Elia Alba
Interdisciplinary
Elia Alba (b. 1962, Brooklyn) received her Bachelor of Arts from Hunter College in 1994 and completed the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in 2001. She has exhibited throughout the United States and abroad. Those include The Rhode Island School of Design Museum; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; The Science Museum, London; ITAU Cultural Institute, Sao Paolo; National Museum of Art, Reina Sofía, Madrid and the 10th Havana Biennial. She is a recipient of numerous awards and residencies for example, Studio Museum in Harlem Artist-in Residence Program in 1999; New York Foundation for the Arts Grant, Crafts 2002 and Photography 2008; Pollack-Krasner Foundation Grant, 2002 and Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant 2002 and 2008; Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) Workspace Program, 2009, and Recess Analog, 2012. Her work is in the collection of the Smithsonian Museum of Art, El Museo del Barrio, Lowe Art Museum to name a few. Her recent project, The Supper Club, brings together artists, scholars and performers of diasporic cultures, through photography, food and dialogue to examine race and culture in the United States. A book on The Supper Club, produced by The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation was published by Hirmer June of this year and critically acclaimed by The New York Times. She is currently Artist-in-Residence at The Andrew Freeman Home in the Bronx.
Image: Portrait of a Young Girl, 2012. Phototransfers on fabric, synthetic hair, acrylic, 36” x 24” x 3”
Marsha Cottrell
Drawing
Marsha Cottrell (b. 1964, Philadelphia) has for more than two decades expanded the definition of drawing by repurposing the functionality of an electrostatic office laser printer, computer and screen unplugged from online space. Her seemingly alchemical process gives material form to an open-ended exploration of nature and technology, exterior and interior, body and machine in luminous, carbon-black images that evoke visionary states, nature and the sublime. Cottrell’s work is in the public collections of The Art Institute of Chicago; Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin; The Morgan Library and Museum, New York; Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; North Carolina Museum of Art; Philadelphia Museum of Art; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Cottrell is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Award (2013), a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Fellowship Grant (2007), and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (2001). Her work has been included in exhibitions at the The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio, among others. Cottrell lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
Image: Aperture Series (40), 2016, Laser toner on paper, unique, 11.625” x 18.125”
Torkwase Dyson
Painting
Torkwase Dyson (b. 1973, Chicago) spent her developmental years between North Carolina and Mississippi. Traversing these geographies helped develop a fundamental interest in architecture, systems, and space. Dyson received a BA from Tougaloo College in 1996, a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1999 and MFA from Yale School of Art in painting/printmaking in 2003. Though working in multiple forms Dyson describes herself as a painter whose compositions address the continuity of movement, climate change, infrastructure, and architecture. For Dyson these subjects in relationship to each other produce abstractions that explore the history and future of black spatial liberation and environmental exploitation. Dyson's solo exhibitions and installations include Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery, New York; Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Chicago; Bennington College VAPA Usdan Gallery, Vermont; Cooper Union, New York; Colby College Museum of Art, Franconia Sculpture Park, Maine; Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education, Philadelphia; Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago, and Davidson Contemporary, New York. Group exhibitions include Between the Waters, Whitney Museum of American Art; Plumb Line: Charles White and the Contemporary, California African American Museum; Look for Me All Around You, 2019 Sharjah Biennial; PopRally: Practice and Ritual, Museum of Modern Art. Torkwase has been awarded the The Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Grant, Nancy Graves Grant for Visual Artists, The Lunder Institute of American Art Fellowship, Spelman College Art Fellowship, Brooklyn Arts Council grant, Yale University Barry Cohen Scholarship, the Yale University Paul Harper Residency at the Vermont Studio Center, Culture Push Fellowship for Utopian Practices, FSP/Jerome Fellowship and Yaddo. Torkwase Dyson’s work has also been supported by the Eyebeam Art and Technology Center, The Laundromat Project, the Green Festival of New York, Obsidian Arts and Public funds of the City of Minneapolis, Mural Arts Program of Philadelphia, The Kitchen, and Dorchester Projects in Chicago. Torkwase Dyson lives and works in New York and is a critic at the Yale School of Art.
Image: Installation view, I Can Drink the Distance, 2019, 41 Cooper Square
Heide Fasnacht
Painting, Drawing, Sculpture
Heide Fasnacht (b. 1951, Cleveland) has shown an abiding interest in states of flux. She has returned to painting/collage after several decades. This return has ushered in a commensurate new area of interest: the depiction of neglected and long forgotten playgrounds. This work is more personal in nature than her previous sculptures. The bodily feelings evoked by climbing and swinging include vertigo, confusion, excitement, and mastery. These works limn vast and sublime spaces. All of this and more are explored through the more direct and fluid medium of paint.
Fasnacht has exhibited at MOMA, Socrates Sculpture Park, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Documenta 6, RAM Galerie in Rotterdam, Galeria Trama in Barcelona, QBox Galerie Athens, Kent Fine Art NYC, the Worcester Art Museum, PS1, and many others. She is in many permanent collections including: the MFA Boston, Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard, The Brooklyn Museum, the High Museum of Art, the Dallas Museum of Art, The Walker Art Center, and the Yale University Art Gallery. Fasnacht is also the recipient of numerous awards, including: The Guggenheim Fellowship, several National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, The Gottlieb Foundation Grant, and two Pollock-Krasner Foundation Fellowships. She has taught at Harvard, Princeton, U Penn, UCLA, Parsons, and others. Further visiting lectures include: Yale, The Whitney Museum, RISD, and VCU.
Image: Turbulence (red), 2019, Acrylic paint on manipulated photo mounted on wood panel, 48” x 60”
Nona Faustine
Photography
Nona Faustine (b. 1969, Brooklyn) is an award winning photographer her work focuses on history, identity, representation, evoking a critical and emotional understanding of the past and proposes a deeper examination of contemporary racial and gender stereotypes. Faustine’s images have been published in a variety of national and international media outlets such as Artforum, New York Times, Huffington Post, Hyperallergic, The Guardian, New Yorker Magazine and the LA Times, among others. Faustine's work has been exhibited at Harvard University, Rutgers University, Maryland State University, Studio Museum of Harlem, Brooklyn Museum, African American Museum in Philadelphia, Schomburg Center for Black Research in Harlem, the International Center of Photography, Saint Johns Divine Cathedral, Tomie Ohtake Institute in Brazil and many others. Her work is in the collection of the David C. Driskell Center at Maryland State University, Studio Museum of Harlem, Brooklyn Museum and recently the Carnegie Museum. In 2019 she was recipient of NYSCA/NYFA Fellowship, Colene Brown Award, Finalist in the Outwinn Boochever Competition of the National Portrait Gallery and selected to be in the first inaugural class of Kehinde Wiley’s Black Rock Senegal Residency in 2019/2020.
Image: From My Body I Will Make Monuments In Your Honor, 2015, Pre-revolutionary Cemetery, Brooklyn
Rhodessa Jones
Interdisciplinary
Rhodessa Jones (b. 1948, Bunnell, FL) is Co-Artistic Director of the acclaimed San Francisco performance company Cultural Odyssey. She is an actress, teacher, director, and writer. Ms. Jones is also the Director of the award-winning Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women and HIV Circle, a performance workshop designed to achieve personal and social transformation with incarcerated women and women living with HIV. Rhodessa received the Theater Practitioner Award presented by the Theater Communications Group in July 2015. The award recognizes “a living individual whose work in the American theater has evidenced exemplary achievement over time and who has contributed significantly to the development of the larger field.” Most recently, the Journal of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care has published Rhodessa’s work with the Medea Project’s HIV Circle as an essay titled “An expressive therapy group disclosure intervention for HIV-positive women: a qualitative analysis.” BIRTHRIGHT? is the first in the Medea Project’s Rituals of Resilience performance series, exploring the capacity of women of all ages, hue,s and cultures to endure in these trying times against great odds, cruel backlash, and low expectations using dance, gesture, song, spoken word, and the stories from women who bounce back, stand strong, and survive!
Image: BIRTHRIGHT?, 2015, The Medea Project in collaboration with Planned Parenthood of Northern California, Brava Theater, San Francisco, CA. Photo by David Wilson.
Jennifer Wen Ma
Visual Art
Jennifer Wen Ma (b. 1973, Beijing, China) is a visual artist whose interdisciplinary practice bridges varied media of installation, drawing, video, public art, design, performance, and theatre; often bringing together unlikely elements in a single piece, creating sensitive, poetic and poignant works. Projects with international institutions include: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain; National Art Museum of China, Ullens Center For Contemporary Art, Beijing; Vancouver Art Gallery; Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art, Charleston; Seattle Art Museum; The Phillips Collection, Washington DC; Qatar Museums, Doha; Cass Sculpture Foundation, UK; Sydney Opera House, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; among others. She conceived, visually designed and directed installation opera Paradise Interrupted, performed around the world, including: MGM Cotai Theatre, 2019; National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts, Taipei National Theatre and Concert Hall, 2018, Singapore International Festival of Arts and Lincoln Center Festival, 2016, Spoleto Festival USA, 2015. In 2008, Ma was on the core creative team for the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, and received an Emmy for its US broadcast.
Image: Paradise Interrupted, 2015, installation opera
Amie Siegel
Interdisciplinary
Amie Siegel (b. 1974, Chicago, IL) works variously between film, video, photography, performance and installation. She is known for layered, meticulously constructed works that trace and perform the undercurrents of systems of value, cultural ownership and image-making. The artist’s recent solo exhibitions include Medium Cool, Blaffer Art Museum, Houston, TX (2019); Winter, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (2017) Strata, South London Gallery (2017); Double Negative, Museum Villa Stuck, Munich; Ricochet, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart; Imitation of Life, Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin (2016), Provenance, MAK- Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna (2015) and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2014). Siegel has participated in group exhibitions including the 2018 Gwangju Biennial; Dhaka Art Summit; CAPC Bordeaux; Witte de With, Rottderdam; Vancouver Art Gallery; MuMA, Melbourne; Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; MAXXI Museum, Rome; Hayward Gallery, London; CCA Wattis, San Francisco; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis and Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin among others. Her work is in public and private collections including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Tate Modern, Carnegie Museum of Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Her works have screened at the Cannes, Berlin, Toronto and New York Film Festivals. She has been a fellow of the DAAD Berliner-Künstlerprogramm and the Guggenheim Foundation, the Fulton Fellow at The Film Study Center at Harvard University, a recipient of the ICA Boston's Foster Prize, Sundance Institute and Creative Capital Awards. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
Image: The Noon Complex, 2016, 3-channel video installation, color/sound
Diane Simpson
Sculpture
Diane Simpson (b.1935, Joliet, IL) is a Chicago-based artist who for the past forty years has created sculptures and preparatory drawings that evolve from a diverse range of sources, including clothing, utilitarian objects, and architecture. The structures of clothing forms has continuously informed her work, serving as a vehicle for exploring their visually formal qualities, while also revealing their connections to the design and architecture of various cultures and periods in history. Her wide selection of materials (wood, perforated metals, linoleum, fabrics ) reflect her interest in the coexistence of the industrial/architectonic and domestic worlds. She has exhibited widely in the US and abroad; most recently in the 2019 Whitney Biennial. In 2010, a thirty-year retrospective was held at the Chicago Cultural Center, and she has had solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. Simpson's work is in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; Art Institute of Chicago; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York; Illinois State Museum, Springfield, IL; Perez Museum, Miami, FL; and the Kadist Art Foundation, San Francisco and Paris, FR. She received a BFA in 1971 and an MFA in 1978 from the Art Institute of Chicago. Simpson is represented by Corbett vs Dempsey Gallery, Chicago; JTT Gallery, NY; and Herald St Gallery, London.
Image: Installation view, Diane Simpson, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. Photo by Charles Mayer
Karina Aguilera Skvirsky
Photography, Video, Performance
Karina Aguilera Skvirsky (b. 1967, Providence, RI) is a multidisciplinary artist that works mainly with photographs, video, and performance. She has exhibited widely in the United States and internationally. She participated in the Cuenca Biennial, which was curated by Dan Cameron in 2016 and the São Paulo Biennial in 2010. She has participated in numerous residencies and received multiple grants including LMCC Workspace (2003), NALAC, (National Association of Latino Arts and Culture 2018), Jerome Foundation (2015) and others. Currently, she is in the production phase of a new project, “How to build a wall and other ruin” that is being funded by a 2019 Creative Capital (NY, NY) grant. Her work can be seen in fairs such as ARCO Madrid, NADA Miami or PArc Lima, where she regularly exhibits with the galleries that represent her. Her work is included in the following collections: Urbes Mutantes, The Whitney Museum of American Art, the SFMOMA, the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as numerous private collections. Skvirsky is an Associate Professor in the Department of Art at Lafayette College, Easton PA. She lives and works in New York, NY and Ecuador.
Image: Ingapirca: Rock #9, 2019, 17” x 22” x 1”, Courtesy of the Artist and Ponce & Robles Gallery, Madrid SP