August 28, 2015–May 20, 2016
Tyler School of Art
2001 N. 13th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19122
www.reForm-project.org
www.templecontemporary.info
Temple Contemporary, the gallery of Tyler School of Art at Temple University, presents reForm, a large-scale participatory installation/exhibition from Friday, August 28 through May 20. The exhibition is part of a two-year project conceived by artist Pepón Osorio in which installation, performance, public art and advocacy components are interwoven to explore a school closing from the perspective of one North Philadelphia community. reForm relocates Fairhill Elementary—one of 24 schools closed by Philadelphia’s School Reform Commission since 2013—to a classroom at Tyler that will in turn be transformed into an immersive, changing installation.
The over-the-top tableau will evoke a landscape of memory and evolve daily as neighborhood residents hold a steady stream of community planning meetings, workshops and public programs there. The programs will be planned by the project participants, not by Tyler, nor by the artist. For Osorio, the sense of agency that residents may gain from the group process is as important as the installation environment: “I am hoping that this project, with all its components, counters the feelings that I’ve heard so many North Philadelphians describe—feeling invisible in the bureaucratic decision-making of the school closings.”
reForm will be accompanied by a full-color publication, available in the spring of 2016 from D.A.P. and Cornerhouse. This publication will include commissioned texts by Tom Finkelpearl, Amalia Mesa-Bains and Martha Rosler.
reForm is organized by Temple Contemporary and generously funded by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage and the Surdna Foundation.
Media information
Anne Edgar: T +646 336 7230 / [email protected]
About Temple Contemporary
Temple Contemporary’s mission is to creatively re-imagine the social function of art through questions of local relevance and international significance.
