Our first exhibition, PELEA – Visual Responses to Spatial Precarity explores how artists respond to displacement through their work. This practice provides a platform for examining visual strategies among contemporary Latinx artists.
The show was curated by our inaugural Artist in Residence Shellyne Rodriguez and The Latinx Project’s curatorial team. The opening was February 15th, 2019 from 6 to 8 pm at The King Juan Carlos Center. The show was open to the public and on view until May 3rd, 2019, gallery hours Monday through Friday from 11 am to 7 pm.
Featuring
Melissa Calderón, Roy Baizan, Alicia Grullón, Groana Melendez, Carlos Jesús Martínez Domínguez, Shellyne Rodriguez, Francisca Benítez, Mi Casa No es Su Casa, and Jehdy Vargas.
Curator-Led Tours
February 21st : 10 am - 11 am & 11 pm - 12 pm
March 5th: 10 am - 11 am & 11 pm - 12 pm
April 5th: 10 am - 11 am & 11pm - 12 pm
Artists
Calderón -born and bred in the Bronx- has exhibited her work at El Museo del Barrio, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, The Queens Museum, Socrates Sculpture Park, The Portland Museum of Art, Pioneer Works, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Arsenal de la Puntilla and Galeria 20/20 in Puerto Rico, Art in Odd Places Festival, and Smack Mellon, among others.
She is a PEPATIAN artist; a South Bronx-based organization dedicated to creating, producing and supporting contemporary multi-disciplinary art by Latino and Bronx-based artists founded by visual artist Pepon Osorio and dance/choreographer Merian Soto. Calderón continues to be an advocate and activist for conscious arts revitalization in the South Bronx. She has been included in such books as Frescos, 50 contemporary artists from Puerto Rico, Strange Material: Storytelling through Textile, and EMERGENCY INDEX VOL. 4 ‘s annual performance publication.
Roy Baizan
Baizan is a Chicanx documentary photographer and arts educator from the Bronx. His work focuses on community, identity, and family. Shortly after graduating from the International Center of Photography’s free 10-week program at The Point- ICP @ THE POINT, he became a Teaching Assistant where he taught photography to the youth in the Bronx and Manhattan.
He has since worked for The Bronx Documentary Center, The Point, The Bronx River Art Center, and ICP continuing to pass forward the opportunities that were awarded to him through photography classes. Recently, he graduated from the Visual Journalism and Documentary Practice Program at the International Center of Photography with the support of the Wall Street Journal Scholarship and Board of Directors Scholarship. His work has been featured in The New York Times, The Gothamist, America Magazine, and Riverdale Press.
Alicia Grullón moves between performance, video, and photography, channeling her interdisciplinary approach towards critiques on the politics of presence, an argument for the inclusion of disenfranchised communities in political and social spheres.
Grullón’s works have been shown in numerous group exhibitions such as The 8th Floor, Franklin Furnace Archives, Bronx Museum of the Arts, BRIC House for Arts and Media, School of Visual Arts, El Museo del Barrio, Columbia University, Socrates Sculpture Park, Performa 11, and Art in Odd Places.
She has received grants from the Puffin Foundation, Bronx Council on the Arts, the Department of Cultural Affairs of the City of New York, and Franklin Furnace Archives. She has participated in residencies in the United States and Korea among them New York University’s Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics. She has presented for the 2017 Whitney Biennial with Occupy Museums, Creative Time Summit 2015, The Royal College of Art, United States Association for Art Educators, School of Visual Arts, and the American Museum of Natural History.
Grullón’s work has been written about in the New York Times, Village Voice, Hyperallergic, Creative Time Reports, Art Fag City, ArtNet News, Blouin Artinfo, New York Daily News, The Columbia Spectator, and Brooklyn Press.
Groana Melendez is a lens-based artist whose work focuses on the representation of marginalized peoples. She was raised between New York City and Santo Domingo and holds a Master of Fine Arts in Advanced Photographic Studies from the International Center of Photography-Bard Program. She currently works and lives in the Bronx.
Melendez graduated Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Art Photography from Syracuse University. She has participated in group exhibits in China and Guadalupe, as well as solo shows in the New York Public Library, The City University of New York, and the International Center of Photography’s Bard’s studio in Queens.
CARIBBEAN NEW YORKER, FATHER, PARTNER, ATHEIST ON SOME DAYS, NON THEIST AGNOSTIC ON OTHERS, APOSTATE, LEFTEST, SOCIALIST, AGITATOR, ETHICAL POLYAMORIST, OCD HAVING, HS DROPOUT, GED HOLDER, AUTODIDACT, EDUCATOR, DEBATER, WHITE PEOPLE FEARING, ALL PEOPLE LOVING, QUEERISH?, LACTOSE INTOLERANT HAAGEN-DAZS COFFEE ICE CREAM DEVOURING, MARIJUANA ADVOCATING, HIP HOP, SNEAKER, COMIC AND SCI-FI LOVING NON LATINO/A/X IDENTIFYING DOMINICAN PUERTO RICAN INTERDISCIPLINARY ARTIST BORN ON A MILITARY BASE IN NORTH CAROLINA IN 1976. CARLOS JESUS MARTINEZ DOMINGUEZ A.K.A FEEGZ, FIGARO & FIRO173 HAS EXHIBITED, TAUGHT, SPOKEN, CURATED AND LEARNED IN A S_IT LOAD OF INSTITUTIONS NATIONALLY AND INTERNATIONALLY. WASHINGTON HEIGHTS NYC SINCE 84.
“MY WORK CONVEYS MY ANXIETY AND THRILL REGARDING HISTORY, HOW THAT HISTORY MANIFESTS IN THE PRESENT, AND PRESENTS IMPLICATIONS FOR THE FUTURE. “
Shellyne Rodriguez is a visual artist who works in multiple mediums to depict spaces and subjects engaged in strategies of survival against false hope, a device employed in the service of subjugation. These psychological and emotive inquiries put the Baroque in contact with a Decoloniality rooted in the traditions of hip hop culture. Her work utilizes text, drawing, painting, found materials, and sculpture to emphasize her ideas.
Shellyne graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Visual & Critical Studies From the School of Visual Arts and a Master of Fine Arts in Fine Art from CUNY Hunter College. She has had her work and projects exhibited at El Museo del Barrio, Queens Museum, New Museum, and her work has recently been commissioned by the city of New York for a permanent public sculpture, which will serve as a monument to the people of the Bronx.
Francisca Benítez (b.1974) is an artist born and raised in Chile, living and working in New York since 1998. Her practice delves into the intersections between space, politics, and language, working with different mediums including drawing, video, photography, performance, and music.
Her work has recently been shown at the New Britain Museum of American Art, the XII Havana Biennial in Cuba, the Jeu de Paume in Paris, France, and El Museo del Barrio in New York. She graduated as an architect from the University of Chile (1998) and a Master of Fine Arts from Hunter College CUNY (2007).
Jehdy Vargas, a New York-based artist, seeks to link the past to the contemporary as she draws on her personal experience. In this process, she hopes to engage in a transformative act which purges the present of its deep psychic impact, somewhat akin to a therapeutic experience.
A person’s history fuses with their present circumstances on many levels, carrying a deep emotional impact. Through reflecting on the past, integrating it into the present, she draws the viewer into this psychic drama, hoping to relieve it of its limiting effects. She utilizes a journalistic approach to her work which involves shooting, printing, pasting, scanning, painting, and repeating this process until the primary mechanic image is obscured, potentially lost. Expanding beyond the use of canvas, she utilizes found objects which help define the image. Through this act, Vargas hopes to blur the line between past and present, create a transfigurative process.
Mi Casa No es Su Casa, a political art project by New Yorkers for New Yorkers, based out of the Mayday Space in Bushwick, using art + direct action to build a visible resistance to gentrification and displacement in NYC and beyond. #DecolonizeTheHood
The exhibition was co-sponsored by New York University’s KJCC (The King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center).
Event Recap
The opening last Friday was a huge success with hundreds of people coming to celebrate our inaugural exhibition, PELEA – Visual Responses to Spatial Precarity. Many of the artists were in attendance and talked about their work with many members of the community. KJCC Director, Ana Dopico welcomed us to space, and our founder Arlene Dávila said a few words as well as our artist-in-residence and co-curator of PELEA, Shellyne Rodriguez.
“Immediately I thought I don’t want to do a cliche political art show about gentrification. Often what happens when you are a person who takes a radical stance politically, your arguments get robbed of their nuance. So, I wanted to take a poetic approach at thinking about some of this ‘pelea’ or fight that we have in our communities and think about them politically in this space.“ - Shellyne Rodriguez
