Julia Heyward, sometimes known by the moniker Duka Delight, is an artist who has consistently strived towards an emotive, textured, and unapologetically demonstrative approach to her preferred medias of video, performance, and photography. She graduated with a BFA from Washington University, St. Louis, and participated in the Whitney Independent Study Program in 1973. She received an MFA from the Department of the Arts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2003. In 1984, Heyward was one of the first artists to win the inaugural New York Dance and Performance Award known as the Bessie. She was nominated for a Herb Alpert Award in the Arts in the field of music composition in 1995, and in 2004–05 for film/video production. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in Multimedia in 1999 as well as awards from the Rockefeller Foundation, The Greenwall Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts, among others. Her video work, performances, installations, and interactive projects have been exhibited internationally at such venues as the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Kitchen, Lincoln Center, and Anthology Film Archives in New York City; The Daejeon Municipal Museum in Korea; Art Interactive, Boston; Centro de la Imagen, Mexico City; and the Künstlerhaus Stuttgart. Her first monographic study, Consciousness Knocks Unconscious, was curated by Jamie Stevens for The Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, San Francisco, in 2014.

Critical Issues in Contemporary Art Practice is organized by the School of Art + Art History + Design at the University of Washington with support from the Henry Art Gallery. The general public is invited to sit alongside degree-seeking individuals studying fine art to share ideas and raise questions about contemporary art. Following the public lectures, UW graduate and undergraduate art students enrolled in ART 361/595 interface with the visiting artists in the classroom and studio.

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