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Beverly Naidus

Beverly Naidus is an interdisciplinary artist, activist and educator, known for her interactive, site-specific installations to provoke dialog and storytelling. 

Inspired by lived experience, topics in her artwork include environmental illness, climate change, unemployment, the alienation of consumer culture, nuclear nightmares, body hate, cultural identity, visions for the future and global justice. She has exhibited her work, guest lectured and led workshops all over North America and in Europe.  

Her work has been part of major exhibitions at the Institute for Contemporary Art in London, the New Museum of Contemporary Art in NYC, the Hammer Museum in LA, the Boulder Museum of Art, the Long Beach Museum of Art, the Lehmbruck Museum in Germany, the Jewish Museum in several cities and hundreds of other galleries, public sites and community centers. Her work has been discussed in many journals and books.

She is the author of Arts for Change: Teaching Outside the Frame, a narrative collage that explores the motivations of teaching and making art for social change and includes the stories of 33 other practitioners. She has been a teaching artist in many New York City museums and a visiting artist/lecturer at Carleton College, Goddard College, Hampshire College and the Institute for Social Ecology.

She has had tenure at California State University, Long Beach and the University of Washington, Tacoma. She facilitates a unique, interdisciplinary, socially engaged, studio art curriculum at the latter campus.  Her collective, ARTifACTs, is developing a series of collaborative and interactive projects with the theme, “We Almost Didn’t Make It” that deals with our uncertainties about the future from the perspective of our descendants.  Her website is www.beverlynaidus.net

“The Perils and Rewards of Activism Game” at the center of the installation, “AND NOW Behind Curtain #2” – 2012, Folklife Festival, Seattle, WA. The game features discouragement and encouragement cards, and invites the “winners” to share a story about their experience of activism. They share it out loud and then leave a written copy in the archive surrounding the game for others to read.
The Nightmare Quilt (Revival) 2017, Seattle Presents Gallery (hosted by the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture) – originally created in 1988 and exhibited on the east and west coasts of the USA, this quilt originally had 54 nightmares about the future on one side, and 54 visions or dreams for the future on the underside. In order to see the dream side, one has to write down one’s own nightmare or dream and place it under the quilt. If one asks for help, the whole quilt is turned over to reveal the interconnecting dreams. In 2017, 27 more nightmares (and 27 more dreams) were added to the quilt to reflect the increasing concerns and hopes of living in this time.
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