The Drawing Center will present The Intuitionists, a collaborative project curated by artists Steffani Jemison, Heather Hart, and Jina Valentine, and organized by Lisa Sigal, Open Sessions Curator. Inspired by Colson Whitehead's 1999 novel The Intuitionist—a work of speculative fiction that explores the relationship between progress, technology, and difference—the exhibition considers how the collection, the database, and the aggregate serve as complementary models for the organization of information and objects in flux. Using the keywords that organize The Drawing Center’s Viewing Program database (e.g. “autobiographical,” “geometric,” “historical,” “consumer culture”) as a point of departure, the exhibition installation will feature artworks and ephemera by over sixty artist members of the Viewing Program.

The curators searched the Viewing Program registry for artists whose work exists at the intersection of unusual keywords. These artists were then invited to submit an artwork that responded to a word or phrase from the novel. The artworks or found items or objects in The Intuitionists exhibition will be hung according to the sequence determined by Whitehead’s book. The Lab will feature a collaboration by the artist-curators inspired by Whitehead's book The Intuitionist , using letters of the alphabet to form an interpretive drawing.

Heather Hart

Based in Brooklyn, New York, Heather Hart has been an artist-in-residence at Skowhegan, RBPW, Santa Fe Art Institute, Open Sessions at The Drawing Center, Fine Arts Work Center, LMCC Workspace, and the Whitney ISP. She has received grants from Joan Mitchell Foundation, Harvestworks, Jerome Foundation, and a fellowship from NYFA. Her work has been included in a variety of publications and exhibited at Socrates Sculpture Park, Seattle Art Museum’s Olympic Sculpture Park, the Studio Museum in Harlem, Art in General, The Drawing Center, No Longer Empty, Museum of Arts and Craft in Itami, Portland Art Center, Figure One at University of Illinois, and the Brooklyn Museum. She studied at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, Princeton University in New Jersey, and received her MFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University. Hart will be an artist-in-residence at Bemis and the Hermitage in 2014.

Steffani Jemison

Steffani Jemison is an artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Art, LAXART, the Studio Museum in Harlem, Laurel Gitlen, Team Gallery, the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, and other venues. She has presented performances and lectures at the Museum of Modern Art (NYC), the Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), and the Menil Collection (Houston), among others, and her work has been reviewed in Artforum, Art in America, FlashArt, and Mousse. Jemison has been an artist-in-residence at Project Row Houses, the Core Program at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the International Studio and Curatorial Program. She is a 2013 Art Matters Foundation grantee, a 2014 Louis Comfort Tiffany Biennial awardee, and a 2014–2015 artist-in-residence at Smack Mellon. She received a BA in Comparative Literature from Columbia University and an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Jina Valentine

Jina Valentine was born in Pennsylvania and is based in North Carolina. She has exhibited widely, including at The Drawing Center, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the CUE Foundation, the Elizabeth Foundation, the DiRosa Preserve, Southern Exposure, Marlborough Gallery, and the Fleisher Ollman Gallery. She has participated in residencies at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Women’s Studio Workshop, Sculpture Space, the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the Santa Fe Art Institute, and the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. She has received numerous awards for her work including a Joan Mitchell MFA Grant and a San Francisco Arts Commission Fellowship. Jina received her BFA from Carnegie Mellon University and her MFA from Stanford University. She is currently an Assistant Professor of studio art at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.