Suzy Halajian Lecture

November 26, 2018

The PNCA MFA in Visual Studies program is excited to welcome Suzy Halajian as part of the Fall 2018 Visiting Artist Lecture Series. Halajian, an LA based curator and writer, is the 2018-19 Disjecta Contemporary Art Center Curator in Residence with her first of three exhibitions opening this Saturday, December 1st, at Disjecta.

Suzy Halajian is a curator and writer based in Los Angeles. Her work begins at the intersection of art and politics, treating image making as steeped in colonial pasts and modern surveillance states. Additionally, her research interests center on the legacies of trauma and conflict in experimental documentary and performance practices from the Middle East and North Africa and their diaspora. Halajian has curated exhibitions and programs at LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions), Hammer Museum, Human Resources LA, Los Angeles Contemporary Archive (all Los Angeles); Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena; Sursock Museum, Beirut; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York; UKS, Oslo, among others.

Halajian serves on the Programming Committee of Human Resources LA, and is the 2018-19 Curator-in-Residence at Disjecta, Portland. From 2015-16 she co-organized the invitation of sorts talk series in Los Angeles. In 2017 she was granted a Creative CapitalAndy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant with Anthony Carfello and Shoghig Halajian for the journal Georgia, and in 2014 she received a Curatorial Research Fellowship from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Her writing has been published by ArtEast, BOMB, X-TRA, Ibraaz, among others.


The MFA in Visual Studies Visiting Artist Lecture Series brings artists, scholars, designers, curators, and critics from around the globe to engage with students and the wider community in a variety of formats, including lectures, conversations, panel discussions, group critiques, workshops, and studio visits. These visiting art practitioners contribute to, challenge, and expand the academic and artistic discourse at PNCA, extending the opportunities for instruction and learning.