The first major gallery exhibition to present sports fanaticism as a significant form of cultural production, bridging the assumed gap between sports and the arts.
STEELER NATION MAP
This is a new map of the world representing Steeler Nation, where countries that don’t have a fan base for the Pittsburgh NFL team don’t exist.
Texas Observer on Keep It Slick
“Keep It Slick features video of the group’s elaborate agitprop gags, manipulated newspaper headlines and fast-food logos, and interactive ‘conference rooms’ where visitors can read the script of a ‘real’ Yes Men hoax.”
Artforum Critic’s Pick of Keep It Slick
“The Yes Men’s ability to seamlessly blend with and subvert corporate identities engages the public to envision a more just world of commercial and governmental responsibility… The logic behind ‘Keep It Slick’ runs contrary to most exhibitions. Instead of affirming the artists’ originality or craftsmanship, this show is intended to motivate ordinary citizens to themselves become Yes Men through DIY activism and infiltration.”
Houston Press on Keep It Slick
“The Yes Men’s canny mimicry of business culture is on display in their mock boardroom with running PowerPoint presentations, bad paneling, motivational posters and bottles of Bhopal water.”
CONTESTATIONAL CARTOGRAPHIES Symposium
A three-day symposium introducing the thoughts of leading “experimental geographers” who employ mapping techniques in new modes of critical practice and cultural research.
Art Papers reviews Keep It Slick
“A timely acknowledgment of the work of Mike Bonanno and Andy Bichlbaum, two of the great social satirists of our time… The exhibition’s pointed installation hits it just right. Rather than mold The Yes Men’s activist artwork into a discreet, restrained presentation, Suparak gets into its spirit—both its serious underbelly and its consciously foppish exterior”
Post-Gazette on Suparak’s appointment at CMU gallery
“Her appointment and programming are also signals from CMU that it’s moving full throttle into a leadership role among university and alternative galleries.”
City Paper reviews Keep It Slick
“Curator Suparak has demonstrated a knack for exhibiting the work of those who require a hyphenated addendum to the word ‘artist.'”
KEEP IT SLICK: Infiltrating Capitalism with The Yes Men
The first major exhibition of the internationally renowned culture-jamming group. Dubbed “the most prescient show of the year” by Paper City and “a timely acknowledgment of the work of […] the great social satirists of our time” by Art Papers.
City Paper feature on Your Town, Inc.
“This and other revelations about the afterlives of closed big-box retailers are the subject of Your Town, Inc., a new exhibition of work by artist Julia Christensen”
Rhizome interviews Suparak
“Your style of independent curating was noticeably different: your interest in emerging artists, non-traditional exhibition spaces and video and media art set you apart.”
YOUR TOWN, INC.: Big Box Reuse with Julia Christensen
Photographs and new installation work examine how communities are changing in the shadow of corporate real estate.
City Paper on Suparak’s appointment at CMU’s Miller Gallery
“Suparak made her name as a globetrotting independent curator. Now she’s parked at CMU; her hiring, in March, makes her arguably the biggest underground art star to move to Pittsburgh in years.”
Other Exhibitions at Miller Gallery
Other exhibitions, events, residencies organized for Carnegie Mellon’s Miller Gallery, 2008 – 2014.
IN PURSUIT OF NORTHERN LIGHTS: Tracking Canada’s Living Cinema
“These artists, working at the forefront of contemporary cinematic performance across Canada, represent two tendencies of a multivalent, transnational, projector-based screen practice. Both Boyle and Barrow orchestrate overhead projectors, hand-drawn and live animation, and their own shadows to realize fantastical vignettes and comic book narratives. Alternatively, Lemieux and MacKenzie manipulate hand-processed, self-shot, and found footage film in their formalist projector performances that entertain the potential for technical failure.”
C Magazine feature on Suparak’s curatorial practice
“What Suparak has done for me is to restore my sense that cool can work as a powerful rhetorical device… She uses her personal voice and her institutional power to give permission to speak to those who might not have believed they had it.”
Fanzine feature on Come On and controversy
“The fact is that Suparak did curate contextually strong exhibitions. This is why she had a following. This is why the Warehouse was widely hailed as a success… Suparak was exceedingly capable of creating a context for challenging and new work.”
NPR-affiliate WAER on Suparak
“She’s fast developing a signature style for exciting, witty and synergistic group exhibits”
Canadian Art review of Faux Naturel
“Given my prejudices, I found Faux Naturel – a group show celebrating some of the many wonderful ways artists have contrived to recreate woodland splendours, but without all the mucky bits – just my kind of walk in the park… Faux Naturel reminded the sensible viewer (and me) that, exotic and mysterious as nature may be, it’s best left to its own devices.”
Astria Suparak 