chicago. He is also the editor of Critical Inquiry. Mitchell is the author of several books including Cloning Terror: The War of Images, 9/11 to the Present (2011), What Do Pictures Want? Essays on the Lives and Loves of Images (2005), The Last Dinosaur Book: The Life and Times of a Cultural Icon(1998), Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology (1986), and The Language of Images (1980)

Co-sponsored by the Open Practice Committee in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Chicago.