ARTWORK
KEVIN QUILES BONILLA / In Between (Nié)
What shapes our movement and image in the everyday space? What power impacts the individual in public, and in private? What histories frame us? And what culture claims or rejects us? Using installation and performance-based strategies as resources for re-signification, my current work deals with representations of the colonial subject, constantly traveling on unsolid grounds. I do so through the intersection of structures such as space, language, history and politics, with a body like mine transiting between Puerto Rico (the colony) and the United States (the mainland). Ultimately, my work seeks to unearth the construction of a Queer, historic heritage, using my body as the political repository, colonized by multiple structures of power: As a Puerto Rican, as a diaspora migrant, as a person with a disability, and as a queer man.
ALEXANDER HERNANDEZ / Crying in Spanish
Reflecting on his work Alexander Hernandez states, “growing up as a sissy-boy who hated gym, craft was a way to create my own safe space where my love of American pop culture and Mexican upbringing could coexist.”
Through stitching, Alexander’s work explores intersectional identities rooted in immigrant experiences, gender expectations, HIV+ survival, and queer sensibilities. He patchworks together domestic fabrics, digitized prints, cultural textiles and pop-cultural artifacts to create Frankensteinian-like work that embraces layers and patterns. In the process Alexander’s goal is to challenge gender roles and acculturation anxieties through visual code switching.
(Works on loan from FLXST CONTEMPORARY, Chicago IL)
ALEXANDER HERNANDEZ / Brown Dreamsicle
IKORMA / Day Dreamer + Dreamer 2
IKORMA is the four handed, Venezuelan and Hillsborough, NC based father-son artist duo who create mixed media works that reflect on what it means to simply be human. Their abstracted faces are composed with color, shape, and light; seeing themselves as cosmic beings from a collective consciousness that has the power to transcend the individual and embrace the connectedness of human lives.
IKORMA says of their series KOSMIK BEINGS, “We are all connected, it doesn't matter your skin, hair or eye color, we are all one...we paint their soul, maybe their energy, maybe an evolution of ourselves, that is for you to explore while you see the artwork. De aquí y de alla venimos, but we all end in the same place.”
PEDRO LASCH / Made Elsewhere
Pedro Lasch’s body of work, Made Elsewhere, is a series of extreme photographic close-ups of twenty-six Statue of Liberty figurines. Each of these is made outside of New York and outside of the United States, a majority of them were made in China. The juxtaposition of the American icon that is the State of Liberty and the freedom and migration that it symbolizes, with the idea of souvenirs “made elsewhere,” challenges notions of place. Made Elsewhere suggests that home is not a fixed latitude and longitude, but is a fluid construction that shifts continuously and transcends physical place all together.
Made Elsewhere exists in four versions, a headshot set of all figures (aluminum print, 12” x 15”, edition of 10), a set of varied compositions (archival matte photo paper, 18” x 24”, edition of 10), a smaller selection of large scale full figure shots (archival matte photo paper, 38” x 60”, edition of 10), as well as an unlimited edition standard postcard accordion whose cropping and composition of all photographs is consistent with the most common tourist postcard of the Statue of Liberty's face in three quarters.
ELIANA RODRIGUEZ / Gaining Strength
As a Latina woman of color, Eliana Rodriguez’s Dominican and Honduran ethnic backgrounds have always played large roles in her artwork, both visually and conceptually. Upon reflecting on what it means to come from a beautifully rich history that has been colonized, Eliana created a body of work that reflects her own thoughts and experiences as they relate to her cultural identity. For this body of work she has used a variety of mediums to create an installation that symbolizes the process of her arrival to her current identities. Eliana says, “Researching the indigenous people of where my parents are from and learning more about family traditions and my childhood were major steps in the creation of this work. Through this entire process of researching, reflecting and creating, I have found a way to visually represent my deeper connection to my parents, my culture and the places where my family comes from. All these discoveries, my own lived experiences, and the creation of this work come together to create my identity as a Dominican-Honduran Latina woman of color.”
JHONA XAVIERA / yoni del jardín
Jhona Xaviera is “a multimedia performance artist and interdimensional chimæra who uses poetry, music, photography, video, and performance to create worlds that honor the divine, monstrous, and human multiplicities of the trans experience.” They look to history, personal and collective, to ask questions about power. Jhona looks to the present, here and there, to ask questions about empathy. She looks to the future, ours and theirs, to ask questions about desire. These alchemical elements come together to form ritually activated altars that act as catalysts for radical self love.
Jhona says, “When the language I was given fails, I choose to build a visual poetic realm purely out of the yearnings, skepticisms, and frustrations of my ancestors. I am inspired by the centuries of marronage, ballroom, radical uprising, queer theory, decolonial praxis, and Afro-Caribbean religion that contextualize my lifetime. I offer space for others to join me in embodying their inner child, their shadow self, and their highest self, and the communities that celebrate them.”
[NAVIGATION] HOME || ARTWORK || VIDEOS || INSTALLATION || INTERVIEWS || ALTERS
[NAVIGACIÓN] PAGINA PRINCIPAL || OBRAS || VIDEOS || INSTALACIÓN || ENTREVISTAS || ALTARES