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The Immigrant Artist Biennial: Nazanin Noroozi

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Nazanin Noroozi, The Rip Tide, 2020. Cyanotype, pastel and ink on paper, 20 x 28 inches, photo courtesy the artist

The Immigrant Artist Biennial (TIAB) is a volunteer, female-led, artist-run project. TIAB 2020 launched in March in New York City at Brooklyn Museum, and continued in September through December at EFA Project Space, Greenwood Cemetery, and virtually, presenting 60+ artists. This interview series features 10 participating artists.

Nazanin Noroozi works predominantly in the medium of printmaking, but also incorporates moving images and alternative photography processes exploring new ways to represent the notions of collective memory, displacement and diaspora. Noroozi’s work has been widely exhibited in both Iran and the United States, including the Museum of Russian Art, Noyes Museum of Art, NY Live Arts, Prizm Art Fair, and Columbia University. She is the recipient of awards and fellowships from , Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, NYFA IAP 2018, Mass MoCA Residency, North Adams, MA and Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts Residency, Ithaca, NY and the winner of “Selection of A New Generation” competition. She is an editor-at-large of Kaarnamaa, a Journal of Art History and Criticism. Noroozi completed her MFA in painting and drawing from Pratt Institute in 2015. Her works have been featured in various publications including Elephant Magazine, Financial Times, and Brooklyn Rail.

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The Immigrant Artist Biennial: Abena Motaboli


Abena Motaboli, The Pieces that hang far up above – in you, in me, in I, in We, in Us, 2019 Plastic Tarp. Dimensions variable approximate 12ft x 12ft x 12ft. Photo courtesy the artist

The Immigrant Artist Biennial (TIAB) is a volunteer, female-led, artist-run project. TIAB 2020 launched in March in New York City at Brooklyn Museum, and continued in September through December at EFA Project Space, Greenwood Cemetery, and virtually, presenting 60+ artists. This interview series features 10 participating artists.

Abena Motaboli is a Southern African born educator, visual artist, and writer based in Chicago. She grew up in Lesotho, a landlocked country in Southern Africa, before moving to the U.S where she obtained her bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts at Columbia College Chicago and at L’Institut Catholique de Paris in Paris, France. With a strong commitment to social justice work in the South and West sides of Chicago and being an immigrant, her artwork comments on displacement, immigration, the African diaspora, and the loss of the sense of home. In her intricate plastic installations and meditative line-work in her paintings, she uses ephemeral material such as plastic, tea, dirt, and coffee to comment on colonialism, past memories, and the culture of creating.

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Visions of an Alternate Universe

In Dialogue with Mixed Media Collage Artist Jenny Brown

Photo of the artist. Photo credit: Brittany Taylor

Providence-based artist Jenny Brown’s mixed media collages and drawings visually present the viewer with her imagined visions of an alternate universe in which the sublime beauty of nature is heightened. She layers vintage photographs, sketchbook drawings, and other paper ephemera of plants and sea flowers, adding delicate linework and speckled marks with ink to create maximalist compositions that invite one to question if how we perceive our own natural world is indeed limited. The artist’s fascination with our current understanding of how time, space, energy, and matter intersect largely informs her art and the process of creating itself.

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The Immigrant Artist Biennial: Matilda Forsberg

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Matilda Forsberg, Feeding rite, 2019, acrylic on canvas, 48” x 36”

The Immigrant Artist Biennial (TIAB) is a volunteer, female-led, artist-run project. TIAB 2020 launched in March in New York City at Brooklyn Museum, and continued in September through December at EFA Project Space, Greenwood Cemetery, and virtually, presenting 60+ artists. This interview series features 10 participating artists.

Matilda Forsberg’s paintings explore heritage, identity, and the duality between the past and present. Her practice is inspired by the complexities of family and cultural tradition, and its emotional and psychological influence on individuals as independent beings. Originally from Sweden, Matilda Forsberg is based in Newark, NJ where she is currently a resident artist at Gallery Aferro. Her work has been exhibited across the country in New York, Los Angeles, Miami, and Portland (OR). She received her BFA in Painting from Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon.

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Amy Butowicz: Boudoir Theatre at Peninsula Art Space

In Dialogue with Eric Fallen, Founder and Executive Director

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Duet, 2020 76.5”h x 84”w x 53”d Canvas, acrylic paint, wood, furniture parts, wheels, and hinges

Amy Butowicz solo show Boudoir Theatre at Peninsula Art Space features a collection of domestically scaled sculptures staged as a group of characters which are readily associated with notions of sensuality, ornamentation, and haute couture. Bulging cushion-like forms, meticulously hand-stitched over wooden structures, display intricate patterns and rich material suggestive of bedding, vanities, corsets and human anatomy. Bold and tender simultaneously, these anthropomorphic forms defy the disdain and fear that are frequently imposed upon feminine artforms, spaces, and bodies. Eric Fallen, founder and executive director of the Red Hook based Peninsula Art Space elaborates on Amy Butowicz’s exhibition and on his art venue.

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Now + Never – Marcus Aitken

In Dialogue with Jacob Barnes, Editor in chief, Soft Punk Magazine

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Marcus Aitken, Now + Never print, Limited edition of 50 on 300gsm Hanehmuhle German etching paper,42×29.7cm

Now + Never, a virtual solo exhibition of new works by London-based gestural artist Marcus Aitken, is released in tandem with Soft Punk’s latest publication. The exhibition will be made available online from November 16th, 2020 via Soft Punk’s web platform. In this interview for Art Spiel, Jacob Barnes, the London and New York based co-founder and editor of this literary arts and culture quarterly, shares some of the background for his publication and for Marcus Aitken’s virtual art exhibit.

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Americans Looking In at The Center for Book Arts

In Dialogue with Emilie Ahern and Sherri Littlefield


The curators, Emilie Ahern (left) and Sherri Littlefield (right), stand in the exhibition space among the works from Americans Looking In. Photo credit: Andrew Littlefield

In the thought-provoking group show Americans Looking In at the Center for Book Arts the curators Emilie Ahern and Sherri Littlefield explore what it means to be “American” mostly through media such as photography, book art, sculpture and prints. Their personal experience of coming from multicultural backgrounds and growing up in the States has prompted them to ask the question – What is American culture today, and what does an American look like?

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Art for Your Collection at the Catherine Fosnot Art Gallery and Center

In Dialogue with Catherine Fosnot

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Inside Atrium 106 showing the work of Karlis Rekevics, Richard Kalina, and Lisa Corinne Davis (left to right), Image courtesy of The Catherine Fosnot Art Gallery and Center, New London CT. Atrium 106 is just one of three atriums being used for the exhibition

Art for Your Collection, the upcoming group show at Catherine Fosnot Art Gallery and Center in New London, CT., features paintings and sculptures by 26 artists who were recommended by New York City art critics and curators. Catherine Fosnot, the founder of the gallery who is an artist herself, says that her own experience as an isolated artist during the pandemic has been an impetus for opening this art gallery as a hub for art discourse and art collection outside large metropolitan centers. The exhibition opens November 12th and runs through December 30th, 2020. Catherine Fosnot shares the genesis of her new gallery, her vision, and how this show evolved.

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Eunice Golden: Metamorphosis at SAPAR Contemporary

In Dialogue with curator Aliza Edelman


Eunice Golden painting Metamorphosis #20 in her East Hampton studio. Photo: © 2007 Walter Weissman

The excellent current exhibition Eunice Golden: Metamorphosis at SAPAR Contemporary, rigorously curated by scholar and curator Aliza Edelman, Ph.D., features paintings and photographs by the 93 years old prolific artist from 1979 to 2009. Based in the West Village and in East Hampton, New York, Eunice Golden has made throughout five decades an outstanding and bold body of work with consistent commitment to her artistic vision and to feminism, while keeping her work admirably fresh and urgent all the way. In her later paintings the body is fragmented and anthropomorphized into a landscape, described by the artist as a philosophical and spiritual outgrowth of her earlier radical oeuvre of sexual body landscapes. Golden says on these recent works, “I am concerned with tactility and the sensation of touch, but also of thought on a primal level, where there are no boundaries and where natural phenomenon are blurred by processes of metamorphosis.” In this interview Aliza Edelman elaborates on the genesis of this show and the ideas behind Eunice Golden’s work.

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With the Grain at New York Artists Equity

In Dialogue with Patricia Fabricant


Patricia Fabricant, with her work “Dream”

The group show With the Grain, curated by artist and curator Patricia Fabricant at the New York Artists Equity, features artists who work directly with wood grain. Patricia Fabricant, who is also a participating artist, shares some of her thoughts on the exhibition. With the Grainopens today, Thursday, Nov 5th from 6-8PM and runs through Sat, Nov 28th, 2020.

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