Elia Alba: Busts

New York, NY (November, 2009): Black & White Gallery is very pleased to present Busts - the dynamic and thought provoking exhibition by the New York based artist Elia Alba.

The exhibition features 30 busts placed on pedestals to emulate a presentation of classical art and artifacts. Alba transformed unique photographs she took of her close family and friends into life size head and chest sculptures. Utilizing her typical manipulation of photography, fabric, and portraiture, Elia Alba’s latest series, Busts, removes all of these elements from their usual 2-D existence and creates 3-D sculptures that convey both the materiality of the medium and the humanity of the subjects. Each bust stares at the viewer, some forlorn and serious, others smirking knowingly. Some busts stand alone and resolute, such as Catlin, whose hair covers much of the bust, while other busts stand in relation to themselves, as in Two Cacys, where Alba duplicated one person in order to shine a light on his dual nature. Whereas in previous bodies of work, Alba has attempted to obfuscate race, gender, and identity with masks and staging, with Busts, Alba reveals her subjects’ true personas.

Elia Alba (*1962) is a multi-media artist whose work has been exhibited and screened at various national and international institutions, including Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; El Museo del Barrio; The RISD Museum; Valencia Institute of Modern Art, IVAM, Spain; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; ARCO, Madrid; Jersey City Museum; Science Museum, London; and ITAU Cultural Institute, Sao Paolo, Brazil, and most recently the 10th Havana Biennial. Her awards have included the Whitney Museum Van Lier Foundation Fellowship 2001; Studio Museum in Harlem, Artist in Residence Fellowship Program (1998-1999), New York Foundation for the Arts Grant (Crafts 2002 and Photography 2008); Pollack-Krasner Foundation Grant (2002) and Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant (2002 and 2008). Her work has been reviewed in the Art Nexus, The Guardian, Time Out, FlashArt, Tema Celeste and The New York Times. Ms. Alba received her Bachelor of Arts (Specials Honors Curriculum) from Hunter College in 1994 where she graduated magna cum laude and completed the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in 2001. Elia Alba lives and works in Queens, NY

Image: Busts (Catlin), 2009
photo transfer on fabric, acrylic, thread, metal armature, life size

Arnaldo Roche Rabell at Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Puerto Rico

October 24 - December 20, 2009

This year, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Puerto Rico commemorates its 25th anniversary and begins this important period of celebration with an exhibition of recent work by Arnaldo Roche Rabell, titled Azul (Blue).

Roche is one of the most significant and well-known Puerto Rican artists on the island and internationally. His pictorial work has been characterized by its emphasis on problematizing the limits of figuration and the representation of the human body, expanding the use of color and elaborating a narrative art that oscillates between emblematic and direct political questioning, and the construction of a subjectivity that is concerned with personal mythology. Frequently, the public and private have mixed in this work, known for its color, its formal daring and for its adherence to the human figure and an inventory of everyday objects. Azul presents a substantial change from the artist's traditional practices. Recurring, almost exclusively to blue monochrome and pure white line, to the carving of pigment on paper or linen, and to the creation of work on a much larger scale, Roche represents his notion of the figure and narrative and represents his of working the pictorial plane. In the new images, the characterstic iconography of the artist persists, but it is reconfigured austerely in order to emphasize the meanings behind the imagery.

This new pictorial sobriety, which distances itself from the explosion of color and texture of his previous work, may be unexpected to the wider audiences that are familiar with the artist's work. Despite this, this new style was already latent his work of the 1970s and 1980s. To illustrate this development, along with new works, the exhibition presents works from earlier periods in which this new direction is readily apparent.

Azul has been curated by Dr. Lilliana Ramos Collado, Dr. Ivette Fred Rivera and Marianne Ramírez Aponte, Executive Director of MAC.

¡Aquí! (Here) – An Uptown Latino Art Exhibition

¡Aquí! (Here) – An Uptown Latino Art Exhibition at the NoMAA Gallery

September 25 – December 30

¡Aqui! (Here) is the first group exhibition of its kind at NoMAA’s newly inaugurated gallery space in Washington Heights. ¡Aqui! (Here) exposes works by local artists depicting their creative experiences within our neighborhoods, as well as celebrate Latino arts and cultures uptown from September (Hispanic heritage month) through December 2009. A panel of jurors selected the fifteen artists exhibiting in the show whose work was curated by Rocío Aranda-Alvarado, Associate Curator, Special Projects at El Museo del Barrio.

¡Aqui! (Here) es la primera exposición colectiva de este tipo que albergará la recientemente inaugurada galería de arte de NoMAA, en Washington Heights. ¡Aqui! (Here) muestra obras de artistas locales acerca de sus experiencias creativas dentro de nuestras vecindades, y servirá para celebrar las artes y culturas Latinas del Alto Manhattan desde septiembre (mes de la herencia hispana) hasta diciembre 2009. Quince artistas fueron seleccionados por un jurado para exhibir su trabajo en esta exposición curada por Rocío Aranda-Alvarado, Associate Curator, Speical Projects, El Museo del Barrio.

Artists:

Andrea Arroyo

Alta Berri

Héctor Canonge

Lucho Capellán

Niccolo Cataldi

Florencio Gelabert

Anthony Gonzalez

Maggie Hernandez

Jessica Lagunas

Roni Mocan

Dionis Ortiz

Frank Polanco

Rojelio Reyes Rodriguez

Rider Ureña

Chinitas Yon

info@nomaanyc.org

Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance

178 Bennett Avenue, 3rd Floor (at 189th Street)

Gallery Hours: Monday – Friday 11am-5pm

NoMAA’s mission is to cultivate, support and promote the works of artists and arts organizations in Northern Manhattan. Since 2007, NoMAA has been serving and promoting the works of artists in these communities as well as developing partnerships with businesses and other organizations to increase the visibility of this area of Manhattan. NoMAA’s programs include the Regrant Program, Technical Assistance Institute, NoMAA Website, NoMAA E-Newsletter, Uptown Arts Stroll, First Thursdays Arts and Business Stroll, and the NoMAA Artists’ Salon.

Dominican Artists in the Bronx!

Samaná: Images of the Dominican Republic features photographs by Marino Corniel, Elaine Eversley and Ryan Mann-Hamilton of the Samaná peninsula which was settled in the 1820s by freed slaves from the United States. Portraits and landscapes of this unique region with a special emphasis on the descendants of the African-American settlers and the impact of development projects on the environment and the traditional cultures of the peninsula. This show is a presentation of Hostos Center for the Arts & Culture and is curated by Wallace I. Edgecombe. On view in the Main Gallery September 28 through November 7.

Research Trips to Washington, D.C. and New Orleans

During the past two weeks, Caribbean Crossroads has made trips to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and to the Latin American Library at Tulane University (also an alma mater of Caribbean Crossroads). The trip to the Library of Congress was organized specifically to look at rare books, maps, watercolors, and prints from the Kislak Collection. This phenomenal collection contains over 4000 books, maps, documents, paintings, prints, and other artifacts amassed during his lifetime by Mr. Jay Kislak. Among the objects consulted in the collection were 19th century travel guides to places like Bahamas, Cuba, Jamaica, and Martinique and an "Album pintoresco" of Cuba, with over 20 color lithographs of various scenes on the island. A trip across the street to the Prints and Photographs division afforded exploration of photographs published by Look magazine from the mid 20th century. This included great views of ultra modern hotels built throughout the Caribbean to bolster the tourism industry. In New Orleans, a trip to the Latin American Library at Tulane University yielded a view of a fabulous mid-nineteenth century map of the Caribbean basin, featuring the mouth of the Mississippi River extending deep into the Gulf of Mexico and a host of 19th century post cards and other wonderful ephemera. The image above is the oldest example of Creole architecture in New Orleans, the Jean Pitot home, built in the late 18th century and marked by the typical characteristics of Caribbean architecture, including floor to ceiling shuttered windows to allow for proper flow of air in the tropical climate as well as protection from harsh storms.

New slideshow

Hello all, we've just added a slide show featuring images from the Curatorial Team's visit to Curaçao and Aruba. Among the images are pictures of our visits to Landhuis Kenepa, the Mongui Maduro Library, and an architectural tour of the historic Otrobanda neighborhood in Willemstad, Curaçao.

TWO GREAT SHOWS FEATURING LATINAS...

This week, two exhibitions featuring Caribbean Latinas have opened. A solo show of work by Dominicana Firelei Baez, http://fireleibaez.com/, at Kaffe 1664 (a fab coffee shop at 275 Greenwich St., NYC) and "A Black and White World" at Black and White Gallery (Chelsea Terminal Warehouse 636 W. 28th St.) featuring the work of New York-born Dominicana, Elia Alba, http://eliaalba.com/.

Trip to Curaçao and Aruba. May 2009

Caribbean: Crossroads of the World organizational team of made a recent trip to Curaçao and Aruba at the end of May 2009. Coordinating efforts and logistics for the New York team were headed by Susan Delvalle, Director of External Affairs at El Museo del Barrio, with the host partners, three specialists in the Dutch Caribbean: art historian and curator Jennifer Smit, collector and historian Nicole Henriquez and curator and Co-Director of Instituto Buena Bista, Nancy Hoffman. A two-day research trip to Aruba was also scheduled for the group, organized by Ruby Eckmeyer, Secretary-General, Directorate of Culture in Aruba and a designated commission of artists. The trip had multiple purposes. It was organized in order to make a brief survey of art scene in Curaçao and Aruba as well as to present and promote the Caribbean Crossroads project to various audiences. We also hoped to explore the legacy of colonialism in the Anglophone Caribbean. Finally, we also sought to have a closer meeting with our invitees and colleagues in order to discuss the most recent project proposal developed by the curatorial department at El Museo with Elvis Fuentes, Curator, as Project Director.

Caribbean: Crossroads of the World is a multi-year and multi-venue project conceived as a series of city-wide conversations and public programs that will culminate in a milestone exhibition and publication in Fall 2011. The project looks at the arts of the Caribbean Basin and its Diaspora through the lens of the region’s complex history and rich culture.

Caribbean will explore the wide range and variety of aesthetic expressions that have developed with the region’s history since the Europeans arrived in the wake of Modernity. Although centering on the era opened by the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804), which represented autonomy and self-determination for the region, Caribbean will also span from the early colonization period to the present, dealing with subjects such as slavery, geography, commerce, migration, hybridism and paradise.

As a project already three years in the planning, an international team of renowned curators specializing in Caribbean art have fostered the conversations held among colleagues in our institutions since the project’s inception in June 2006. Also, an Advisory Committee formed by prominent scholars has been nurturing the discussions on these essential topics.
El Museo del Barrio will lead the project and has assigned Elvis Fuentes as Project Director and Rebeca Noriega as Project Manager of Caribbean: Crossroads of the World. Hitomi Iwasaki and Naomi Beckwith will be Project Managers at the Queens Museum of Art and the Studio Museum in Harlem respectively. The catalogue of the exhibition will be a scholarly book and its editorial team will be led by Deborah Cullen, Director of Curatorial Programs at El Museo del Barrio.
Caribbean: Crossroads of the World seeks to break barriers and create new paths of understanding about the paradigmatic contributions of the Caribbean to modern and contemporary culture. Proudly, our museums will become the first to do so on such an extensive scale.

Caribbean: Crossroads of the World is organized by El Museo del Barrio in collaboration with The Queens Museum of Art and The Studio Museum in Harlem. These institutions were founded at approximately the same time (1968-1972) out of similar social and political needs and each are currently growing; expanding their facilities and undertaking capital renovations. The collaboration will link all three for the first time, connecting the narratives of their development while highlighting their core cross-cultural constituency.

Research and development of Caribbean: Crossroads of the World is made possible by generous mutli-year support from The Reed Foundation and The Rockefeller Brothers Fund.