The School of Art is pleased to announce the appointment of artists Janelle Iglesias and Sean Lynch as visiting faculty members in the area of Sculpture, Installation, and Site-Work. Iglesias, whose work is informed by her background in Cultural Anthropology, will join the faculty for the 2018-19 academic year. Lynch, whose work mines forgotten history to examine contemporary society, will join the faculty for the Spring 2019 semester.
“Both Janelle Iglesias and Sean Lynch demonstrate a strong interdisciplinary approach to art making, stretching the confines of traditional sculptural practice,” said Head of School Charlie White. “We’re thrilled to have Janelle, whose poetic installations have been exhibited extensively across the country, join the faculty for the 2018-19 academic year. We’re also honored to have Sean, who represented Ireland in the 2015 Venice Biennale, join us for the spring semester. Both artists will teach advanced undergraduate studio courses and provide one-on-one mentorship for our graduate students.”
Janelle Iglesias’ site-sensitive sculptures and installations investigate how objects mediate social relationships and how inanimate objects can be read as having a form of agency of their own. Instigating new connections between seemingly unrelated objects and materials, Iglesias defamiliarizes that which is common, revealing unconscious values, meanings, and relationships we have to objects. As part of her long-standing collaboration Las Hermanas Iglesias, her work also extends into social practice and performance.
Iglesias’ work has been shown at Sculpture Center, The Queens Museum, El Museo del Barrio, Socrates Sculpture Park, and Smack Mellon, among many others. A graduate of the MFA program at Virginia Commonwealth University, her work has been supported by the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and the Jerome Foundation.
Sean Lynch’s sculptures, installations, and multimedia work stems from an interest in the role that history, especially forgotten history, plays in our lives. Through extensive research, Lynch uncovers the objects, events, and stories from the past that continue to shape societal structures and cultural identity. His expanded sculptural installations often incorporate video, slide projection, and printed matter.
Lynch has had recent solo exhibitions at the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin; Charles H. Scott Gallery, Vancouver; Rose Art Museum, Boston; Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin; and Modern Art Oxford; among others. He studied art at Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main. In 2015, he represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale with his work “Adventure: Capital.”
Rated the No. 6 art school in the United States, and No. 1 in the area of time-based and new media by U.S. News and World Report, Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Art stands among the world’s leading programs. Housed within one of the most respected research universities in the United States, the School offers an unparalleled convergence of contemporary art, technology, and critical discourse with distinguished alumni including Andy Warhol, Mel Bochner, Joyce Kozloff, Philip Pearlstein, Deborah Kass, and John Currin.