Creating New Artifacts with Cynthia Brannvall

Join us for an artist talk with artist Cynthia Brannvall and art historian Dr. Elizabeth Carroll (SJSU and Foothill College). In this conversation, Brannvall reflects on the personal and historical significance of her artistic practice - both as an outlet for catharsis and as a tool for preserving materials, perspectives, and narratives that would otherwise be overlooked by dominant political and institutional forces. For Brannvall, her practice is an instrument for creating counter-narratives. In a time when artifacts and heirlooms are threatened by decay, destruction, and erasure, Brannvall speaks on the power that objects (and the memories they hold) can have, both personally and socially.

New Museum Los Gatos (NUMU) presents an exhibition of five women artists who explore concepts of memory as it pertains to generational and cultural experience, immigration and migration. Through various media, they explore their experience of inherited memories and unveil personal stories of family and heritage while inviting us all to consider the deeper themes that connect us with the past, and with each other. Engaging with culturally significant materials and symbolism, these works examine the vicarious nature of memory, and present implicit meanings carried in ancestral artifacts that are passed from one generation to the next. Each artist meaningfully conveys the idea that we are all shaped not only by our personal experiences, but by those of past generations.

Cynthia Brannvall
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Cynthia Brannvall is an art historian and a multi-media artist who teaches art history as a full-time faculty member of Foothill Community College. She is a California native of African American and Swedish descent. Cynthia has undergraduate degrees in Art Practice and Art History from UC Berkeley where she was a Phi Beta Kappa and a Ronald E. McNair scholar and was awarded the Departmental Citation for her research in Art History.

She has an MA in Art History from San Francisco State University with an emphasis on Modern and Contemporary art.

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