After five years of curating extraordinarily memorable exhibitions at one of the Southeast’s finest contemporary art centers, the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA) in Winston-Salem, NC, announced that its Curator of Contemporary Art Steven Matijcio will assume a new curatorial position at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, OH, beginning June 1, 2013.
“When Steven joined SECCA in 2008, we were in a major transition – becoming an operating entity of the North Carolina Museum of Art and the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources,” said SECCA Executive Director Mark Leach. “His energy and perspective on art-making on the global stage allowed us to make a new imprint as a Center that not only offered visually compelling and continually changing work, but also thoughtfully enhanced perspectives. His greatest impact on our has been that he was able to inspire this community to rally around new ideas, and a refreshed SECCA. Steven’s vision of what we could be has forever shaped our future, and we will miss having him on the team.”
SECCA is an affiliate of the NC Museum of Art, within the NC Department of Cultural Resources and a funded partner of The Arts Council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County. Additional funding is provided by the James G. Hanes Memorial Fund.
Steven Matijcio has been curator at The Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA) in Winston-Salem for five years.
During Matijcio’s tenure at SECCA, he curated more than 25 exhibitions and projects spanning a wide range of media, art forms and cultural perspectives. His curatorial debut here in 2008 included a solo show of Dutch Photographer Erwin Olaf and a group show featuring videos by Carlos Amorales, Jeremy Blake, Louis Cameron and Shazia Shikander. His most recent projects at SECCA include Vibha Galhotra: Metropia; Frank Selby: Misunderstanding; and dialogue shows pairing Jacco Olivier, Jennifer West, Tomory Dodge and Denyse Thomasos.
According to SECCA Foundation Chair Wesley Davis, “Steven’s unique vision has ignited a SECCA renaissance as a leader in cutting-edge contemporary art in North Carolina and the Southeast and has propelled us into the future. His visionary curatorial exhibitions have made a lasting impression upon visitors to SECCA; and we are appreciative of all of his hard work and dedication.”
In 2009 Matijcio took art out of the museum and into the community with public art initiatives that allowed SECCA to remain vital and visible while the building underwent major renovations. Inside Out: Artists in the Community II was one of Winston-Salem’s most ambitious public art programs in recent years, bringing artists such as Anna von Gwinner, Kianga Ford and Mark Jenkins to various locations in Winston-Salem and Greensboro. As the refreshed museum opened to the public in 2010, Matijcio unveiled an international exhibition that reflected the organization’s wish for the community to return and be awestruck. The exhibit, Look Again, examined contemporary translations of the centuries-old “trompe l’oeil” (trick of the eye) tradition, urging visitors to take a second look – and be amazed – at the seemingly familiar.
From this well-received re-opening exhibition, Matijco set the tone at SECCA, solidifying his reputation as having the ability to see dynamic intersections between artists, media and the Center’s galleries. Highlights from his diverse and provocative tenure included displays of multi-disciplinary works by Shinique Smith; hand-drawn animations by Glenda Wharton, contemporary interpretations of woodworking by Aaron Spangler and Alison Elizabeth Taylor in the exhibition “American Gothic”; politically poignant soft sculptures by Margarita Cabrera; a re-reading of fashion as an archive of time, nature, and memory in “Out of Fashion”; redrawn photographs of international war zones by Curtis Mann; and the award-winning paperless exhibition that won the support of both the Emily Hall Tremaine and Elizabeth Firestone-Graham Foundations.
Matijcio was a global representative for SECCA during his time with the organization, participating in residencies and conferences in Gwangju, South Korea, Berlin, Germany and Montreal, Canada. His global impact was punctuated in 2012 when he organized art thou gone, beloved ghost? in Gdansk, Poland. It was a city-wide celebration of large-scale video projections that brought together performance, politics and implicit memories of a haunted city.
“I have had so many great opportunities to help shape this organization,” commented Matijco. “I have the utmost respect for Mark Leach, the staff, the board, and everyone who propels SECCA as a premier arts organization in this country. They have given me the platform to explore art on an international stage, and continually elevate my ambitions. There are few places in this world as unique as SECCA; and I’m proud to be part of its story. I look forward to watching this organization reach new heights in the near future.”
SECCA will conduct a search for a new curator in the coming months. In the meantime, Matijco’s vision will continue through 2013 and 2014 as the museum stages three exhibitions that were designed by him with works by Iranian Artist Reza Aramesh, Chinese Artist Zhang Qing and British Artist Claire Harvey.
Additional Notes about Steven Matijcio
Born in Toronto, Canada and educated in New York, Matijcio has an accomplished background in the gallery and museum field. He has held positions at the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto, and has organized projects across all media and themes around the world. Prior to joining SECCA, he worked as Curator at the Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art in Winnipeg, Manitoba: one of Canada’s most respected and cutting-edge institutions dedicated to contemporary art.
Alongside his activities in curating, writing and criticism, Matijcio is an active researcher and lecturer who has been the recipient of numerous awards including a Governor General’s Award and the Orpheus Prize in Humanities. He was named a University of Toronto scholar all four years of his undergraduate study, and received both a fellowship and scholarship to attend graduate school at the Center for Curatorial Studies in New York (Bard College).
Under curators such as Marcia Tucker, Ivo Mesquita, John G. Hanhardt and Christiane Paul, he co-curated an exhibition that investigated the effects of institutional structures on the human body (Instructure). Matijcio was also commissioned by the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation to organize an online exhibition highlighting important, but lesser-known works by the iconic Mapplethorpe (Momentum).
Matijcio has worked in numerous academic arenas, including his time as an adjunct professor at the University of Manitoba’s School of Art from 2007 – 2008. He is currently researching the relationship between art and political activism, and has received a number of travel grants to conduct research in countries such as Italy, Germany, Austria and Brazil.
Matijcio has edited and published a number of notable texts. He conducted interviews with Jane Alexander, Shaun Gladwell, Nasrin Tabatabai and Babak Afrassiabi for the 2006 Sao Paulo Bienal Catalogue, and has written for journals such as “Canadian Art”, “Border Crossings”, “Locus Suspectus”, and “Canadian Architect”.
About The North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources
The North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources (NCDCR) is the state agency with a vision to be the leader in using the state’s cultural resources to build the social, cultural and economic future of North Carolina. Led by Secretary Susan W. Kluttz, NCDCR’s mission to enrich lives and communities creates opportunities to experience excellence in the arts, history and libraries in North Carolina that will spark creativity, stimulate learning, preserve the state’s history and promote the creative economy. NCDCR was the first state organization in the nation to include all agencies for arts and culture under one umbrella.
Through arts efforts led by the NC Arts Council, the NC Symphony and the NC Museum of Art; NCDCR offers the opportunity for enriching arts education for young and old alike and economic stimulus engines for our state’s communities. NCDCR’s Divisions of State Archives, Historical Resources, State Historic Sites and State History Museums preserve, document and interpret North Carolina’s rich cultural heritage. NCDCR’s State Library of North Carolina is the principal library of state government and builds the capacity of all libraries in our state; developing and supporting access to traditional and online collections such as genealogy and resources for the blind and physically handicapped.
NCDCR annually serves more than 19 million people through its 27 historic sites, seven history museums, two art museums, the nation’s first state-supported Symphony Orchestra, the State Library, the NC Arts Council and the State Archives. NCDCR champions our state’s creative industry that accounts for more than 300,000 jobs and generates nearly $18.5 billion in revenues. For more information, please call 919/807-7300 or visit (www.ncdcr.gov).
