Wong Forum on Art and the Immigrant Experience

Faces/Portriats/Selfies

Culver Center of the Arts

November 3, 2017

Human faces and their representation are unquestionably  seen more often than just about anything else in our daily lives. This half-day symposium will discuss the subject of faces, whose very omnipresence ironically makes us often forget their cultural and social significance. 

The human face has held the interest of the public, painters, sculptors, and even scientists across difference cultures and periods. The representation of faces in the portrait genre, for instance, delivers not only likeness, but also the status, wealth, personality, and emotion of the portrayed, providing viewers a quasi-direct engagement with the subject. Recent developments in IT and internet-based social media such as Facebook, using hardware like smartphones and facial recognition surveillance systems, have made the face an integral component of our highly complex society. For example, taking and posting selfies on Facebook is one of the most popular pastimes, perhaps even a daily ritual of the general public in the US. This is not only a cultural phenomenon, but also a form of social interaction and communication through  which people assert their cultural capital and claim public recognition. Furthermore, face recognition technology has been adopted by a growing number of countries as part of their response to ever-increasing concerns over public safety. The five presentations offered in this forum will help us better understand how faces and their visual representation are intricately related to larger social and cultural concerns of the past and present

Schedule of Events:

1:00 – 1:10 PM
Welcome Remarks: Jeanette Kohl
Introduction: J.P Park

1:10 – 2:30 PM
Derek Murray, University of California, Santa Cruz
"The Self-Portrait in a Narcissistic Age"
Dora Ching, Princeton University
“Fascinating Faces: Identity and Type in Chinese Portraits”

2:30 – 2:50 PM
Break

2:50 – 4:20 PM
Maria Loh, Hunter College
"Status Update”
Amy Freund, Southern Methodist University
“The Name of a Dog: Eighteenth-Century Portraiture and the Question of the Animal Self” 
        
4:20 – 4:40 PM                                                                                                             
Break

4:40 – 5:30 PM
Conrad Rudolph, University of California, Riverside
“FACES: Faces, Art, and Computerized Evaluation Systems"                    
Closing Remarks
Reception

For more information, contact arthistory@ucr.edu

Support has been provided by UCR College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (CHASS) and the City of Riverside.