Artist Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, based in San Juan, Puerto Rico, will continue “Art and the Radical,” an art lecture series, facilitated by the department of art and design at Grand Valley State University. The artist will discuss her work about exploring recuperation from trauma, regeneration, effect and how our connections to our past are actively produced, maintained and refuted.

Santiago Muñoz’s lecture will be held Wednesday, Feb. 1 at 6:30 p.m. at the Civic Studio (336 Straight Avenue SW) in downtown Grand Rapids.

The Art and the Radical lecture series is comprised of thought-provoking, world-renowned artists who have completed pieces and projects that challenge the public’s imagination with practical, political or imaginative aspects.

Using her photography, Santiago Muñoz explores different spaces, communities and terrains in an unique and slow way. Her work stems from heavy research, observation and documentation, and her camera is an object with “social implications.”

According to the GVSU department of art and design, Santiago Muñoz demonstrates her concern for the role of the camera as a linguistic, political and conceptual frame through which actions or events are seen. Santiago Muñoz’s lecture will be discussing her research, practices and work itself.

“Her transdisciplinary work points to and borrows from experimental cinema, documentary filmmaking, ethnography and anthropology, among other practices and disciplines,” said Nayda Collazo-Llorens, Padnos Distinguished Artist-in-Residence. “Her work is as poetic as it is political. I think we are in for a treat.”

Santiago Muñoz will also be visiting GVSU for the 2017 Whitney Biennial, an exhibition of 63 participants, focusing on the formation of the self and the individual’s place in an upending society. The exhibition is located at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City and will display Santiago Muñoz’s work from March 17 to June 11.

Santiago Muñoz’s work has been displayed all across the world, including London, New York City, Mexico City, Seattle and Chicago. Most of her pieces explore the different aspects of politics, nature and communities.

“The lecture will be full of intimately engaging images and videos, new ideas, and also, things that make you reflect and think about the unconscious decisions that get made in your world- all of the different ways that you think about the world are embedded in her work,” said Paul Wittenbraker, professor of 2D foundations and visual studies at GVSU. “It’s so interesting to have a visitor that produces professional content. It’s around all of cultural aspects like politics, feelings, social relations, so it’s how students tie it all together, how they see a real life example of the things they’re trying to learn on their own and with this university.”