May 2, 2023
In honor of Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month, Oakland University will be celebrating the visual art and achievements of three OU AAPI faculty members in the Department of Art and Art History — Jetshri Bhadviya, a special lecturer in art; Yu-chuan Chen, an assistant professor of art history; and JenClare Gawaran, a special lecturer in art.
“Last year, for our inaugural celebration we had a wonderful artist from New York, Siyan Wong, present to us via Zoom,” said Dr. Chaturi Edrisinha, a special education researcher and professor within OU’s School of Education and Human Services. “This year, we wanted to celebrate the exciting work of our own AAPI faculty, some of whom are recognized as Kresge scholars.”
This year’s celebration is sponsored by the AAPI Employee Resource Group at Oakland University and co-sponsored by the Division of Student Affairs and Diversity. It will be held from 5 to 7 p.m. on Monday, May 8 in Gold Rooms B and C in the Oakland Center, with a one-hour presentation followed by an afterglow social.
You can RSVP for the event here.
About the Speakers
Jetshri Bhadviya is a multimedia artist from India. She explores how a human body activates a space and is perceived in a social, political, religious, and spiritual context through video, sound, performance , installation and/or photography. Bhadviya has exhibited her work nationally and internationally in venues like The Peanut Factory in North Carolina, Cave Gallery, Detroit Symphony Orchestra Hall, and David Klein Gallery in Detroit, the Arts at California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, the Grand Rapids Art Museum, and the Society of Photographic Education in New Orleans, as well as many venues in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, UAE. The Sheikha Manal Young Artist Foundation named her one of the top- ten artists in Dubai in 2011. She was presented with the Toby Dewan Lewis Fellowship Award in 2015 and a AICAD Teaching Fellowship 2017-2018 in Michigan. Bhadviya has been working as a special lecturer at Oakland University since 2020 in the Art and Art History Department, and adjunct at College For Creative Studies since 2015 in the Photography, Fine Art and Foundations Departments.
Yu-chuan Chen holds the position of the assistant professor of art history at Oakland University. Chen received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 2019. He specializes in East Asian art and visual culture, with an emphasis on the ecological implications of visual materials. His projects return artworks to their original environmental contexts to understand the interactions between humans, natural organisms, and the physical landscape. His recent publications include “Through the Lens of Fengshui: Zhu Xi’s Deep Connection with the Wuyi Mountains (Monumenta Serica, forthcoming),” “Activating the Sacred Landscape: The Visual Culture of the Wuyi Mountains” (Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, 2019), and A Mushroom Perspective on Sacred Geography (Stanford: Cantor Arts Center, 2015).
JenClare Gawaran holds a BFA in art education from Michigan State University and an MFA in printmaking from Wayne State University. She currently is a special lecturer in the Department of Art and Art History at Oakland University, and an instructor of drawing, design and printmaking at various other colleges and universities in Metro Detroit. Gawaran's work has been exhibited locally in galleries such as the Detroit Artist Market and The Scarab Club, as well as nationally and abroad, from Los Angeles and New York to Jerusalem, Finland and China. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Detroit Institute of Arts, Wayne State University and the Guangdong Museum of Art. Gawaran has curated and juried art exhibitions across the United States, and currently sits on the Board of Trustees of the Anton Art Center.
About Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month
Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month is an annual celebration that recognizes the historical and cultural contributions of individuals and groups of Asian and Pacific Islander descent to the United States. The AAPI umbrella term includes cultures from the entire Asian continent — including East, Southeast and South Asia — and the Pacific Islands of Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. The AAPI Employee Resource Group at Oakland University was started in 2022 as a staff- and faculty-driven collective dedicated to supporting and advocating on behalf of all AAPI employees. For more information, visit www.oakland.edu/aapi.