a…is alter(ed): Open Sessions 12 explores the imaginative determination of “drawing” and “line” by relating it to a development process, social artifacts, psychological trace, and prosthetic memory—journals, maps, technology, and calendars. The poetics of flow between known and unknown is a feedback murmur that leads to clarity when engaging the object. a..is alter(ed) features Joeun Aatchim, Kenseth Armstead, Ludovica Carbotta, Billy and Steven Dufala, LaMont Hamilton, and Ester Partegàs.

For a…is alter(ed), experimental and traditional approaches to drawing are taken as a mode of inquiry, to produce the unexpected through ventriloquism (Aatchim); tell the story of a slave-turned-spy in the American Revolution (Armstead); upend notions of scale by drawing with an excavator shovel (Dufala Brothers); recover the role of imagination by projecting fictional narratives onto objects (Carbotta); welcome the blind and visually impaired into the space through braille-large-scale poems (Hamilton); and to disseminate advertisement-flyer-like drawings across The Lab and the neighborhood (Partegàs).

Ester Partegás (b. La Garriga, Barcelona, 1972) lives and works in Richmond, VA. She holds an MFA from the Universitat de Barcelona and has completed postgraduate studies in Multimedia at Hochschule der Künste, Berlin. Partegàs is Assistant Professor in the Sculpture + Extended Media Department at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond. Exhibitions include: Species of Spaces, Museum of Contemporary Art, Barcelona (2015); In __ We Trust, Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH; You Are Here, Anderson Gallery, VCU, Richmond, VA (both 2014); Samesation, DA2 Domus Artium, Salamanca, Spain (2013); Keeping it Real, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2011); Less World, Christopher Grimes Gallery, Santa Monica, CA (2010); Rebava, Galeria NoguerasBlanchard, Barcelona, (2009); The Invisible, The Aldrich Museum for Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT (2008); and Invaders, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain (2007). She is currently teaching at Parsons/ The Newschool in New York.