EXHIBITION

Face to Place

60 Wall Gallery-Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation's gallery, New York, New York, 06/25/2015 - 01/04/2016

60 Wall Street, New York

ABOUT

APT artist Priscila De Carvalho is participating "Face to Place" that features select participants of the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program from its inaugural year in 2007 through 2014. The exhibition highlights the acute observations and the unique perspectives that are often manifested through the immigrant-artist experience of transitioning to living and creating in another country. "Face to Place" brings together portraiture, landscape and observations regarding the contemporary urban, natural and social environments we share. Each of the artists is sensitive to different aspects of experience, incorporating an identity and allegiances that they bring with them into a new reality.


Seeking to understand their adopted home, the place they left, and the persistent dialogue between the two raises existential questions and often translates into dualistic modalities and juxtapositions in the work. Their practices explore a wide range of aesthetic positions that reflect the intellectual, political and emotional nature of re-location. 

Duality is a consistent theme. Ezra Wube speaks of "belonging to two worlds. As an immigrant, one can never be fully part of the present or the past.” Denise Treizman considers this in her practice, reclaiming and inventing discarded objects from the streets of New York City. “These objects are particularly eye-catching to many of us who were raised in a ‘pass along’ culture, where the lifetime of an object is maximized (as opposed to easily disposable).” Doris Neidl’s video “Sometime” plays with the impossibility of “togetherness,” being close and far at the same time, as it is when living in two different countries.

Some of the artists, including Eva Nikolova, Olivié Ponce, Laetitia Soulier and Hidemi Takagi, manifest the theme with environmental structures. Eva Nikolova speaks about the persistent use of "vernacular architecture as a motif, for as immigrants [we are] always negotiating the notion of belonging, and grappling with the meaning of “home”. Katya Grokhovsky, Priscila De Carvalho and Hai Zhang bring social commentary to their observations of environment. Katya Grokhovsky’s performance, "Status Update," filmed in the Wall Street area, investigates the experience of alienation in crowds of visitors, while Priscila De Carvalho's images of nature and architecture are symbolic commentaries. "A Butterfly Flies," references the social reality for many countries in conflict, where destruction is both natural and man-made. She uses the imagery of butterflies "to enable the audience to feel a sense of hope within the chaos of the destruction taking place.”

Miryana Todorova and Pablo Carpio work with abstraction. Carpio speaks about his art as a “transformation of matter and how it moves between two mediums: painting and sculpture; becoming a metaphor for the author when he also lives between two territories...”

Todorova's colorful, twisted girders and spatial enclosures evoke urban experience and the frustrations of negotiating one's physical space in New York City.

Elena Kalman, Eleen Lin and Jung S. Kim ask us to look through their psychological and fantasy-based lenses, where they intertwine and juxtapose diverse cultural references, time periods and emotional states. Julio Jojo Austria and Soumailia Adigun’s works in particular speak about the emotional journey of the immigrant. Soumalia Adigun claims his work to be the “the language of love between the artist and the land of welcome.”

The Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program pairs foreign-born artists with NYFA Fellows and alumni who act as Mentors to help immigrant artists working in all disciplines acquire the skills and information necessary to compete and succeed as artists. Mentors meet regularly to help their Mentees accomplish a specific task, such as writing an artist statement, creating a website or completing a grant application. Group meetings, including an alumni mixer, serve to foster an active community and network to further support the Mentee’s career goals. The program is free of charge to accepted applicants who were born outside the U.S., but live and work in the New York Tri-State metropolitan area.

Artists

Soumaila Adigun / Julio Jojo Austria / Pablo Carpio / Priscila De Carvalho / Katya Grokhovsky / Elena Kalman / Jung S. Kim / Eleen Lin / Doris Neidl / Eva Nikolova / Sunghee Pae / Olivié Ponce / Laetitia Soulier / Hidemi Takagi / Miryana Todorova / Denise Treizman / Ezra Wube / Hai Zhang

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