TIAB by Anna Mikaela Ekstrand

The Immigrant Artist Biennial: Sari Nordman

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.

Sari Nordman, a native of Finland, is a NYC-based interdisciplinary artist working with dance, video and installation. She loves to travel to the isolated parts of the world to reflect on nature, history and female experience, the recurring themes in her works. She continues developing Torni-Tower, an installation work which has received support from the Catwalk Institute and NYU, The Immigrant Artist Biennial, The Amsterdam Collective and Tohmajärvi Residency, for Jamaica Flux: Workspaces and Windows 2021 exhibition and Performance Mix Festival. She worked as a performer with choreographer Dean Moss in 2009-2018, and holds a M.F.A. from NYU/Tisch School of The Arts.

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In Dialogue by Etty Yaniv

Amy Butowicz: Boudoir Theatre at Peninsula Art Space

In Dialogue with Eric Fallen, Founder and Executive Director

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.

TIAB by Anna Mikaela Ekstrand

The Immigrant Artist Biennial: Bianca Abdi-Boragi

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.

Bianca Abdi-Boragi is a French-Algerian/American interdisciplinary artist who received her MFA from Yale School of Art, Sculpture, in 2017 and obtained her BFA from ENSAPC. Her solo shows include “The Heel of the Loaf” at Border Project Space and a presentation at CADAF Art Fair, she has exhibited with the Immigrant Artist Biennial, NARS Foundation, Border Project Space, VCU Arts, NURTUREart Gallery, Chashama Gallery, Field Project Gallery, Galerie Protégé, and The Clemente Soto Velez Center NY, among others. 

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TIAB by Anna Mikaela Ekstrand

The Immigrant Artist Biennial: Jorge Rojas

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.

Jorge Rojas is an artist from Cuautla, Morelos, México. He is interested in cultural, social, spiritual and mediated forms of communication. Rojas uses performance to bring people together through participation, interaction, and active engagement. His interests include spiritual histories, interpretations of ancient rites and customs, institutional critique, and responding to abuses of power.

Artist Interview by Etty Yaniv

Michele Brody – Embodying Daily Flux

A fourth generation NY builder, artist Michele Brody loves working with materials. She recalls how her father groomed her early on to become an architect so that she could continue the family tradition of builders and land developers. Although she excelled in the study of Architecture, she was not attracted to pursue it as career. ” I prefer building with my own hands,” she says. So in 1994, instead of getting a degree in Architecture, she graduated with an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from the Fiber and Material Studies Department.

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In Dialogue by Etty Yaniv

Now + Never – Marcus Aitken

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

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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TIAB by Anna Mikaela Ekstrand

The Immigrant Artist Biennial: Priscilla Dobler Dzul

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.

Born in Merida, Yucatan, Mexico, Priscilla Dobler Dzul, is an interdisciplinary artist working in sculpture, ceramic, film, fiber arts, and performance. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. She has shown at A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; The Bellevue Art Museum, Bellevue, WA; Consulate of Mexico, Seattle, WA; NARS Foundation, Brooklyn, NY; 125 Maiden Lane, NYC, NY; Olympic Sculpture Park, Seattle, WA; Form and Concept, Santa Fe, NM; The Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, Santa Ana, CA; Decentered Gallery, Puebla, Mexico, and DAC Gallery, Los Angeles, CA. 

In Dialogue by Etty Yaniv

Americans Looking In at The Center for Book Arts

In Dialogue with Emilie Ahern and Sherri 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?

Armita Raafat, Untitled, 40 x 80 x 8 inches, fabric, paper, resin, tile, and mirror. 2019. Image courtesy of Raafat
TIAB by Anna Mikaela Ekstrand

The Immigrant Artist Biennial: Yikui (Coy) Gu

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 continues in September through December at EFA Project Space, Greenwood Cemetery, and virtually, presenting 60+ artists. This interview series features 10 participating artists.

Yikui (Coy) Gu was born in 1983 in Nantong, China and emigrated to the United States at the age of seven, growing up in Albany, NY. Yikui (Coy) Gu has a BFA from Long Island University and an MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He has exhibited his work nationally in New York, Miami, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Boston, and St. Louis; and internationally in London, Berlin, and Siena, Italy. His work has been reviewed in the Washington Post, KunstForum International, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Yale Daily News. His work has appeared on the cover of the Lower East Side Review, and in Fresh Paint and Art Maze. He resides in Philadelphia and teaches as Associate Professor of Art at the College of Southern Maryland. He is currently plotting in his South Philly studio, while remaining mostly harmless.

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Artist Interview by Etty Yaniv

Bonny Leibowitz – Not This, Not That, Yet This and That

Bonny Leibowitz makes site responsive sculptural installations with painterly sensibility – they hover in the air, spill on the floor, or sprawl on the walls. Her love of Baroque compositions, Abstract Expressionist gestures is underscored throughout her work. Bonny Leibowitz had a long-standing interest in the illusory nature of experience and the supposition of stability. In Terra Unfirma, her most recent body of work, she tackles what it means to deconstruct expectations and perceptions by using a variety of materials which play off one another – natural appearing manufactured, manufactured appearing natural – constructing environments which may feel ephemeral, eternal, fleeting, solid, light or looming at the same time. The artist refers to this quote: “Everything worth knowing is cloaked in paradox because everything substantial defies being revealed in its totality” – Mark Nepo