FAR & Away Conversations: Artist Kelly Lloyd & Writer Yalie Kamara

In this moment with travel all but halted and colleges and universities practicing remote or socially distanced teaching, FAR is continuing with programming that focuses on the inherent potential in interactions between artists and thinkers who share common interests.

We are launching FAR & Away Conversations, a virtual series of live-streamed discussions. For each of four episodes, we’ve asked a prominent artist to invite a peer, collaborator, or mentor to engage in an illuminating conversation loosely based on conceptual intersections in their work.

In the first installment of FAR & Away Conversations, artist Kelly Lloyd has invited poet/writer Yalie Kamara to join her in a virtual live-streamed discussion. In this live-streamed event the collaborators have the platform to talk about topics that they feel are pertinent in the moment and you as the audience will have the opportunity to ask questions via the chat.

The event is free, but registration is required at https://fla.st/2EID86N

Artist Kelly Lloyd and writer Yalie Kamara have been friends since meeting in 2003 at The Oxbow School, a visual arts boarding school in Napa, California. They’ll begin their conversation with a discussion of their work, and will explore their common ground while answering your questions making sure to touch on memory, artistic and cultural influences, Blackness, and their lives as current doctoral students.

Kelly Lloyd is a multidisciplinary conceptual artist who focuses on issues of representation and knowledge production, and prioritizes public-facing collaborative research. Lloyd received a dual M.F.A. in Painting and M.A. in Visual & Critical Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2015, and earned a B.A. from Oberlin College in 2008. In 2019, she completed the Starr Fellowship at the Royal Academy Schools; had solo exhibitions at the Royal Academy Schools (London), Crybaby (Berlin), Bill’s Auto (Chicago) and Dirty House (London); lectured at the Edinburgh College of Art and The Ruskin School of Art; collaborated on public programming at rum 46 (Aarhus), Raven Row (London) and Block 336 (London); and was granted a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant, the Art Licks Workweek Prize, and a Step Travel Grant. She began her DPhil in Fine Art at the University of Oxford this Fall. – www.k-lloyd.com

Yalie Kamara is a Sierra Leonean-American writer, researcher, and a native of Oakland, California. She’s the author of A Brief Biography of My Name, which was included in New-Generation African Poets: A Chapbook Box Set (Tano) (African Poetry Book Series/Akashic Books, 2018) and When The Living Sing (Ledge Mule Press, 2017). She has received fellowships from The Vermont Studio Center, Callaloo, and The National Book Critics Circle, and was a finalist for the Brunel African Poetry Prize. She earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Indiana University, Bloomington and is a doctoral student in Creative Writing and English Literature at the University of Cincinnati. – yaylala.com