The Center for Innovation, Research and Creativity in the Arts presents Andrew Keiper and Kei Ito, a collaborative artist team whose large-scale visual and sound installations probe the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and their intertwined family histories. Ito’s grandfather witnessed the explosion of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima that killed his family, while Keiper’s grandfather was an engineer who contributed to the effort to develop the bomb. Their collaboration grapples with this history while asserting its pertinence to a contemporary audience living in an increasingly unstable political landscape. Ito and Keiper seek mutual understanding while contemplating the roots, sorrow and scope of the bombing. In an era of overt nuclear crisis unlike any seen in decades, Afterimage Requiem asks the audience to reflect on the ramifications of our current course, and to learn from the past. The artists will discuss their project Afterimage Requiem, a pairing of Ito’s 108 photographic prints, and Keiper’s four-channel audio experience, as well as their forthcoming work, Archives Aflame.

In 2016, Ito and Keiper received the Rubys Artist Project Grant through the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance to create Afterimage Requiem. The Rubys were conceived and initiated with start-up funding from the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation and are a program of the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance. Further support for this project comes from Full Circle Fine Art Services.

Andrew Paul Keiper is a sound artist based in Baltimore, Maryland, where he is faculty in the Animation and Film programs at the Maryland Institute College of Art. His work addresses the legacy of nuclear weaponry, race and white supremacy in Baltimore, and the frontier between sound art and experimental music. Andrew’s art has spanned the gamut from painting and woodworking to video and performance, but currently he primarily produces sound-based art, installation, sound design and scores. His work very often portrays reverberant acoustic spaces and the ways sounds erode when transmitted or recorded. Andrew’s work asks the audience to listen deeply into and through imagined worlds that both resist and open up to our hearing. Andrew received his BFA in painting from the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University in 2002 and his MFA from MICA’s Photographic and Electronic Media program in 2016. He has exhibited in Baltimore, New York City, Philadelphia, New Jersey and Washington, DC. Andrew’s work has been covered by the Washington Post Magazine, the Washington Post, the BBC, the Baltimore Sun, Baltimore Magazine, Bmore Art and others.

Kei Ito is a conceptual photographer working primarily with camera-less image making and installation art. Ito earned his MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2016, following his BFA from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 2014. Ito’s work addresses issues of deep loss and intergenerational connection as he explores the materiality and experimental processes of photography. His recent exhibitions include Afterimage Requiem at the Baltimore War Memorial funded by the Rubys Artist grant; an art billboard project in NYC funded by 14×48.org, an art billboard organization; Only What We Can Carry, a solo show at the Hillyer Art Space in Washington DC; a solo exhibition hosted by Noorderlicht in the Netherlands; and he is one of the participants of 2018 FOTOFOCUS Biennial in Cincinnati. Ito’s works have been collected by major art institutions including: the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, IL; the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, FL; the California Institute of Integral Studies/Chroma in San Francisco, CA; En Foco in the Bronx, NY; and the Nikon Corporation in Tokyo, Japan.

Admission is free, and a free lunch will be provided.