GALLERY
TIAB 2020: Here, Together!,
Curated by Katya Grokhovsky
EFA Project Space
Artists: Blanka Amezkua, Esperanza Cortés, Bahareh Khoshooee, Daniela Kostova, Cole Lu, Ana Mendieta, Levan Mindiashvili, Qinza Najm, Anna Parisi, daàPò réo, Yali Romagoza.
EFA Project Space is thrilled to present The Immigrant Artist Biennial 2020: Here, Together! a timely exhibition featuring multidisciplinary works by US-based artists. Delayed several months by the COVID crisis which has disproportionally impacted communities of color and immigrants, Here, Together! explores displacement, alienation, and the steady erosion of American Empire, viewed through the work of eleven Immigrant artists.
Confronting a national rhetoric of exclusion, nationalism, and discrimination, the artists in the exhibition call for urgent unity, visibility, and criticality, by facilitating a necessary platform of cultural exchange. Against the backdrop of a global pandemic, and culminating on the eve of a fraught election, the exhibition draws attention to the intertwined issues of immigration and the engineered neglect of othered bodies. In her curatorial statement, Grokhovsky writes: “These artists call forth the power dynamics and hierarchies of a late-stage struggling capitalist society in dire need of compassion and humanity. Their work grapples with issues of identity, the meaning of home and place, and the consistent, looming threats of erasure, removal, and cultural whitewashing.”
Through the works on exhibit and public events, talks, and performances, The Immigrant Artist Biennial expresses ongoing efforts to counter the seemingly dominant paradigms of colonialism, xenophobia, and politically-motivated bigotry to create a common ground and a global community. By uplifting and spotlighting these artists from elsewhere who have chosen to make New York their home, the exhibition is a ray of hope for a future that we can yet create—“here, together!”
CATALOGUE
PRESS RELEASE
CURATORIAL WALKTHROUGH
Photos Walter Wlodarczyk. Courtesy EFA and TIAB.
The Immigrant Artist Biennial 2020: Here, Together! Exhibition at EFA Project Space is made possible in part with public funds from [Creative Engagement or Creative Learning], supported by New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature and administered by LMCC. Project Space programming is made possible through the generous support of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. TIAB Performance events at EFA Project Space are supported by the women & performance: a journal of feminist theory public programs fund.
TIAB 2020: Here, Together!
Curated by Katya Grokhovsky
EFA Project Space, NYC.
Performance: Levan Mindiashvili
A reading by Lucas de Lima in response to Levan Mindiashvili's work Levani's Room: AMERICA, 20 mins
For the Immigrant Artist Biennial's closing performance, Levan Mindiashvili invited Brazilian-born, New York-based poet Lucas de Lima to read excerpts from Cosmic Bottom. Featuring text by James Baldwin, Levan Mindiashvili's installation comments on the representation of race, colonialism, identity, and queer love and desire in American culture. Lucas de Lima's manuscript expands on bottoming as an act of heightened receptiveness that collapses the sexual, the racial, the affective, and the ecological. Penetrable and permeable, the bottom opens a portal to life-worlds that are unintelligible to the gaze of phallic mastery, from Ariel the mermaid in the depths of the sea to the hole left by a mining dam's collapse in Brazil.
ZOOM Recording
Photos Walter Wlodarczyk. Courtesy EFA and TIAB.
TIAB 2020: Here, Together!
Curated by Katya Grokhovsky
EFA Project Space, NYC
Performance: Yali Romagioza
No me pongan en lo oscuro (Do not bury me in Darkness)-Action #2 takes place outside the Whitney Museum of American Art. Two performers acting as Cuquita The Cuban Doll (Romagoza's alter-ego) stand still bearing simulated penises. The public action is part of an ongoing series of performances that raise critical questions about the exclusion and erasure of the Latina artist in the diaspora. As the artist writes, “The art system does not represent the Latina artist in all its diversity of cultures, identities, origins, and stories. Each new performance and public action will add a new Cuquita The Cuban Doll, creating the multiplication and expansion of the Cuquitas confronting various art institutions.” Performers: Paola Martinez Fiterre, Yali Romagoza.
Video
Photos Walter Wlodarczyk. Courtesy EFA and TIAB.
TIAB 2020: Here, Together!
Kick-Off curated by Katya Grokhovsky
Great Hall, 1st Floor
Brooklyn Museum, NYC
Performance: Christopher Unpezverde Núñez
YO, OBSOLETE is an autobiographical performance exploring gender, queerness, and childhood memories.
Photos Walter Wlodarczyk. Courtesy TIAB.
TIAB 2020: Here, Together!
Kick-Off curated by Katya Grokhovsky
Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art
Brooklyn Museum, NYC
Performance: Hanae Utamura
A Letter from Future Past (The Pacific) incorporates planetary and oceanic movement as well as spoken words into a multimedia performance focusing on the Pacific Ocean. Performer: Tina Wang.
Photos Walter Wlodarczyk. Courtesy TIAB.
TIAB 2020: Here, Together!
Co-Curated by Katya Grokhovsky and Harry Weil
Greenwood Cemetery, NYC
Performance: Iván Sikic
Conscious Oblivion is a durational performance, presented as part of Green-Wood‘s annual Día de los Muertos celebrations and in partnership with the Immigrant Artist Biennial. For four hours, Sikic cleans and tends to the graves of immigrants from the Global South who are buried in Public Lot 14964 (next to the Prospect Park West entrance) during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Afterward, he says aloud the names of the deceased as Tariq Allen, a Brooklyn based trumpet player, performs a jazz funeral tune. Sikic’s work pays tribute to life, labor, and the sacrifices of generations of immigrant communities who now rest at Green-Wood.
Photos Christian Rodriguez.