Please note that due to popular demand, Shantell Martin’s Artist Lecture will be in Blackman Auditorium, not the Studio Theatre.
Artist Shantell Martin – known for her sprawling black-and-white drawings on everything from walls to skin to Adidas sneakers has a business model for artists that she wants to share with Northeastern on January 10, 2018.
Shantell Martin is an artist whose work exists outside the gallery setting in a self-made space between street art, graphic design, entrepreneurship, technology and performance art. Exploring themes of identity and experience, Martin has become a global cultural influencer. Recently collaborating with musicians such as Kendrick Lamar, developing an augmented reality drawing app with ARCore and launching drip, a new tool for creators by Kickstarter.
Shantell Martin has more than 130,000 Instagram followers, and she often uses the hashtag #AREYOUYOU as a reminder to her followers to be themselves. Martin, whom herself had a troubled childhood growing up biracial in East London, in a predominantly white, working-class area. Drawing was something she initially did as an escape, but it now is her tool to connect with and empower others as they explore their own identities.
She sees her work as a vehicle to forge new connections between education, design, philosophy and technology — the glue in an increasingly interdisciplinary world. Martin’s work with institutions such as the MIT Media Lab, Autodesk and New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts denote her ongoing inquiry into new models and technologies that are transforming the way art is made and consumed. Eschewing traditional art world norms, Martin’s work purposefully bridges fine art, performance art, technology and commercial work. Her artwork has appeared in the Brooklyn Museum, Museum of the Contemporary African Diaspora, Bata Show Museum and at the prestigious Albright Knox Gallery in Buffalo, New York.
Shantell Martin has been featured in New York Times’ Home and Garden Section, Vogue Magazine, and the New Yorker Magazine even created a short video (above) on her creative process called Follow the Pen. She has been featured on CNN, Jimmy Kimmel Live and the television show Gossip Girl and was one of four artists commissioned by Nike iD to make a piece of work and a limited-edition shoe to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Nike Cortez.
Join us for an artist talk by artist & designer Shantell Martin in Northeastern’s Studio Theatre followed by an opening reception of new work in Gallery 360.
Exhibition co-organized by Northeastern Center for the Arts, Gallery 360 and the Office of Institutional Diversity & Inclusion, with special thanks to the Northeastern Department of Theatre.