Lectures
Myriam Bellazoug Memorial Lecture
Esther Choi
Double Negatives: On Pictures and Petroaesthetics
Esther Choi is a multidisciplinary artist, based in New York City, whose practice includes photography, video, dialogue-based engagement, publishing, and writing. With a background in photography and architectural history, her artistic practice and research often explore how concepts of nature—and, by extension, ideas about “normality"—have been shaped by modern worldmaking practices.
For several years, Choi has produced interrelated participatory artworks by and for cultural workers who identify as Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour. These include Office Hours (2020–), a knowledge-sharing project for BIPOC cultural producers, and Public Service (2023-), an online archive of conversations between BIPOC artists, scholars, and designers about catalyzing social change in the culture industries.
Choi’s writing has appeared in Art Papers, Harvard Design Magazine, The Journal of Architectural Education, and e-flux, in addition to edited volumes and exhibition catalogs. She is the co-editor of Architecture at the Edge of Everything Else (MIT Press, 2010) and Architecture Is All Over (Columbia U, 2017). Her work has received support from The Ford Foundation, Canada Council for the Arts, Social Sciences Humanities Research Council of Canada, Richard Rogers Fellowship, The Graham Foundation, and Society of Architectural Historians.
Choi holds a joint Ph.D. in Architectural History and Interdisciplinary Humanities (Princeton University), an MDes in Architectural History (Harvard University), an MFA in Photography (Concordia University), and a BFA in Photography (Toronto Metropolitan University). In 2022, she was a Getty/ACLS Postdoctoral Fellow in the History of Art. She has taught at The Cooper Union since 2016.