Join us for a conversation with artist and U-M Stamps Professor Heidi
Kumao, Stamps Gallery Director, Srimoyee Mitra, and special guests: poet Marilyn
Chin, writer Lynn Love, and art critic Wendy Vogel as they discuss Kumao’s
narrative fabric works and animations and the future of feminist praxis in art
and contemporary culture. A public Q&A and book-signing will follow the
discussion.

The book “Heidi Kumao: Real and Imagined” features narrative
fabric works and animations from a solo exhibition that was held at the Stamps
Gallery in Fall 2020. The exhibition was inspired by the courage, testimony,
and experiences of women (like Christine Blasey Ford) who publicly report
assault, harassment, or misconduct. The #MeToo movement gave voice to
thousands of women to tell their personal stories, but also exposed a hostile
backlash meant to silence them. The title, “Real and Imagined,” is a
deliberate contradiction: both terms are used to reference a woman’s testimony
and determine how it is publicly interpreted. Her account is accepted as
truthful by many and simultaneously dismissed as imaginary by the court of
public opinion: “her memory is wrong,” “she imagined
it.”
Copies of the book “Heidi Kumao: Real and Imagined” will be
available for purchase at the event. Virtual options for event attendance are
available. Please contact Jennifer Junkermeier-Khan at jenjkhan@umich.edu for more information.


The book “Heidi Kumao: Real and Imagined” is designed by Franc
Nunoo-Quarcoo.