Chanda Laine Carey is the Andrew W. Mellon Diversity Postdoctoral Fellow at the New York University Center for the Humanities. She specializes in Contemporary art in global context, and presents her research internationally.  Her work focuses on the transcultural aesthetics of Contemporary art, with an emphasis on artists whose practices reflect the influence of cosmopolitan worldviews and experiences.  Her research agenda reaches across borders and cultures, disciplines and media, pursuing a more diverse and inclusive scholarly approach to the criticism and history of Contemporary art.  These studies frequently explore the global geographies of artists’ interest in philosophy, science, and religion.  Her dissertation and ongoing research on Marina Abramovic addresses the development of Abramovic’s transcultural performance aesthetic as a reflection of her spiritual life and global travels, the role of public participation in her work, recent collaborations with neuroscience, and the accelerating globalization of her image in the media.  

Dr. Carey has published widely on American artists including Robert Rauschenberg, Jack Whitten, and Lita Albuquerque, as well as international artists Marina Abramovic (Serbia), Xu Bing (China), and Vik Muniz (Brazil).  Her criticism has appeared in NKA: Journal of African Contemporary Art, YISHU: Journal of Chinese Contemporary Art, and artillery magazine.  The art of the African diaspora features strongly in her research, with multiple studies of Contemporary African American artists in curatorial and academic contexts.  She has contributed research to the exhibition Dimensions of Black at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, and presented her research on Jean-Michel Basquiat for the Association of Critical Race Art History.

She holds a PhD in Art History, Theory and Criticism from the University of California at San Diego, and an MA in Theory and Criticism from Art Center College of Design. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the European Science Foundation, the Max and Iris Stern International Symposia, and the Société Européene pour l’Astronomie dans la Culture have supported her research.

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