The Great Farce Exhibition Keynote: Federico Solmi in Conversation

Join us to celebrate our current exhibition . Artist Federico Solmi will be in conversation with Özge Samanci, Associate Professor in the School of Communication, Keyman Modern Turkish Studies Program Faculty Board at Northwestern University, to discuss the technical and conceptual aspects of Solmi’s work, which uses satire to explore history and mythmaking. Their conversation will be moderated by Janet Dees, Steven and Lisa Munster Tananbaum Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. The conversation will close with an audience Q&A.

Participation level – light, participants can choose to participate by submitting questions via or requesting the microphone to ask a question.

Programs are open to all, on a first-come first-served basis. RSVPs are not required, but are appreciated.

Federico Solmi (Bologna, Italy 1973) has lived in New York since 1999. His groundbreaking work was recognized with a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in 2009. Solo museum surveys include American Circus at the Haifa Museum of Art in Haifa, Israel, in 2016; The Grand Masquerade at the Tarble Art Center in Charleston, Illinois, in 2019; and Joie de Vivre at the Morris Museum in Morristown, New Jersey, in 2022–23.

His work was included in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery’s traveling exhibition The Outwin 2019: American Portraiture Today. In 2021, he was featured in the Phillips Collection’s centennial exhibition Seeing Differently. He has participated in several international biennial exhibitions, including the SITE Santa Fe Biennial in New Mexico in 2010; Venice Biennale in 2011.

From 2016 to 2019, Solmi was Visiting Professor at Yale University School of Art and Yale School of Drama, New Haven, Connecticut. He was appointed Guest Critic at the Yale University School of Art for 2022.

Özge Samanci, media artist and graphic novelist, is an associate professor in Northwestern University’s School of Communication. Her interactive installations have been exhibited internationally, including Museu do Amanhã, Siggraph Art Gallery, FILE festival, Currents New Media, The Tech Museum of Innovation, WRO Media Art Biennial, Piksel Electronic Arts Festival, ISEA among others. Her autobiographical graphic novel Dare to Disappoint (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2015) received international press attention and it has been translated into six languages. Her second graphic novel Evil Eyes Sea (Uncivilized Books, 2024) is released recently. Her drawings appeared in The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, Slate Magazine. In 2017, she received the Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin. Her other awards are Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts Distinguished Alumni Award (2020) from Georgia Institute of Technology and the Artist Fellowship Award in Media Arts (2023) by the Illinois Arts Council.

Photo: Annette Hornischer

Janet Dees is the Steven and Lisa Munster Tananbaum Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, where she is also affiliated faculty in the Department of Art History and an affiliate of the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research and the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program. Trained as a historian of American art, her research and curatorial work focuses on the ways in which contemporary artists engage with history and archives; artists’ interest in transformational practices; and inclusive museum methodologies. Her work includes commitments to African American, African diasporan, and Native American and Indigenous artists. Since coming to The Block in 2015, Dees has curated several exhibitions including (2022); (2018); (2018); (2017); and (2017). Prior to her appointment at the Block, Dees was curator at SITE Santa Fe, where she worked since 2008. Dees is the recipient of a 2018 Curatorial Fellowship from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and was a 2023 fellow of the Center for Curatorial Leadership.

Host or Publisher The Block Museum of Art