Hen Institute
Hen Institute is a public art project sponsored by the City of Raleigh and the Raleigh Arts Commission as part of SEEK Raleigh. It is composed of a mobile chicken coop and classroom inhabited by egg laying chickens. Hen Institute invites artists and community members to use hens as a curatorial framework to create artistic, community-based, and educational programs. Themes include but are not limited to, sustenance, protection, feminism, immobility, nesting, community, sustainability, home, rural, courage, motherhood, nutrition, and generosity.
Occurring at a variety of outdoor locations throughout the city of Raleigh, an assortment of creative and educational performances, exhibits, lectures, and workshops will happen on site at the coop. Community meals created off-site by guest chefs using eggs produced by the hens will compare ideas of creative and educational nourishment to food related nourishment. Raleigh residents are also invited to become Chicken Stewards who will care for the hens and take home the eggs.
SEEK RALEIGH
SEEK Raleigh is a temporary public art program that engages artists to use unique, non-traditional interiors, structures, and outdoor spaces for site-specific, performative, and participatory installations and experiences. These temporary, experimental projects are designed to introduce the public to new, diverse, and thought-provoking experiences as well as create opportunities for artists to extend their creative practice. Through these experiences, both the artist and the community will find novel ways to learn and share the stories of our City.
CURRENT Location
Tully, NY
PAST LocationS
Outside of Sertoma Arts Center: October 7th - November 8th, 2020
Raleigh City Farm: July 5th - August 8th, 2021
The Coop
Adam Carlin
Artist, Founder, & Director
Adam Carlin is a curator, educator, administrator and social practice artist. He is currently the Director of Learning & Engagement at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, NY. He is also co-Director of the artist project, the Greensboro Contemporary Jewish Museum, a decentralized museum that explores the intersections between contemporary art practices and southern Jewish life. Carlin was previously the Director of Community Engagement for UNC Greensboro’s College of Visual and Performing Arts and Director of UNCG’s off-campus contemporary art center Greensboro Project Space. Other notable projects Carlin co-Founded and co-Directed include Creek Colleges, an organization that created schools on the banks of rivers, lakes, and creeks that are going through active restoration and Some Thing Spacious, an experimental project space in Oakland, CA that focused on participatory art practices. He received a BFA from California College of the Arts and an MFA in Art and Social Practice from Portland State University.
Carlin’s practice draws from a variety of histories and lineages. From community organizing principles defined in the civil rights era; to the expanded field of sculpture; to the contemporary canon of socially engaged arts. But first and foremost his practice draws from that which is right in front of him. He makes both permanent and ephemeral projects that are created in context to the external environment, be that a community, a history, a situation, a place, or a person. The projects act as platforms for these constituents to tell their stories, to express their own creativity, and to contribute to a collective idea or action. Some of his personal works often take the form of institutes as artworks which grants artists the power to not only create institutions of their own but to radically reimagine institutional practices in order to counter systemic inequalities that are embedded into the tradition of the arts. Working simultaneously as a curator, educator, administrator, and socially engaged artist, Carlin’s artistic projects have taken the forms of schools, colleges, museums, departments, and various other institutions whose qualities he has co-opted as a container for participatory projects for the public.