About The Transart Foundation for Art & Anthropology
Mission Statement
The Transart Foundation is a private, non-profit organization established by artists and scholars in Houston, Texas, in 1996 for the purpose of supporting individual artists, scholars, curators, filmmakers, and directors whose work incorporates contemporary social research and cultural critique.
Objectives
To broaden and promote the conceptual base of a post-colonial vision of art and its interpretation.
To stimulate a trans-disciplinary understanding of art, founded in the anthropology of the creative process and its contributions to society.
To develop and promote the artist’s own social, anthropological poeisis in their thought processes.
Artist Owner’s Collaborative Nature Permeates High-Concept Transart Foundation Building | Surpik Angelini Interview by Molly Glentzer | Houston Chronicle
Slow Art: Surpik Angelini’s Serene Privte Kunsthalle in Montrose Offers a Temple to Contemplation and Activism (PDF) | Catherine D. Anspon | Paper City
New Building
Our new home is located in the museum district of Houston, Texas, at 1412 West Alabama Street, near the Menil Collection.
About the Founder | Surpik Zarikian Angelini
Surpik Angelini is a Houston based artist, independent curator, and writer. Her work is rooted in the overlapping disciplines of art, architecture, and cultural anthropology.
Trained in art at Mills College and Cornell University (1966-68) and in architecture and urban planning at the Universidad Central de Venezuela (1971-76), she obtained her BArch from the University of Houston (1979). With artist-theorist Abdel Hernandez, she founded the Transart Foundation: a workshop for Art and Anthropology based in Houston, TX. Surpik has directed since 1996, pushing the foundation's mission to support artists and scholars involved in relevant social, anthropological and interdisciplinary research.
Surpik’s artistic vision was impacted by her collaborative performances with John Cage and Gordon Matta Clark (1966-68); her theoretical studies with Thomas McEvilley (1990-1994) at Rice University and her association with the Rice Department of Anthropology (1997), when they co-sponsored Transart’s Artists in Trance: New Methodologies in the Work with the Other, a semester program of lectures, documentary films and cutting edge exhibitions of anthropologically based art, she co-curated with Hernandez in 1997. As an artist she exhibited in solo and group shows in Houston.
As a cultural researcher, she lectured in universities and museums throughout the country. Her critical essays have been published in art magazines, academic journals, artist's catalogs and monographs.
"When Architecture Dreams" (Video) / Surpik Angelini and Carlos Pelayo
Presentation of “SKETCHES,” a book by surrealist painter Jorge Camacho
Collaborations
Since 1996 Angelini has collaborated with artists and scholars through the Transart Foundation. The artists’s and scholars’s work involves interdisciplinary research in contemporary art, ethnography and cultural anthropology: Abdel Hernandez San Juan, visual artist, cultural anthropologist, ethnographer and writer (1996- 2002); Alejandro Lopez, visual and performance artist (1997-2007) ; Lazaro Saavedra, conceptual artist ethnographer (1997) ; Ernesto Leal conceptual artist ethnographer, writer (1996-1997) ; Juan Jose Olavarria; multimedia artist ethnographer, writer (1996-1997) ; Juan Carlos Rodriguez, performance artist-ethnographer (1996-1997) ; Luis Gomez Armenteros, visual artist, cultural researcher(1999) ; Nilo Castillo, performance musical artist, ethnographer (1997) ; Fran Rodriguez, documentary film director (1996-1997) ; Jose Saul Martinez, cultural anthropologist, ethnographer (1997-1998) ; Thomas MsEvilley, Phd. Philosophy, art historian, writer and poet (1989-1997) ; George E. Marcus, Phd. Anthropology, writer, ethnographer, cultural researcher (1997-2000) ; Stephen Tyler, Phd. Anthropology, linguist, writer (1997) ; Stanford Carpenter, Phd. Anthropology and cartoonist (1999/2001) ; Cecilia Vicuña, multimedia performance artist and poet (1999) ; Elia Arce, ethnographic researcher, writer and performance artist (2002-2009) ; Cameron Armstrong, architect-cultural researcher /curator (2000) ; Robert Neustadt, Phd. Latin American Literature, writer, cultural researcher (2002) ; Johannes Birringer, writer, cultural researcher, multimedia performance artist (2003) ; Fiamma Montezemolo, Phd. Anthropology, writer, conceptual multimedia artist (2008) ; Jorge Folgueira, writer and theatre director (2002-2007) ; Lawrence Elbert, documentary film director (2007) ; Rina Carvajal, art curator, writer (2002/2013) ; Alex Karpovsky, actor, ethnographic film director (2007) ; Tarek Elhaik, Phd. Anthropology film curator (2009) ; Aisen Caro Chacin, Phd. Robotics, experimental artist, curator (2010); Nancy Douthy, artist photographer, cultural researcher (2010) ; Mary Ellen Carroll, visual and conceptual performance artist, curator (2010) ; Mari Carmen Ramirez, Phd. Art History, cultural researcher, curator, writer (2011-2016) ; Jorge Camacho, visual artist, photographer, writer, cultural researcher (2012) ; Milton Becerra, multimedia artist, ethnographic researcher (2013) ; John Collins, Phd. Anthropology, ethnographic researcher, writer (2013) ; Joyce Burstein, artist, cultural researcher, editor (2014) ; Delilah Montoya, artist, photographer, cultural researcher (2014) ; Fabiola Lopez Duran, Phd. Art and Architectural History, cultural researcher, curator, writer (2015) ; Linarejos Moreno, Phd. Art History, multimedia artist, photographer (2015) ; Michael Wellen, Phd. Art History, curator, researcher(2016) ; Gustavo Diaz, cultural researcher, visual artist, curator (2016) ; Gerardo Rosales, multimedia artist and cultural researcher (2019) ; Christy Jadick, multimedia artist and ecological researcher (2019) ; Mery Godigna Collet, multimedia artist and cultural researcher (2019) ; John Calaway, multimedia artist and technological researcher (2019) ; Vicky Meek, multimedia artist and cultural researcher (2019) ; Gocke Gunel, Phd. Anthropology, ecological researcher (2020) ; Dawn DeDeaux, conceptual multimedia artist, editor, writer, filmmaker, ecological researcher (2020).