HINDSIGHT
Hindsight is truly 20/20. If we learned anything from the past year, it is -- to survive. Social injustices, a global pandemic, the wrath of mother nature and mental health issues have taken its toll on humanity. As creators, we interpret world views, we mold and shape what the world could be and what the past and present realities are. Marginal Art Projects invited artists to submit artwork reflecting on the year 2020, focused on themes of: social injustices, politics, Covid-19 Pandemic, natural disasters, mental health, and relationships during times of stress. We invite you to view our exhibition - please, click on the image to find out more about the artwork and about the artist, including websites and social media information.
"As cultural producers, we should be very aware of what the culture is doing." - Felix Gonzalez-Torres
Mixed media collage, 2020
On June 3, 2020, I marched in a peaceful protest in Jersey City, NJ following the killing of George Floyd. It was an awakening moment in 2020 where people came together to use their voices to call for systemic change and rise against racial bias and police brutality towards the African American community. I documented this inspiring movement by shooting a series of photographs and videos. This collage is made from a double exposure photograph taken with an instant camera on the streets of downtown Jersey City. Then I combined that imagery with a stenciled spray-painted piece of cardboard as a response to the uprising. I want to use my platform as an artist to voice my support for this cause and also have the artwork be a catalyst for change in the injustices of the world.
Artist Bio - Kasia Skorynkiewicz is a Polish-American multi-media visual artist. She received her bachelor’s degree from Seton Hall University and her Master's in Fine Arts from Montclair State University in New Jersey. For 8 years, she lived in Los Angeles, working on a variety of award-winning films and TV productions while working on her own short films. Her art practice builds on the forgotten past of discarded objects that have been thrown away and deemed worthless. The work questions the habits of our modern throwaway culture and examines what it means for an object to become worthless due to changing fashion, technological progress, and through the passage of time. She transforms the found objects to create new poetic residues that explore obsolescence, the ephemeral, and transience. Her work has been exhibited at the Montclair Art Museum in N.J., at Magnan Metz Gallery in New York City, among other places. Kasia Skorynkiewicz lives in Jersey City, NJ and is an adjunct professor at Seton Hall University.
Website: www.kasiaskorynkiewicz.com
Instagram: @beingandbecoming
Oil on Panel, 2020
Ali Miller is a New York City-based artist from Long Island, NY, working in painting, drawing, and sculpture. Miller constructs fantastical nonlinear-narratives, addressing themes of expectation, using extreme and surreal scenarios. Miller received her MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art, Hoffberger School of Painting in 2012 and her BFA from Alfred University in 2008. She has attended residencies at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Golden Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, and Chautauqua Institution. In 2012, Miller received the Best in Show Prize at the Bethesda Painting Awards. Miller's work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, and her work can be found in both public and private collections. She is currently represented by High Noon Gallery.
Website: www.alimillerstudios.com
Instagram: @alimillerstudios
Digital Painting, 2020
This piece explores the constant emotional struggle many have dealt with as a result of isolation during Covid-19. The image places the viewer in a scene from Thanksgiving 2020, but rather than feelings of warmth, safety and love as expected, the atmosphere is disjointed and appears to exist within many realities. Through the use of collage, I hoped to tap into the warm memories we often associate with looking at family photographs juxtaposed with representations of starkness, isolation, and disorder.
Covid-19 has been a time of great struggle and unimaginable pain for many, and the nostalgia I feel for time pre-pandemic is one that I believe many can relate to: a feeling of never quite being able to reach contentment as our world continues without a definite light at the end of the tunnel to when things will be "normal" as we once knew them to be.
Instagram: @msgarlickbread
Oil on canvas, 2020
The image of a grave yard is a reminder of death, which during the covid-19 pandemic takes on a new weight. This painting was also made while I was thinking about how circular windows are used for more structural integrity when preventing exposure to whatever exists on the other side of them. That protective window is also a reference to the pandemic and how we use material barriers to shield us from exposure to the virus.
Chris Rivas is a Los Angeles born artist who received his BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and his MFA from Montclair State University. His work revolves around an investigation of cultural diaspora, emotional reactivity, and hybridity. He uses various materials to investigate ambiguity and dualities while continuing to depict the intersectionality experienced in his everyday life.
Website: https://chrisrivas.art/
Instagram: artistchrisrivas
Digital Photography, 2020
I made this piece by smearing mud and paint on the window of an abandoned building in New Orleans, photographing it, and then editing it digitally so that the smears looked like waves crashing over the reflection of the city in the window.
In Louisiana we’re facing a compounded and multifaceted climate disaster. As our primary industries contribute heavily to green house gas emissions, they also have ruined our state’s natural defenses against the gulf by cutting canals and installing pipelines through our coastal wetlands. As a result not only are the seas rising, but the land upon which our coastal communities sit is sinking.
Louisiana is experiencing the effects of the sea level rising and climate change, including more severe weather, at a rate far surpassing the rest of the country.
This is an inevitability that cannot be stopped, only prepared for. Our local, regional, and state leadership have done very little to ready the coastal communities, and harden them against severe weather and rising seas.
This piece is about fear, but not my own. It’s about instilling a fear, terror, and anxiety into the hearts of elected and appointed officials and policy makers. With a hope that they begin to speak and act as if the people they represent will be under water in their lifetime. Without their intervention this is an inevitable reality.
Sculpture, 2020
These series of masks are inspired by my thoughts around Covid-19. Due to the pandemic, we have had to wear physical masks to protect ourselves. However, the idea is that wearing masks is not foreign to us. We wear invisible masks everyday to protect ourselves from a certain environment, place or people. Every individual has a different mask made up by their own world and need for protection. Each mask I make is inspired by life stories of people and what they are trying to protect themself from.
My name is Alyssa Vignone and I am based out of NYC/NJ. I originally graduated with an art and psychology degree and took a turn into becoming a therapist. Seven years later, I have infused the two worlds. Right now, I am currently making masks which was inspired out of COVID-19. The idea is that wearing masks is not foreign to us. We wear invisible masks everyday to protect ourselves from a certain environment, or people. Every individual has a different mask made up by their own world and need for protection. This is what I am aiming to show in my mask collection.
Instagram: @lysvee_art
Photography, 2020
These two photographs represent duality, desperation, confusion, among many other changed ideas. Focusing mainly on my own identity and body, this work speaks about my queerness as well as my non-binary identity and body. Often, there is a lot of trauma, injustice, and hate towards the queer community. Compounded with a global pandemic, mental illness, and the harsh realities of everyday life, it can become a burden far too heavy to bear. I've found in my experience, I have a tendency to react to these things by blaming myself or feeling as though my body is cursed. Like my identity is cured. This work aims to examine those chaotic emotions and unpack them through motion and contrast.
Craig Peters is a queer, non-binary freelance and fine artist living in North New Jersey. Working primarily in photography, they draw on their own trauma and experiences, mentally, and physically, as inspiration for storytelling. Always fascinated by the idea of identity relating to yourself and others, Craig creates surreal works outlining these ideas.
Website: www.craigpeters.com
Instagram: @craigmeista
Enamel, India Ink, Acrylic, Charcoal, Oil, Graphite and Colored Pencil, on Canvas, 2020
To be completely honest, these monochromatic paintings started out of a necessity to preserve money once my paycheck got cut due to Covid restrictions. Shortly thereafter, these paintings became so much more than a personal reflection of my cut paycheck, they quickly became gestural marks highlighting my body’s movement through restricted space. In the act of making, these marks became more prominent by the attempted removal and smudging of their existence. In doing so, these automatic lines then became a visual source whose function is to organize, disrupt, and punctuate the borders that encapsulate them.
Sarah Dupré is an abstract artist who grew up in South Central Louisiana and moved to Illinois in 2015. She is an adjunct professor at McHenry County College and Elgin Community College where she teaches painting, drawing, and art appreciation. Dupré received her BFA from McNeese State University, Lake Charles, Louisiana (2015) and her MFA from Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois (2018). Using tar, oils, house paint, and charcoal to create her work, Sarah’s practice explores the relationship between drawing and painting. Dupré’s work was most recently exhibited in group shows at Joseph A. Cain Memorial Art Gallery, Del Mar College, Corpus Christi, Texas and Ashton Gallery, San Diego, California, and Cleaner Gallery + Projects, Chicago, Illinois.
Website: www.sarahduprearts.com
Instagram: @sarahedupre
Stoneware and Porcelain Ceramic, 2020
Working with clay is a great practice in collaboration with things outside my control, patience, and trusting the process. This creative outlet has been an anchor to joy during a time in which I have experienced dramatic shifts in my relationships with others and with myself. Making these pieces with my hands has opened up space in my mind to process deep personal and collective grief introduced by the COVID-19 global pandemic. My understanding of myself, my connection to others, and my role in the world are transitioning. Ups/downs, ends/beginnings, and growing pains are an inevitable part of the journey. But much like the ceramics process, there is some magic in the transformation.
Tanya Zal grew up in upstate New York, and earned a BFA at The College of St Rose in Albany, NY. She has spent the last decade working at non profit arts organizations and building a creative ceramic practice in Austin, TX. She also offers compassionate companionship as a full spectrum doula, providing support to those in variety of life experiences. Her work and play is driven by a curiosity of what makes us feel held, and the things that we hold close. Her ceramics are celebratory, surreal, and a colorful exploration of personal iconography.
Website: www.tanyazal.com
Instagram: @heartofgoo
Gouache on Paper, 2020
Push Lock (Self Portrait) examines the unique experiences of quarentining during Covid-19 pandemic in my childhood home and finding both a sense of familiarity and entrapment in seemingly mundane objects. Two pieces from a five part series, these self portraits reflect my exploration of present growth while constantly being surrounded by souvenir and the cognitive dissonance of past persona.
Samantha Van Heest (b. 1998) is an artist currently residing in Northern Virginia. She has exhibited her work in the Mid-Atlantic region and in Aix-en Provence, France. She was featured in New American Paintings South #148 and has worked as a studio intern for the painter, Amy Sherald. She is the recipient of the Alfred Levitt Memorial Scholarship in Art, the Emil R. Schnellock Award for Excellence in Painting, and the Roasalie Chauncey Memorial Scholarship.
Website: www.samanthavanheest.com
Instagram: @samanthavanheest
Gouache on paper, 2020
“It is an artist’s duty to reflect the times” - Nina Simone
I’ve had COVID-19 twice, once a year ago before anyone knew what it was and then again this past December. Not being able to spend time in my studio in East Orange because of quarantine left me frustrated and disconnected. There were two bright spots. One was working on a Black Lives Matter mural project through Liquitex and Manufacturers Village (where my studio is) and the other was creating paper sculptures for the first time. The mural project, which is on going, has left me feeling much more connected to my artist community and to the larger East Orange community. The paper sculptures were created during quarantine and a direct result from not being in the studio and having to find a new way to work.
Christine Romanell’s colorful wall sculptures and installations explore non-repeating patterns informed by cosmology and physics, while rooting itself in applied design similar to Islamic patterning. Her use of rotational symmetry to generate dimensional forms allude to movement and create an event horizon, a space where the infinite tessellations of universal physics can intersect with patterns, collapsing the divide between the theoretical and the real.
Romanell lives and works in New Jersey where she’s on the board of Manufacturers Village Artists space in East Orange. She is the founder and editor of NotWhatItIs art blog. Her work has been discussed in Hyperallergic, MIT Technology Review, Art and Cake, ArtFuse, ArtSpiel and WoArt. Her sculptures have been included in ArtPrize and she is a recipient of an NEA grant for her work through Chashama in NYC. She has lectured at Pratt University and taught at the College of St Elizabeth. Her BFA is from the School of Visual Arts (NYC) and her MFA is from Montclair State University (Montclair NJ.)
Website: www.christineromanell.com
Instagram: csromanell
Gouache on paper, 2020
Keyed Entry (Self Portrait) examines the unique experiences of quarentining during Covid-19 pandemic in my childhood home and finding both a sense of familiarity and entrapment in seemingly mundane objects. Two pieces from a five part series, these self portraits reflect my exploration of present growth while constantly being surrounded by souvenir and the cognitive dissonance of past persona.
Samantha Van Heest (b. 1998) is an artist currently residing in Northern Virginia. She has exhibited her work in the Mid-Atlantic region and in Aix-en Provence, France. She was featured in New American Paintings South #148 and has worked as a studio intern for the painter, Amy Sherald. She is the recipient of the Alfred Levitt Memorial Scholarship in Art, the Emil R. Schnellock Award for Excellence in Painting, and the Roasalie Chauncey Memorial Scholarship.
Website: www.samanthavanheest.com
Instagram: @samanthavanheest
Acrylic, 2020
My two works, Pop and Tapestry, deal with mental health in the times of COVID. For me, Covid-19 has turned me into more of an artistic hermit who has decided to explore some fresh artistic avenues. These artistic avenues are color explorations. I have previously created a large body of monumental mandala paintings that are all executed in black and white. I knew that someday I would use color in this series but never really felt the time was right. This pandemic created the perfect timing for color. Facing new artistic challenges is great for mental health, particularly in times of isolation. I have found great comfort and joy exploring the wonders of color and I am invigorated by the vastness of artistic choices opening in front of me. Covid-19 in a sense opened this door.
I was an Art Professor of Drawing and Printmaking at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, La for 30 years before moving to Greenville, SC to just be an artist. I draw, paint, make prints, sculpture, digital art, and the occasional theater set. I have been in over 300 group exhibitions as well as 30 solo exhibitions. Some of the notable venues for my solo shows: Louisiana Museum of Arts and Sciences, New Orleans Contemporary Arts Center, The Arts Center of Western Colorado, the Dishman Gallery at Lamar University, Southwestern University, Abercrombie Gallery at McNeese State University, and Lake Charles City Hall. I received my BFA in Printmaking from CSU in Ft Collins, Co and my MFA in Printmaking from IU in Bloomington, ln.
Acrylic on mylar, 2020
As artists we are encouraged to create worlds and tell stories – I have always aligned myself with non-fiction. I don’t think I have a grandiose imagination; I base things on facts and experience. As time is revisited – memories and occurrences overlap. Like telling a story, my paintings emphasize parts that are vital or symbolic within the composition. Through overlapping, I am able to combine past and present together.
This series of paintings began as loving reflections of my life and my relationship with myself, God, and my relationship with my now, ex-fiancé. After the covid-19 pandemic and Hurricane Laura, my world was gutted. I think that in times of incomprehensible stress some people have difficulty expressing their sadness by wallowing in the depth of despair while others run from it.
Little Lamb: Big Heart, Small Sleeve is a self-portrait of a younger image of myself with a distorted image of myself today – layered along with the image of the sacrificial lamb, pouring blood into the chalice and the text. These visuals are combined to create a non-linear narrative - that does not come to a resolution.
Meagan Green (b 1986) is an interdisciplinary artist from Louisiana. She received her Bachelor of Art in Painting from McNeese State University in 2012 and her Masters of Fine Art from Montclair State University in 2016. She currently lives and works in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Green has participted in many group exhibitions around the country. She is the Art Educator for Lake Charles College Prep and has taught for other highly regarded programs: The Art School at Laguna Gloria, The Contemporary Austin, and Teen Outreach programs. Green was awarded Art Educator of the Year 2019 for The Mayors Art Awards. She is the Creator, Gallery Director and Lead Curator for Marginal Art Projects.
Website: www.kmeagangreen.com
Instagram: @greenmeag
Acrylic, 2020
My two works, Pop and Tapestry, deal with mental health in the times of COVID. For me, Covid-19 has turned me into more of an artistic hermit who has decided to explore some fresh artistic avenues. These artistic avenues are color explorations. I have previously created a large body of monumental mandala paintings that are all executed in black and white. I knew that someday I would use color in this series but never really felt the time was right. This pandemic created the perfect timing for color. Facing new artistic challenges is great for mental health, particularly in times of isolation. I have found great comfort and joy exploring the wonders of color and I am invigorated by the vastness of artistic choices opening in front of me. Covid-19 in a sense opened this door.
I was an Art Professor of Drawing and Printmaking at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, La for 30 years before moving to Greenville, SC to just be an artist. I draw, paint, make prints, sculpture, digital art, and the occasional theater set. I have been in over 300 group exhibitions as well as 30 solo exhibitions. Some of the notable venues for my solo shows: Louisiana Museum of Arts and Sciences, New Orleans Contemporary Arts Center, The Arts Center of Western Colorado, the Dishman Gallery at Lamar University, Southwestern University, Abercrombie Gallery at McNeese State University, and Lake Charles City Hall. I received my BFA in Printmaking from CSU in Ft Collins, Co and my MFA in Printmaking from IU in Bloomington, ln.
Acrylic on canvas, 2020
The paintings were made in response to the protests against police violence during the height of George Floyd protests this summer.
Daniel Morowitz (b. 1989) is a painter based in Jersey City, NJ with a Bachelor’s Degree from Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University and a Masters Degree from Montclair State University; Exhibitions’ include shows in Brooklyn, NY at the Buggy Factory, Trestle Gallery, La Bodega Gallery, Established Gallery. Jersey City, NJ at Curious Matter, Arthouse Productions, Novado Gallery. Hoboken, NJ at Proto Gallery, Manhattan, NYC at Field Projects Gallery, Here Arts Center, and co- curated “Line and Language” at the Watchung Arts Center and “Unnatural Intimacy” at SPRING/ BREAK NYC 2020.
Website: www.danielmorowitz.com
Instagram: @dm61889
Artist's book, coptic binding, 2020
More than a year ago I trimmed down remnants of etchings, marbled paper, and a variety of printmaking papers to a uniform size. When it became clear in late August that Hurricane Laura was heading in the direction of Lake Charles, I gathered up those unbound, blank pages along with some collage and book arts supplies thinking that I might have a few days to begin work on a book. The evacuation of a few days became three weeks.
I worked on the book daily-- thinking about the storm, the fall of the year, limbs falling from trees. The title Thirty-Two refers to the speed of falling objects: thirty-two feet per second per second. The numerical reference is Joycean. James Joyce used the number thirty-two throughout Ulysses. In Finnegans Wake the number 1132 appears repeatedly as a motif; thirty-two referring to falling bodies, the fall from grace in the garden of Eden, the defeat of Napoleon, Humpty's fall, and many more parallelisms. The number eleven is emblematic of new beginnings.
Thirty-Two is a Coptic bound book with 32 signatures.
Born in New Haven, Connecticut, Heather Ryan Kelley is a professor of art at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana where she teaches painting and book arts. She holds a BFA in printmaking from Southern Methodist University and an MA in painting from Northwestern State University.
In 2009 she established The Midden Heap Press. The press is devoted to prints, artist books, and collaborative ephemera related to James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Kelley is represented by the Baton Rouge Gallery, Center for Contemporary Art. She lives and works in Lake Charles, Louisiana.
Website: www.heatherryankelley.com
Instagram: @the.real.xeno
Photography, 2020
These two photographs represent duality, desperation, confusion, among many other changed ideas. Focusing mainly on my own identity and body, this work speaks about my queerness as well as my non-binary identity and body. Often, there is a lot of trauma, injustice, and hate towards the queer community. Compounded with a global pandemic, mental illness, and the harsh realities of everyday life, it can become a burden far too heavy to bear. I've found in my experience, I have a tendency to react to these things by blaming myself or feeling as though my body is cursed. Like my identity is cured. This work aims to examine those chaotic emotions and unpack them through motion and contrast.
Craig Peters is a queer, non-binary freelance and fine artist living in North New Jersey. Working primarily in photography, they draw on their own trauma and experiences, mentally, and physically, as inspiration for storytelling. Always fascinated by the idea of identity relating to yourself and others, Craig creates surreal works outlining these ideas.
Website: www.craigpeters.com
Instagram: @craigmeista
Ink on paper, 2020
This group of drawings evolved out of the response to the pandemic in Spring 2020. Juggling the new normal, I often had the sensation of spinning in circles. At times, I felt like I was bumping into myself, circling back to anxiety and uncertainty again and again. These are not geometric circles, they’re chaotic and fraught filled.
Born in Southern California, Meghan Fleming received a BA in Studio Art from Smith College and an MFA in Painting from Indiana University. She is the recipient of a Louisiana Division of the Arts fellowship, a US Department of Agriculture – Natural Resources Conservation Grant, and several endowed professorships. Her work is featured in the book Expressions of Place: The Contemporary Louisiana Landscape by John Kemp (University Press of Mississippi, 2016). A continual investigation of themes such as adaptation, fluctuation, and impermanence are central to her paintings and drawings. She is an Associate Professor at McNeese State University and lives in Southwest Louisiana.
Website: www.megfleming.com
Charcoal, 2020
This piece examines the mental and physical health of myself as well as relationships in times of stress. This work shows the toll that my disability takes on myself mentally. I have three severe herniated discs in my back along with psoriatic arthritis. It feels like I am being ripped apart at times and it leaves me emotionally exhausted. Because of this, I cannot maintain a healthy relationship. I feel as if my partner looks down on me for how weak I seem, and that they stay with me simply because they pity me. My mental health will crumble any relationship I have yet I still try to cling onto them just to feel something other than the pain that I live with every day.
I am an artist looking to graduate this Spring. My concentration is photography, but I love drawing more than anything. I've struggled with my physical and mental health for years and had to give up on pursuing drawing and other mediums, but I am still trying my best to keep creating art.
Ink on paper, 2020
This group of drawings evolved out of the response to the pandemic in Spring 2020. Juggling the new normal, I often had the sensation of spinning in circles. At times, I felt like I was bumping into myself, circling back to anxiety and uncertainty again and again. These are not geometric circles, they’re chaotic and fraught filled.
Born in Southern California, Meghan Fleming received a BA in Studio Art from Smith College and an MFA in Painting from Indiana University. She is the recipient of a Louisiana Division of the Arts fellowship, a US Department of Agriculture – Natural Resources Conservation Grant, and several endowed professorships. Her work is featured in the book Expressions of Place: The Contemporary Louisiana Landscape by John Kemp (University Press of Mississippi, 2016). A continual investigation of themes such as adaptation, fluctuation, and impermanence are central to her paintings and drawings. She is an Associate Professor at McNeese State University and lives in Southwest Louisiana.
Website: www.megfleming.com
Performance Archive - Photography, 2020
This work relates to the social injustices and killings of Black bodies in the hands of Law Enforcement. This injustices, violence and racism broadly at daylight and night, endanger Black existence everywhere and have lead the Black Lives Matter movement to rise in the United States and the world.
These photographs capture the moment that Yessenia Fernández Selier, Cynthia Renta and myself perform and broadcast on Facebook our BLACK LIVES MATTER: Healing rituals for souls lost to violence. The performance that lasted examines the need to reconnect the search for justice with African and Native American spiritual practices that unlock ancestral technologies and knowledge that can offer healing and empowerment to black and brown bodies.
Artists Names:
Natalie Marx
Yesenia Fernández Selier
Cynthia Renta
Images by: Natalie Marx
BLACK LIVES MATTER: Healing rituals for souls lost to violence
Date of performance: June 6, 2020
Location: James J. Braddock Park, West New York, NJ.
We were getting used to living in the pandemic when George Floyd was killed by a police officer on camera, calling his ‘mama’, he exhaled his last words. The world woke up knocking down statues, taking to the streets, pushing against violence, against indifference, against impunity. Our collective was in the midst of a fundraising to alleviate the impact of Covid-19 on Afro-indigenous communities in Latin America. We took to the streets with both wishes: to alleviate and commemorate. We were preparing for the demonstration leading us to the Black Lives Matter March in North Bergen when we heard about Breonna Taylor's death. So we decided to heal, enlighten, unite. We held a public mass, for George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, of all people, open, on earth, under the sun. A multicolored circle of demonstrators in transit that joined the performance, sang in unison to uplift their souls, and to raise their spirits with our love. This act of purification, of farewell, of our Colombian, Puerto Rican, Cuban grandmothers, was our offering to acknowledge the transition of those black, brown and indigenous bodies whose lives were violently taken to arrive to an ancestral space too soon. Ibae, Ibae Ntonu, Breonna Taylor; Ibae, Ibae Ntonu George Floyd Rest in peace. By the summer of 2020, the problem of violence against black bodies in the US and the rest of the world had reached a tipping point during the lockdown. This performance was a response to the urgency of the times and a global health crisis that continues.
We are three Caribbean artists (Colombia, Cuba, Puerto Rico) based in New Jersey, currently calling ourselves The Coven. Our work meets at the intersection of our studies and practice around the Afican and Indigenous diaspora: performance art, dance and ritual.
Website: www.natytechnicolor.com
Instagram: @natytechnicolor @yeseniaselier @ladylorelay
Acrylic on canvas, 2020
The paintings were made in response to the protests against police violence during the height of George Floyd protests this summer.
Daniel Morowitz (b. 1989) is a painter based in Jersey City, NJ with a Bachelor’s Degree from Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University and a Masters Degree from Montclair State University; Exhibitions’ include shows in Brooklyn, NY at the Buggy Factory, Trestle Gallery, La Bodega Gallery, Established Gallery. Jersey City, NJ at Curious Matter, Arthouse Productions, Novado Gallery. Hoboken, NJ at Proto Gallery, Manhattan, NYC at Field Projects Gallery, Here Arts Center, and co- curated “Line and Language” at the Watchung Arts Center and “Unnatural Intimacy” at SPRING/ BREAK NYC 2020.
Website: www.danielmorowitz.com
Instagram: @dm61889
Performance Archive - Photography, 2020
This work relates to the social injustices and killings of Black bodies in the hands of Law Enforcement. This injustices, violence and racism broadly at daylight and night, endanger Black existence everywhere and have lead the Black Lives Matter movement to rise in the United States and the world.
These photographs capture the moment that Yessenia Fernández Selier, Cynthia Renta and myself perform and broadcast on Facebook our BLACK LIVES MATTER: Healing rituals for souls lost to violence. The performance that lasted examines the need to reconnect the search for justice with African and Native American spiritual practices that unlock ancestral technologies and knowledge that can offer healing and empowerment to black and brown bodies.
Artists Names:
Natalie Marx
Yesenia Fernández Selier
Cynthia Renta
Images by: Natalie Marx
BLACK LIVES MATTER: Healing rituals for souls lost to violence
Date of performance: June 6, 2020
Location: James J. Braddock Park, West New York, NJ.
We were getting used to living in the pandemic when George Floyd was killed by a police officer on camera, calling his ‘mama’, he exhaled his last words. The world woke up knocking down statues, taking to the streets, pushing against violence, against indifference, against impunity. Our collective was in the midst of a fundraising to alleviate the impact of Covid-19 on Afro-indigenous communities in Latin America. We took to the streets with both wishes: to alleviate and commemorate. We were preparing for the demonstration leading us to the Black Lives Matter March in North Bergen when we heard about Breonna Taylor's death. So we decided to heal, enlighten, unite. We held a public mass, for George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, of all people, open, on earth, under the sun. A multicolored circle of demonstrators in transit thatjoined the performance, sang in unison to uplift their souls, and to raise their spirits with our love. This act of purification, of farewell, of our Colombian, Puerto Rican, Cuban grandmothers, was our offering to acknowledge the transition of those black, brown and indigenous bodies whose lives were violently taken to arrive to an ancestral space too soon. Ibae, Ibae Ntonu, Breonna Taylor; Ibae, Ibae Ntonu George Floyd Rest in peace. By the summer of 2020, the problem of violence against black bodies in the US and the rest of the world had reached a tipping point during the lockdown. This performance was a response to the urgency of the times and a global health crisis that continues.
We are three Caribbean artists (Colombia, Cuba, Puerto Rico) based in New Jersey, currently calling ourselves The Coven. Our work meets at the intersection of our studies and practice around the Afican and Indigenous diaspora: performance art, dance and ritual.
Website: www.natytechnicolor.com
Instagram: @natytechnicolor @yeseniaselier @ladylorelay
Video, 2020
Stephanie Spitz received her MFA in Studio Art from Montclair State University and her BFA in Painting from Drake University. She explores the parallels between art making and home building through painting, drawing, video, and installation. She has exhibited internationally and in 2016 she was an artist-in-residence at the New Rochelle Downtown Artist Residency in conjunction with Residency Unlimited. She currently works as a Higher Education Administrator and Adjunct Professor in Montclair, New Jersey.
Website: www.stephaniespitz.com
Instagram: @spitzsteph