cultural identity – Page 3

March 25, 2022November 2, 2022, by Art Spiel

To Have and to Hold at the Clemente

A picture containing indoor, floor, wall, room

Description automatically generated — *To Have and To Hold* exhibition with works by from left to right: Jean Carla Rodea; Maria De Los Angeles; Micaela Martello; Julia Justo, Maria De Los Angeles; and Jeff Kasper

Featured Project: with curators Anna Shukeylo and Yasmeen Abdallah

The group show To Have and to Hold at the Abrazo Interno Gallery at the Clemente brings together work by Maria de Los Angeles, Julia Justo, Jeff Kasper, Michela Martello, Patricia Miranda and Jean Carla Rodea, who explore in their work notions of beauty and soulful trajectories through the potency of heirloom-like objects. Co-curators Yasmeen Abdallah and Anna Shukeylo share their thoughts on their collaborative curatorial experience.

August 22, 2021August 22, 2021, by Tansy Xiao

Wei Jia: The Remembrance of Ink

A picture containing text

Description automatically generated — Wei Jia, No. 19238, 2021. Gouache, Ink and Xuan Paper Collage on Paper, 31 ½ x 44 ¼ inches. ©Wei Jia, courtesy of Fou Gallery and Chambers Fine Art

At a certain point in one’s life, they stop making new marks or registering new memories. All that remains is a fluid, ever-changing assemblage of the fragments from the past. I would call it no stagnation: it is rather a moderate manner of growing at a different pace.

August 20, 2021August 20, 2021, by Nicole Kutz

Chalet Comellas-Baker: Interrogating the Performance of Identity

A person in a black dress

Description automatically generated with low confidence — *Secrets between (Wo)Men & Nature,* single channel video, 2021

Chalet Comellas-Baker uses video, sound, installation, and print to interrogate memory, environment, and place. The Nashville-based artist is inspired by her Spanish, Cuban and American roots and often references Latin American diasporic histories through her personal lens of assimilation. As the co-owner of Unrequited Leisure, she brings a new dynamic of screen-based artwork with critical and topical investigations into Nashville’s growing art scene.

May 17, 2021July 22, 2021, by Etty Yaniv

Scherezade Garcia: Navigating Histories

Las Meninas and War, from the series Tales of Freedom,1997,Acrylic, charcoal, and ink on camouflage fabric, 58 x 39 inches.

For New York based artist Scherezade Garcia drawing gives rise to visual codes, which lead her to spontaneous compositions and meanings at the same time. Scherezade Garcia loves stories. The books she grew up with still provoke her imagination, words inspire a continuous production of images – “from The Arabian Nights to Greek Mythology, to Hans Christian Andersen to Crusade tragedies, to El Cid, Don Quijote, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Balzac, to Alejo Carpentier, Allan Poe, Garcia Marquez to so many others, I cannot imagine life without it,” she says. Through a variety of media, Scherezade Garcia evokes in her artworks the physicality of art making while alluding to layered narratives of history.

May 10, 2021July 22, 2021, by Etty Yaniv

Tomo Mori: Fibrous Points of Origin

Filling the gap, 2020. 24″x30″. Acrylic, painted canvas fabric on masonite board.

Tomo Mori is a Japanese-born and New York City-based fiber artist who has been focusing on two main bodies of work: wall based collage series and sculptural
installations . In both she is working with used materials like old clothes and linens, fabrics she keeps reusing and transforming into new forms. During this 2021 Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Tomo Mori shares what brought her to art making, what role her cultural background plays in her work, and what are some of her recurrent themes and processes.

December 28, 2020November 24, 2020, by Tansy Xiao

Michael Sakamoto – Resolving the Unresolvable

In Dialogue with Michael Sakamoto

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Description automatically generated — Michael Sakamoto’s Performance Blind Spot, Chamber Dance, photographer: Martin Cohen

Michael Sakamoto is an interdisciplinary artist and scholar active in dance, theatre, performance, photography, and media. His solo, ensemble, and visual works have been presented in 15 countries throughout Asia, Europe and North America. Art Spiel had a conversation with him on the alienation of the body; the gender roles and queerness in Butoh, as well the deterritorialization and exotification of non-Western art.

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

The Immigrant Artist Biennial: Yikui (Coy) Gu

Yikui (Coy) Gu, *Oriental Flavor*. 2019. Gouache, charcoal, acrylic, gouache on photograph, chopsticks. Ramen noodle packaging & flavoring pack on bristol board.

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.

August 10, 2020August 10, 2020, by Etty Yaniv

Padma Rajendran – On Cultural Tenderness

Padma Rajendran, *Along the way,* 2019, Dye on silk with stitching, dimensions varied, photo courtesy of the artist

Malaysian born and New York based artist Padma Rajendran works in diverse media yet currently views paper and fabric as her primary materials. She highlights the portable nature of paper and fabric, along with their significance as “keepers of culture, comfort, and call upon the function of the decorative”. Padma Rajendran shares here some insight on her work, what brought her there and where she is heading from here.

June 7, 2020May 30, 2020, by Etty Yaniv

Artists on Coping: Cecile Chong

During the Coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping.

A person in a yellow dress posing for a picture

Description automatically generated — At EFA Studios. Photo: Gaby Deimeke

Cecile Chong is an Ecuadorian-born, New York-based multimedia artist working in painting, sculpture and installation in which she layers material, identities, histories and languages. Her work addresses ideas of culture interaction and interpretation, as well as the commonalities humans share both in our relationship to nature and to each other. Inspired by materials as signifiers, Chong is interested in how we acquire and share culture, and how world cultures now overlap and interact in ways previously inconceivable. With uncertainty looming in everything from our economies to our weather patterns, she’s concerned with the fragility of our civilization despite the universality of its cultural underpinnings.

January 14, 2020November 15, 2020, by Etty Yaniv

Nina Mdivani – NY Meets Tbilisi: Defining Otherness Part I & II

In Dialogue with Nina Mdivani on her curatorial project at Kunstraum LLC (Brooklyn) and The Assembly Room (LES)

Rusudan Khizanishvili, *Producing The New Body* 2019, Acrylic on canvas, 31.49 x 27.55 inches

Nina Mdivani is an independent curator, art writer, and current Curator-in-Residence at Kunstraum located in the Brooklyn Navy Yard neighborhood. Her rigorous curatorial process and research have recently culminated in a two-part exhibition, New York Meets Tbilisi: Defining Otherness. This dynamic group show pairs the works of Georgian and American artists to create multilayered dialogues across cultural identities. Nina Mdivani shares with Art Spiel some of her background, and elaborates on the premise for the upcoming group show she has curated.