Brooklyn Museum – Art Spiel

January 22, 2024December 6, 2024, by Etty Yaniv

Swoon – Hushed and Big Voices

In Dialogue

All images courtesy of Tod Seelie. — Swoon, Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea, photo courtesy of Tod Seelie

Brooklyn-based artist Caledonia Curry, known as Swoon, is celebrated internationally as one of the first female street artists in a male-dominated field. For over two decades, Swoon has explored human experiences through public art, museum exhibitions, and film. Her latest projects look at the ties between trauma and addiction, inspired by her own life in a family affected by opioid addiction. She works closely with communities, using art to show empathy and help people heal. Over the last ten years, Swoon has led important projects in places like Braddock and Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, New Orleans in Louisiana, Venice, and Komye in Haiti, tackling everything from natural disasters to the opioid crisis.

July 14, 2023May 12, 2024, by Saul Ostrow

It’s Pablo-matic: Picasso According to Hannah Gadsby

Opinion

Left: Pablo Picasso, 1920. © 2023 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Right: Hannah Gadsby, 2018. (Photo: Alan Moyle). — Left: Pablo Picasso, 1920. @2023 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Right: Hannah Gadsby, 2018. (Photo: Alan Moyle).

In our current era where historical and critical thinking are on the wane, one can’t complain about a show being ahistorical, but one can be faulted for lacking a cogent dialogue. Consequently, though mashing things together can produce interesting results, the parts must communicate with one another in a meaningful manner. Problematically, the exhibit, It’s Pablo-matic: Picasso According to Hannah Gadsby at the Brooklyn Museum resembles Gadsby’s stand-up comedy routine—it rambles from subject to subject, and in this case, its cohesion relies on the audience’s attempt to understand how it is all connected to the red-herring Picasso. Considering Gadsby has been put in the position of playing auteur in a medium she is unaccustomed to, one which is visual and not language-based, it might have been a more interesting exercise in a post-way of thinking to present solely the exhibition’s wall texts, or conversely just the works themselves without commentary rather than clinging to the conventions of theme based exhibitions.

July 13, 2023July 10, 2023, by Art Spiel

The Immigrant Artist Biennial Names 48 Artists and Art Spiel as Media Partner for their 2nd Edition

Sanié Bokhari. *It’s 11.49 pm here*, 2022. 3 x 4 ft. Acrylic on canvas. Courtesy of the artist and The Immigrant Artist Biennial.

The second edition of The Immigrant Artist Biennial, titled “Contact Zone”, will showcase the work of 48 artists at seven locations across New York and New Jersey from September to December 2023. The curatorial trio adopted the biennial’s theme from a term coined in 1991 by linguist and critical theorist Mary Louise Pratt, which she used to describe “social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations.” Katherine Adams, co-curator and an affiliate of EMPAC, explains in a statement how this concept guided their curatorial research: “It allowed us to work with a productively fractured relationship to place. It also encapsulates our attempt to find an organizational concept for artistic infrastructures that are diasporic in form and not only content—that can deal with effects of situations such as exile, alienation, or simply the elusive concept of home.”

May 1, 2023April 15, 2023, by Amy Talluto

Whisperings from the Wormhole with @talluts

Art Made in Kitchens

A group of people holding flags

Description automatically generated with low confidence — Luchita Hurtado Encounter, 1971, ©Luchita Hurtado

“There’s always time to do what you really want. When I had children, I worked when everybody went to bed, after 11pm. I would set up at the kitchen table and clean it very well before I would start.”

–Luchita Hurtado

Remember in the darkest, most locked down days of the pandemic, when all of us were stuck within our own walls, and many of us had kids at home too? And we found ourselves having to resort to making work at the kitchen table in between the cracks of work and school. Well, it got me thinking that this was nothing new to the history of making art: a history that wants us to think that its entire timeline is full of swaggering guys in big New York City lofts, hands-on-chins, undistracted by life’s mundanity. But, in fact, the reality of being an artist is rife with personal stories of people who had to make it work. They, like us, squeezed making art in between the oven timer and the kids’ nap, or in between the hours of a demoralizing 9-5. And quite frankly, those artists that find a way to eke through those tough years of limited space and time are the artists that have the swagger that impresses me the most.

December 19, 2020November 2, 2022, by Anna Mikaela Ekstrand

The Immigrant Artist Biennial: Priyanka Dasgupta & Chad Marshall

Priyanka Dasgupta & Chad Marshall, *The Silk & Spice Tour: Calcutta,* 2020, Ink on Paper, 17 X 24.5 inches, ©Priyanka Dasgupta & Chad Marshall

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.

Priyanka Dasgupta and Chad Marshall’s practice draws from sociological conventions, archival texts, and postcolonial studies to examine power and disenfranchisement in the US and their relationship to appearance. Recent exhibitions of their work include ‘Uptown Triennial’ (2020), ‘The Immigrant Biennial’ (2020), ‘Pigeonhole,’ Knockdown Center, NY (2019), Dodd Galleries, UGA, Athens (2019), Sunroom Project: Paradise, WaveHill, NY (2018), In Practice: Another Echo, SculptureCenter, NY (2018). Residencies include Artist Studio Program, Smack Mellon (2018-19) and AIRspace, Abrons Arts Center (2018). Dasgupta and Marshall’s work has been reviewed in various publications. They are recipients of the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, 2019-20.

December 17, 2020November 2, 2022, by Anna Mikaela Ekstrand

The Immigrant Artist Biennial: Georgia Lale

Georgia Lale, “3”, 2020, performance, photo by Petros Lales

Georgia Lale is Greek visual artist with Anatolian heritage, based in New York City. She received her MFA from the School of Visual Arts, NYC, and her BFA from the Athens School of Fine Arts, Greece. She is the recipient of several awards and fellowships. Her work has been shown internationally in Berlin, Venice, Brussels, Izmir, and Athens, among others. She has presented her work in major performance festivals, such as the Venice International Performance Art Week and Nuit Blanche Festival in Brussels. Lale’s work has been exhibited in the New York City area, including Smack Mellon, Shiva Gallery, and The Hole. She has been invited to talk about her work by Yale University, the Dedalus Foundation, and MoMA. Her public performance #OrangeVest was presented at the Greek Pavilion at the 15th Venice Architecture Biennale.

December 15, 2020November 2, 2022, by Anna Mikaela Ekstrand

The Immigrant Artist Biennial: Renana Neuman

Renana Neuman, Temporarily Removed, Part 1, Daydreaming, installation view, 2019, photo courtesy the artist

Renana Neuman is a Brooklyn-based artist, producer, and curator born in Israel. In her artistic practice, Renana makes media-installations that mash together eras, continents, and modes of consciousness. She combines video, animation, and text to describe the emotion-driven political ambiguities of our contemporary moment. Renana’s works invoke the ghosts of our cultures and invite them to haunt us, to tell us their stories, to play.

December 10, 2020November 2, 2022, by Anna Mikaela Ekstrand

The Immigrant Artist Biennial: Nazanin Noroozi

A picture containing water, sitting, holding, person

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

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.

December 8, 2020November 2, 2022, by Anna Mikaela Ekstrand

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

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.

December 3, 2020November 2, 2022, by Anna Mikaela Ekstrand

The Immigrant Artist Biennial: Matilda Forsberg

C:\Users\MForsberg\Desktop\Current\New folder\Immigrant Artist\Art Spiel\feeding rite.jpg — *Matilda Forsberg, Feeding rite, 2019, acrylic on canvas, 48” x 36”*

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.