UCI Visiting Artist Lecture Series (VALS)
Co-presented with LACE

EJ Hill

Thursday, April 4, 7-9 p.m. PST

Philosophical Research Society
3910 Los Feliz Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90027

Limited free parking available on site
Free admission – RSVP to rsvp@welcometolace.org 

This talk will be held in-person at the Philosophical Research Society in partnership with LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions)

Join UC Irvine Claire Trevor School of the Arts, Department of Art, and LACE for an evening with artist EJ Hill, as part of UCI’s Visiting Artist Lecture Series (VALS). Following Hill’s presentation, LACE’s Curator and Director of Programs Selene Preciado moderates a Q&A with the artist. Light refreshments are provided.

The Department of Art presents the Visiting Artist Lecture Series (VALS). The annual series, organized by graduate students in Art, invites artists, scholars, curators, critics, gallerists and writers to give public lectures and conduct studio visits with students relevant to graduate students' research and practice. The series will be in-person and live streamed. There will be drinks and dinner after the lecture on CAC 4th floor. Please visit the VALS webpage for links and information on other events in the series.

About the Artist

EJ Hill is an artist born, raised, and based in South Central, Los Angeles. Hill’s practice focuses largely on challenging the social aspects and systems that construct a body. He is not only interested in how bodies and subjectivities are formed, understood, and valued within different social and cultural contexts, but also how they redefine the parameters that govern which of them are allowed to exist freely.

Hill received an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2013 and a BFA from Columbia College Chicago in 2011. His work has been exhibited at the Hammer Museum; the Studio Museum in Harlem; the Whitney Museum of American Art; MASS MoCA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Aspen Art Museum; PinchukArtCentre, Kyiv, Ukraine; and Institut d’art Contemporain, Villeurbanne/Rhône-Alpes, France.

He is a recipient of awards and fellowships from United States Artists, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, the Durfee Foundation’s Stanton Fellowship, Joan Mitchell Foundation’s Painters & Sculptors Grant, the Artadia Los Angeles Award, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts artist grant, and a grant from the Art Matters Foundation.

Much of what he knows he has learned from: Estelle Thompson, Karen Thompson, Ernest Hill Jr., Margaret Nomentana, Joan Giroux, Adam Brooks and Mat Wilson (Industry of the Ordinary), Andrea Fraser, Mario Ybarra Jr., Matt Austin, Young Chung, Adam Feldmeth, Jordan Casteel, TLC, Lauryn Hill, and Augie Grahn. Hill is forever indebted to these educators and thanks them endlessly.

VALS is presented with generous support from The Claire Trevor Society, the CTSA Dean's Fund for Excellence, and UCI Illuminations.. 

Images: (Top) EJ Hill. Portrait photo courtesy the artist and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. (Above) joy studies (triple rainbow), 2022. Acrylic and wax crayon on wood panel, 40 x 30 in (101.6 x 76.2 cm) Photo: Kaelan Burkett.