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Berenika Boberska | Exploring California's Lithium Valley A School of the Art Institute Visiting Artist Lecture

Thursday, April 25 6:00-7:30 PM Buy Tickets Free but Reservations Required

The Driehaus Museum welcomes the School of the Art Institute’s (SAIC) Mitchell Visiting Professor Berenika Boberska to discuss her recent project, Lithium Valley Rituals, an examination of the natural resources present in California’s Salton Sea—‘white gold’ lithium deposits and clay—and the potential toxic landscapes left from mining.

In Lithium Valley Rituals, Boberska explores the material and cultural potential of the lithium mining process by-products, spillages, and spoils. She imagines self-firing terracotta kiln structures made of overburden muds; alchemical color transformations of ceramic glazes endemic to these locations; and fabricated artifacts like landscape tools, ceramic vessels, ceremonial dresses—part folkloric, part technological, and ritualistic in their deployment—that would embody ‘Future Folklores’ of extraction sites.

The event will take place in the Murphy Auditorium. Doors open at 5:30 pm.

This program is produced as a partnership with SAIC’s School of Architecture, Interior Architecture, & Designed Objects and the Visiting Artist Program lecture series.

About the Speaker:

Berenika Boberska is the Mitchell Visiting Professor at the School of The Art Institute of Chicago in the Department of Architecture, Historic Preservation and Designed Objects.

She also taught at the Woodbury School of Architecture in Los Angeles, where she co-founded the Hinterlands Institute - a series of expeditions, fieldwork-based design studios, and exhibitions that engaged with the space beyond the city. She is also the founder of Feral Office based in Los Angeles - a practice at the intersection of architecture, landscape futurism, and speculative folklore.

Berenika Boberska was born in Poland and grew up in the UK. She received her Master of Architecture from the Bartlett School of Architecture, University of London, and Master of Fine Art from the Royal College of Art in London.

Photograph courtesy of the artist.