Interrogative Design Closing Reception

Art installation with a large face projected on an orb, outdoors during the nightime.

El Centro Cultural Projection (Part II), 2001, Tijuana, Mexico. Image courtesy of Krzysztof Wodiczko.

Event Information
Starting Monday, April 4, members of the general public will once again be invited to attend GSD public programs in person. All attendees must be fully vaccinated, including a booster shot, and must present proof of vaccination at the security desk in the lobby of Gund Hall before entering an event. To expedite your check-in process, please email your proof of vaccination to [email protected].

Event Description

Join us for a closing reception to celebrate Interrogative Design: Selected Works of Krzysztof Wodiczko, on view through April 8.

Wodiczko and Dan Borelli, Director of Exhibitions at the GSD, will be giving a tour of the exhibition at 4:00 PM ET on April 8. The tour is open to the general public and the Harvard community alike, but space on the tour is limited. To reserve your spot, email [email protected].

Prior to the exhibition viewing and reception at the GSD, we invite you to visit the Harvard Art Museums to view Krzysztof Wodiczko: Portrait, on view through April 17. On Friday, April 8, the Harvard Art Museums are open from 10 AM – 5 PM. Advanced registration is required to visit HAM and can be made through their online ticketing system.

Spanning five decades, the artistic practice of Krzysztof Wodiczko has interrogated a variety of social conditions across cultures, through artistic interventions that deploy creative technologies to disrupt the public and civic spaces of our everyday urban environments. Wodiczko is well known for his public projections, in which his subject matters range broadly—from homelessness to war veterans—as he consistently engages marginalized peoples and gains their trust to use his artistic platforms for their own public speech-acts. He researches public squares, institutional buildings, and wartime monuments, delving into the various histories embedded in the design, ornamentation, and inscriptions of these pieces of civic architecture. His siting of the surfaces of these spaces and structures recasts them as a stage setting for his ephemeral events, in which unseen, unheard, and forgotten people inscribe their lived experiences back onto the materiality of the architecture. Using projected light, Wodiczko transforms the scale of the individual to the scale of the urban, as these architectural facades—literally the faces of buildings—come alive by taking on the faces and voices of those who have been dispossessed by the host society. This artistic technique of defamiliarizing our everyday built environment empowers the alienated, and this temporary, projected light of their identities shines a spotlight on the power structures of their systemic oppressors. Read more about the exhibition here.

We also invite you to join us for the Joint Panel with Krzysztof Wodiczko: A Dialogue on Art, Technology, and Spectacle, with Rafael Lozano-Hemmer + Art, Community, and Institutions, with Jill Medvedow on Wednesday, February 9 at 6 pm ET.

Anyone requiring accessibility accommodations should contact the Public Programs Office at (617) 496-2414 or [email protected].

#GSDEVENTS