Start point: near elevators at top level of the University of Washington Light Rail Station; the group will then cross the pedestrian bridge.
End point: Jacob Lawrence Gallery — and the closing of Material Performance: Part II.

Join us for Artel, a participatory performance in which six people drag a painting across campus using an artist-made harness, expanding the gesture of painting from solitary and private to public and collaborative. Inspired by Ilya Repin’s painting, Burlaks on the Volga, the title comes from the name of semi-formal associations for craft, artisan, and light industrial cooperatives formed during the Russian Empire and Soviet Union. To be a member of an artel, all that was required was the capacity and willingness to work. Drawing on a history of performative dragging sited in the street by artists such as William Pope L., Francis Alÿs, Papo Colo, and Christian Marclay, Artel will reflect on collective effort, the violence of production, and chance.

Margie Livingston received her MFA in painting from the University of Washington. Her awards include a residency at the Shenzhen Fine Art Institute in Shenzhen, China, in 2008; a Fulbright Scholarship in 2001; the Arts Innovator Award in 2010; the Neddy Fellowship in Painting in 2010; and the Betty Bowen Annual Memorial Award in 2006. Her work was featured at the Portland Art Museum in 2015 and her video, Dragging a Painting (2016), is currently on view at the Seattle Art Museum. She is represented by Greg Kucera Gallery in Seattle and Luis De Jesus Los Angeles. Livingston’s work resides in the permanent collections of the Shenzhen Fine Art Institute, the Seattle Art Museum, the City of Seattle, King County, the Portland Art Museum, and the Henry Art Gallery.

Image: "Dragging a Painting with Harness," in process; photograph by Natalie Jenkins.