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

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.