Tag Archives: Alicia Grullón

Swing Forward While Swaying Back

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SWING FORWARD WHILE SWAYING BACK

October 3 to December 5, 2018
Longwood Art Gallery @ Hostos
450 Grand Concourse at 149th Street, Room C-190, Bronx, NY 10451
TUES – FRI, 1:00 to 7:00 pm.

Opening Reception: Wednesday, October 3, 5:30 to 8:30 pm

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
Alicia Grullón | Blanka Amezkua | Fran Ilich | Francheska Alcantara | Walter Cruz | Yelaine Rodriguez

Curated by Amanda McDonald Crowley

The Hostos Center for the Arts & Culture, Bronx Council on the Arts and the Bronx Arts Alliance present Swing Forward While Swaying Back. Six Bronx artists realize collaborative installations that provocatively and poetically challenge their audiences. Each project simultaneously draws on rich and varied art, activist, and cultural histories to search for something beyond itself – whether in relation to economies of generosity and exchange, practical information about immigration rights, or complex conversations about cultural history.

“When I was drawing connections between the work by the artists in this exhibition, I was reflecting on Elaine Scarey’s book On Beauty and Being Just,” says McDonald Crowley. “Scarey writes: ‘[mental life] is porous, open to air and light, swings forward while swaying back, scatters its stripes in all directions and delights to find itself beached beside something invented only that morning or instead standing beside an alter from three millennia ago.’ It struck me that these Bronx artists all find beauty in their objective to make work that clearly positions itself with a goal to ensure a more just future, but they all also look to their varied pasts to draw connections and to stay grounded in the present.”

The artists in Swing Forward While Swaying Back collaborate with their audiences and with other artists to ‘complete’ their works. It is an exhibition that is about collaboration and invites participation.

Public Programs

Opening Reception
October 3
5:30 – 8:30 pm
Opening Reception with performances and interventions by Alicia Grullón, Fran Ilich with Gabriela Ceja, and Walter Cruz with Art Jones.

  • Alicia serves up Empanada and Information as part of ¡Empanar!
  • Fran in collaboration with Gabriela Ceja activates the Diego de la Vega Coffee Co-op: Against the Walls of Capital, serving coffee and inviting local community members to join this Bronx manifestation of the Coffee Co-op.
  • Bronx photographer Joe Conzo Jr documents the event.

Diego de la Vega Coffee Co-op Activations
October 17, 31; November 28
5:00 – 7:00 pm
Diego de la Vega Coffee Coop: Against the Walls of Capital
Every other Wednesday evening, the Diego de la Vega Experimental Economies and Finance research group will host open meetings in response to a gift of 50 kgs of Zapatista coffee from Ejercito Zapatista de Liberación Nacional to find paths to organize, resist and create alternatives Against the Walls of Capital.
Film Screening of Love and Labor on October 31, 5:00 – 7:00 pm with filmmakers Stephanie Andreou & Sarah Keeling

Closing Reception
December 5
5:30 – 8:30pm
Closing Reception with performance directed by Yelaine with Melanie Gonzalez and Benton C Bainbridge.

Youth Programs
Bronx Council on the Arts also offers bespoke youth programs by appointment. For more information and to book youth group appointments with exhibiting artists or the exhibition curator, please contact Longwood Art Gallery @ Hostos at 718-518-6728.

 

Opening Reception
Photos: Joe Conzo Jr

 

“Maman Brigitte Activation: We are here, because you were there”, was a site-specific performance by Bronx-based collaborative Yelaine Rodriguez, Melaine Gonzalez, Benton C Bainbridge. This activation was performed on December 05, 2018 for the exhibition finissage.

Maman Brigitte came alive in a projected environment of translucent fabrics. The work is inspired by a quote by cultural theorist Stuart Hall and is a commentary of the existences of a new Black culture created from The New World. Concentrated in Haitian and Dominican roots and traditions this performance looks at Maman Brigitte, the death loa in Hoodoo, the protector of cemeteries and graves. She guards spirits in the transition from life to their death. Maman Brigitte is from an ongoing series which celebrates the loa in costume, dance and events.

Rodriguez, Gonzalez, Bainbridge make mixed media, installations, and performances at the intersection of wearable art, performance art, and media art. Conceptual design/sculpture by Yelaine Rodriguez; Cinematography and Video Projection visuals by Melanie Gonzalez; Media Design by Benton C Bainbridge. ‘Maman Brigitte’ was performed by Gina Goico.

 

Background about the exhibition, the artworks, and the artists is also available as a PDF here:
Swing Forward While Swaying Back background information.

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SPRING/BREAK sales site

2018 SPRING-BREAK LOGO BLACK CONTOUR

The sales site for SPRING BREAK Art Show is up. Check out the wonderful work in our contribution to the STRANGER COMES TO TOWN theme – (En)coded Conversations.

I’m so pleased to be presenting work by Alicia Grullón, Chloë Bass, Gonzalo Fuenmayor, Juanli Carrión, and Riitta Ikonen.

Works available at SPRING/BREAK Art Fair site!

Buy tix to visit us on the 23rd Floor, adjacent rooms 2317 and 2313.

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(En)coded Conversations

L: Alicia Grullón, Empanar! R: Gonzalo Fuenmayor, GENESIS VIII

L: Alicia Grullón, Empanar!
R: Gonzalo Fuenmayor, GENESIS VIII

SPRING/BREAK Art Show

STRANGER COMES TO TOWN

March 6 — 12, 2018
4 Times Square, NYC (Chashama), Entrance at 140 West 43rd Street

From March 6 – 12 I will have a project at SPRING/BREAK Art Show during Armory Arts Week. My response to the theme STRANGER COMES TO TOWN is a project I’ve titled (En)Coded Conversations.

List of works at SPRING/BREAK Art Fair site, on consignment through April 30!

(En)Coded conversations: we are all just passing through…

Chloë Bass, Juanli Carrión, Gonzalo Fuenmayor, Alicia Grullón, and Riitta Ikonen are storytellers, who specifically engage their audiences in conversation, and who make work that speaks to strangers helping one another navigate new terrain. Sometimes these conversations are awkward and uncomfortable, but they are always about making connections and navigating safe pathways.

Carrión grew up in regional Spain in a farming and wine growing county: members of the community knew one another, and everyone was connected. The butcher and the baker were essential community members; no one was a faceless stranger. When he moved to New York City he struggled to find ways to participate directly in his communities. As he navigated New York, he started to think about communities as ecosystems and his role, and our role, as plants in those ecosystems, and thus the idea of OSS gardens was born. The drawing for (En)coded conversations questions the text of the USA Immigration and Nationality Act by coloring individually its 148,123 characters to create botanical illustrations of the plants selected by immigrants interviewed for #OSS Manhattan.

Alicia Grullon, serves up empanada and knowledge with her project Empanar! –  a mobile art project working off Bronx street food culture and traditions from El Taller Gráfico Popular. Along with empanada, Grullon distributes flyers that provide information to immigrants on their rights and where to seek counsel.

Gonzalo Fuenmayor’s Papare series examines ideas of exoticism and the complicit and amnesic relationship between ornamentation and tragedy. Opulent Victorian chandeliers and other elements, reminiscent of a decadent colonial past, proliferate from banana bunches, alluding to a tragic and violent history associated with Banana trade worldwide. The theatricality and dramatic nature of the imagery, subordinate the contradictory into a delicate and imaginative order, evoking a certain kind of reconciliation or tense harmony between disjointed realities.

For Gather the house around the table, Bass produced a line of domestic materials that she uses to interact with her audiences –  sometimes in plain sight, and sometimes nearly imperceptibly. Visitors are invited to take their place in at the table, using her objects to enact everyday poetry and share food.

Riitta Ikonen’s photographs in which she costumes herself, and places herself in awkward conversation with built and natural environments are disguises. She is visible in plain sight, while also in conversation with a landscape. The works ask as to think about the costumes (or disguises?) we wear help us navigate new territory.

Individually, these works speak secrets to specific audiences. Collectively, they help us navigate new terrain and make conversation with new communities.

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