Dismantle tropes, illuminate exclusion, ‘See Memory’: Astria Suparak, Anila Agha and Viviane Silvera join a legacy of visiting artists to challenge and inspire UW–Madison students.
By Maggie Ginsberg, Division of the Arts
Have you ever struggled to make sense of cutting-edge research on traumatic memory? What if an artist could help you visualize it through paint dripping on canvas? Ever considered the way that geometric light and shadows can help you think about spaces that certain genders are not allowed to enter? Or have you noticed how popular films like “Blade Runner,” or “Star Wars” steal from and erase Asian American culture?
These are the sorts of questions three different artists — Astria Suparak, Anila Agha and Viviane Silvera — will explore when they make their respective visits to UW–Madison this spring as part of the Division of the Arts’ longstanding interdisciplinary residency programs.
Since 1999, through these residencies, Badger students have gleaned opportunities and insights that resonate long after the visiting artists leave campus. (If they leave at all. Several current UW–Madison faculty members first came to campus as artists-in-residence, including Lynda Barry, Faisal Abdu’Allah, Omari Carter, and Aruṇ Lūthrā.)
“It’s honestly extraordinary that our students get this kind of sustained access to artists who are actively shaping global conversations,” says Arts Residency Coordinator Guy Thorne. “These aren’t drive-through visits. When artists are in classrooms, in studios, in conversation with faculty and curators, the impact compounds. You can trace new collaborations, new courses, even new faculty hires back to these residencies. That’s why they matter — they build the future of the institution.”
Astria Suparak
Visiting March 8-14, 2026
Astria Suparak is an Oakland-based, Thai-American multidisciplinary artist, curator and researcher whose work challenges institutionalized racism, colonialism, gender, and power in Western pop culture. As part of her week-long collaboration with lead faculty host UW Art’s Helen Lee, Suparak will present one of her most lauded projects, “Asian Futures, Without Asians.”
“Astria’s work is a prime example of the arts as research practice, which could be better understood, even in the landscape of a research university,” says Lee. “Her performance of ‘Asian futures, without Asians’ is supported by over a dozen campus units, which speaks to the breadth of scholarship this work informs.”
By weaving together a combination of live performance, film clips, lecture, and music by Detroit-based bilingual singer-songwriter and DJ Tammy Lakkis (whose debut “Notice” was named to NPR Music’s 100 Best Songs of 2021), Suparak offers a slicing critique of the “futuristic” science fiction tropes that steal from Asian aesthetics while simultaneously erasing Asian people. For example, Suparak says, Southeast Asians make up about 37% of the Asian American population, but are cast in only 3% of Southeast Asian roles in mainstream U.S. films.
“A question I get fairly often from white students after a presentation is, ‘Why can’t I use elements from [fill in the blank] culture for my own work? I love that culture!’” Suparak says. “My answer is usually some variation of: It’s a question of power. Which group has political, cultural, and economic power over the other group, historically and globally? In filmmaking, the answer is always going to be white America and Hollywood.”
Suparak will also participate in a panel with professors Preeti Chopra, Derek Johnson and Nam Kim, and work with Lee to visit UW Art, UW Glass Lab and Department of Theatre & Drama students throughout the week.
Anila Agha
Visiting March 15-19, 2026
Anila Agha’s exhibition piece “A Beautiful Despair” features a large cubic sculpture, ornately carved with Islamic motifs and lit from within, hanging in a colorful space and casting kaleidoscopic shadows on every surface. More than just a visually stunning architectural structure, the illuminating work is an artistic representation of the spaces Agha was excluded from as a girl growing up in Pakistan. That exclusion didn’t exactly stop after she, a Muslim woman, immigrated to the U.S. mere months after 9/11.
Now, more than 25 years later, the award-winning multidisciplinary artist and creative researcher’s work has been shown at prestigious museums all over the world, exploring things like global politics, gender roles, and cultural identity.
“We selected Anila to speak to students in the Textile and Fashion Design program because she is a sort of renaissance woman,” says lead faculty host Professor Jennifer Angus. “Early in her career she worked in the fashion industry in Pakistan, and to this day a textile sensibility anchors her practice.”
When Agha comes to the UW–Madison School of Human Ecology for her residency (made possible by support from the Nancy M. Bruce Center for Design and Material Culture and the International Division), she’ll deliver a public lecture and visit classrooms and graduate studios to help students think about gender-based exclusion in a whole new way.
“While her large installations may not include fabric, they often include pattern, which is inherent to cloth,” Angus says. “To some, these patterns may suggest ornate mosaics seen in mosques. But pattern is inextricably linked to domesticity — clothing, wallpaper, etcetera. Her work demonstrates the power of pattern and how an idea can evolve into monumental and powerful work.”
Viviane Silvera
Visiting April 13-24, 2026
“We are what we remember,” says Italian-born painter and filmmaker Viviane Silvera in her Telly Award-winning short film “See Memory,” which recently aired on PBS. Through dreamy, research-informed narration, the viewer is asked to consider that when you think you’re remembering the past, “you’re actually telling a story about the present, of how you became who you are.” Which begs the question: What if we could rewrite our traumatic memories, and therefore our identities?
“Translating neuroscience research on memory into painting and animation made me realize that these forms can mirror remembering itself — layered, dynamic, and constantly being reconstructed,” Silvera says of her 27-minute film, which uses 30,000 hand-painted still images of her paintings set against interviews with a Nobel Laureate neuroscientist and other researchers and mental health therapists. In this moving time-lapse, each ethereal image blurs into the next, helping us visualize the science of memory while capturing the ephemeral nature of memory.
It’s a unique, innovative way to interpret research through an artful lens, and it will be shown as part of a slate of programming in partnership with Wisconsin Institute for Discovery (WID) — long a dynamic hub for the intersection of art, science and storytelling. To assist Silvera in facilitating workshops and conversations on memory, caregiving and creativity, collaborations are underway with WID Illuminating Discovery Hub Director Andrew Hanus and other faculty members, the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, OMAI’s Line Breaks festival, and guest artist Sophia Michelen, a New York-based filmmaker, photographer and global storyteller.
“My hope for the residency is that artists and researchers alike discover how creative practice can help translate complex research into experiences people can see, feel, and understand,” Silvera says.
Are you a faculty member looking to bring a visiting artist to campus? Follow this link to learn more about IVAP and IARP.