MARN and the Portrait Society Gallery of Contemporary Art are pleased to present an artist reception and panel discussion on Saturday, February 24, 2024. Join us first at Portrait Society Gallery from 5 to 6 p.m. for refreshments and to view the show, Nirmal Raja: Grace and Grit.
Then walk over to MARN for a talk by Nirmal and Jodi Throckmorton, Chief Curator at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. They will discuss the new work created during Raja's three month residency in the foundry at the Kohler Arts/Industry program.
Join us! The events are free and open to the public.
Follow the contributors on Instagram: @nirmal.raja @portraitsocietygallery @throckles
About Nirmal Raja
Nirmal Raja is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in Milwaukee, She had lived in India, South Korea, and Hong Kong before immigrating to the United States thirty-three years ago. She holds a BA in English Literature from St. Francis College in Hyderabad, India; a BFA from the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, and an MFA from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. She has participated in solo and group shows in the Midwest, nationally, and internationally. She is the recipient of several awards including “Graduate of The Decade” from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Raja received the Mary L. Nohl Fellowship for individual artists for the year 2020 and the Mildred L. Harpole Artists of the Year 2022 award from the Milwaukee Arts Board.
Her work investigates migration, global interdependence, memory, and loss. She collaborates with other artists and strongly believes in investing energy into her immediate community while also considering the global. She periodically curates exhibitions that bring people from different cultures and backgrounds together.
Raja is represented by Portrait Society Gallery in Milwaukee
About Jodi Throckmorton
Jodi Throckmorton is Chief Curator at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center. Before joining JMKAC in 2022, she was Curator of Contemporary Art at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where she earned accolades for curating a retrospective exhibition and publication on the work of Joan Semmel titled Joan Semmel: Skin in the Game. She also organized the exhibition and publications for Rina Banerjee: Make Me a Summary of the World (2018) with Lauren Dickens and, at the San Jose Museum of Art, Postdate: Photography and Inherited History in India (2015).
During her over seven years at PAFA, she added transformational works by contemporary artists to the collection, including purchases of work by Mequitta Ahuja, Joan Brown, Chitra Ganesh, Ebony G. Patterson, Marie Watt, and Dyani White Hawk, among others. Throckmorton also partnered with Paulson Fontaine Press to make PAFA the East Coast archive of prints by African American artists from the press.
Among her other past projects are Nick Cave: Rescue (2018), Paul Chan: Pillowsophia (2017), Melt/Carve/Forge: Embodied Sculptures by Cassils (2016). Alyson Shotz: Plane Weave (2016), Bruce Conner: Somebody Else’s Prints (2014), Questions from the Sky: New Work by Hung Liu (2013), Dive Deep: Eric Fischl and the Process of Painting (2013), Ranu Mukherjee: Telling Fortunes (2012), and This Kind of Bird Flies Backward: Paintings by Joan Brown (2011).
Previously, she held curatorial positions at the Ulrich Museum of Art at Wichita State University and the San Jose Museum of Art in California.