A sun shining through the trees Description automatically generated
TIAB by Anna Mikaela Ekstrand

The Immigrant Artist Biennial – In Dialogue

Moving Image: Nicholas Oh & Ayoung Justine Yu, Alexander Si, and Masha Vlasova

Surrealists invigorated the film genre in the 1920s and 30s, especially the Spaniards Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí—who at the time were living in Paris—with their non-linear narrative film Un Chien Andalou (1929). Surrealist elements reign in The Immigrant Artist Biennial 2023: Contact Zone’s exhibition Excavated Selves, Magic Bodies at Alchemy Gallery—where surreal elements allow bodies to thrive, often in hostility. A garment used in the video work Mourning Ritual created by artist duo AYDO (Nicholas Oh & Ayoung Justine Yu) on the border between North and South Korea is included in the show. It uses spirituality, ancestry, and surreal landscape to engage with the separation of families and loss of connection. In Parasites and Vessels at Accent Sisters, Alexander Si employs video matter of fact to document his process of crafting a Birkin bag. Masha Vlasova’s poetic work Waterlands investigates surface and texture in the landscape in Enmeshed, Dreams of Water at NARS Foundation.

A room with art on the wall Description automatically generated
Featured Project by Art Spiel

The Mirror Blue Night at Undercroft Gallery

Featured Project

The Mirror Blue Night originated from an idea artist and curator Patrick Neal had for a show called Dark Noir, referencing the character of the city in the evening hours. When Neal was later invited to curate at the Undercroft Gallery, this idea expanded to include nocturnes and night in general. The gallery is located beneath The Church of Heavenly Rest on Museum Mile, and in this context, Neal began to look for spiritual echoes, considering how evening and twilight hours evoke the afterlife, the cosmos, anonymity, peace, and fear. “I had in mind depictions of darkness but also considered night as a condition that occupies half of our days and half of our lives, with all the symbolic, psychological, and temporal associations that come with it.”

A person holding a child in front of a painting Description automatically generated
Featured Artist by Art Spiel

Anna Shukeylo at James Howe Gallery at Kean

Featured artist

The solo exhibition Reflections in James Howe Gallery at  Kean University features Anna Shukeylo’s latest body of work from 2022- 2023. Shukeylo has always combined in her artwork private, autobiographical moments inter-spliced with imagined elements. Since becoming a mother, she has documented and deeply explored in her paintings and drawings the chaotic routine of early parenthood, including her attempts to balance her art career and the day-to-day rigors of two toddlers.

A street sign on a pole in a city Description automatically generated
In Dialogue by Art Spiel

“KIDNAPPED”

In Dialogue

Shortly after the outbreak of the war between Israel and Hamas, flyers suddenly sprouted on New York streets. These flyers were attached to streetlamp posts, tree trunks, and subway stairwells, showcasing photos of infants, children, teens, and grandparents. beneath bold red banners that read “KIDNAPPED.” These photos capture moments from everyday life of people prior to the Hamas attack on October 7th—babies being fed, grandmas smiling, and teens taking selfies. This public art campaign was the brainchild of Israeli street artists Dede Bandaid and Nitzan Mintz. The couple, partners in life and art, have a history of engaging with public spaces globally in places like Tel Aviv, Berlin, Warsaw, and New York. They have recently arrived in New York to pursue their art. However, the events of October 7th shifted their focus. While trying to grasp the enormity and brutality of the terror attack on Israel, they felt compelled to respond by using the street art techniques they were proficient in. Art Spiel had the opportunity to speak with graffiti artist Dede Bandaid over the phone about the inception of this guerrilla street art campaign, which went viral and all over the globe.

Featured Artist by MICHELE JASLOW

Joanne Ungar on beauty and pain

Featured Artist

Joanne Ungar is a singular talent. Her work is a luminous masterclass in the manipulation of color and wax. A gifted encaustic artist with a scientific approach to her art practice, she speaks directly through her chosen medium to address questions of beauty and pain. We spoke about living in analog and digital worlds, women’s beauty, and finding your own art world.

In Dialogue by Etty Yaniv

Emily Culver: The Idea of a Thing

In Dialogue

Virginia-based artist Emily Culver’s background is as multifaceted as her artwork. With a father who is a carpenter and contractor and a mother who transitioned from being a midwife to a nursing professor, she was raised in a world that merged craft and body. This upbringing influenced her own creative direction. Adept at procedural tasks, she nonetheless felt a pull towards a less constrained form of expression. College introduced her to painting, but she soon sought more than just surfaces, finding herself intrigued by the interplay of gravity, physics, and mechanics.

TIAB by Xuezhu Jenny Wang

The Immigrant Artist Biennial – In Dialogue

Dreams and Rituals: Mia Enell, Chiarina Chen, and Jamie Martinez

When does rational agency relinquish its control over the human psyche? In poetic dreams? During nightmares? Or during meditative rituals? In their work, Mia Enell, Chiarina Chen, and Jamie Martinez explore how meaning is derived from out-of-the-ordinary experiences.

Enell, whose work will be exhibited in Excavated Selves: Becoming Magic Bodies, approaches image-making “with humor and a surrealist bent.” Bodies transformed into vibrant geometries as “a proxy for survival” seem simultaneously physical and non-physical in her work. Chen, an independent curator whose workshop Heal Me Through Your Nightmare will take place on October 22nd, grounds her practice on exploring posthumanism and proposes a collective reconsideration of relationships—with oneself, others, and society. Participating in the group show Enmeshed: Dreams of Water, Colombian-U.S. artist Martinez taps into his creative process through intuitive inquiries that are spiritual and ritualistic. He speaks about the encounter with transcendental artistic guidance by opening up to what’s beyond one’s faculties.

As part of The Immigrant Artist Biennial: Contact Zone, the three creatives come together with Xuezhu Jenny Wang, TIAB’s writer-in-residence, to discuss the intangible and the inexplicable: dreams, rituals, bodies, and metaphysical relations.

Featured Artist by Art Spiel

Armita Raafat: Traces and Silences at High Noon

Featured Artist

In Traces and Silences, exhibited at High Noon Gallery in New York, Armita Raafat showcases multimedia sculptures and handmade paper works. By blending elements like the historic Muqarnas from Islamic architecture with subway tiles from her current base in New York, Raafat offers a juxtaposition that liberates and challenges traditional associations of these materials. Here, the artist elaborates on the insights behind this body of work.

A person walking past a large art piece Description automatically generated
Exhibition Review by Melissa Stern

A Stage Within a Stage- Ye Qin Zhu at Dimin

There’s a riot going on. That’s what I thought as I stood in front of Ye Qin Zhu’s large-scale installation piece at Dimin in Tribeca. The gallery space painted a matte black that seems to absorb all the light in the room, is dominated by one wall-mounted assemblage that is 27 feet long and five feet tall. There is a bench placed in front so that the viewer can take a few minutes to absorb the full volume of information and energy radiating from this piece.

TIAB by Anna Mikaela Ekstrand

The Immigrant Artist Biennial – In Dialogue

Interior Worlds of Sculpture and Performance: Bonam Kim, Raul De Lara, and Nyugen Smith

Creating work that both resists and grapples with their immigrant experiences, Bonam Kim, Raul De Lara, and Nyugen Smith offer distinctive approaches to sculpture. Their perspectives on their immigrant experiences show some overlap but also many differences. As part of The Immigrant Artist Biennial, Kim’s work in Enmeshed, Dreams of Water explores how new morphologies of identity emerge across time, place, and patterns of self-reflection, while Smith and De Lara’s work that will be on view in Excavated Selves, Becoming Magic Bodies begs the viewer to interrogate place through storytelling. Together with the artists, co-curator Anna Mikaela Ekstrand discusses the politics of art and how the artists approach personal histories and historical and political events before the exhibit.