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WILLIAM PATERSON UNIVERSITY EXHIBIT FEATURES THREE LATINA ARTISTS WHO EXPLORE ISSUES OF CULTURE AND IDENTITY THROUGH A VARIETY OF MEDIUMS
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Three female artists whose roots by birth or heritage are in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean explore issues of culture and identity in an exhibit that will be on view at the Ben Shahn Galleries at William Paterson University in Wayne from February 2 through March 27, 2009. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is free. A reception for the exhibit will be held on Sunday, March 22, 2009, from 3 to 5 p.m.
The exhibit, titled “Three Latina Artists/Three Artistas Latina,” features works by Elia Alba of Queens, whose parents immigrated from the Dominican Republic; Rodriguez Calero of Union City, who was born in Puerto Rico; and Juana Valdes of New York City, a native of Cuba. Curated by Alejandro Anreus, an associate professor of art and Latin American and Latino studies at William Paterson University, the exhibit includes a variety of media, such as sculpture, painting and photography.
“Since the late nineteenth century, through economic migration and political exile, the presence of the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Cuba have been a constant in the United States,” says Anreus. “Today, the art made by artists whose heritage is found in these communities is very much a part of contemporary art in the U.S. These three Latina artists are committed to their craft and personal visions, also produce works that inevitably are meditations on being women artists of Spanish-speaking Caribbean heritage.”
Alba is a multi-media sculptor who explores issues of race and gender through a visual questioning of conventional notions of beauty. She combines sewing and photography to create her photo-based masks. A graduate of Hunter College, Alba completed the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. Her work has been exhibited and screened at various national and international institutions, fairs and film festivals, including ArtBasel Miami; her awards include the Artist-in-Residence Fellowship from the Studio Museum in Harlem and grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Pollack-Krasner Foundation and the Joan Mitchell Foundation.
Rodriguez Calero’s paintings, which she calls acrollages, are constructed through subtle layers of pigment, stencils, found imagery, and her own photographs. Mostly figurative, the works are charged with the iconographic presence of Catholic saints. Rodriguez Calero has studied at the Institute of Culture’s School of Fine Arts in Puerto Rico and at the Art Students League of New York. Her many honors include a prestigious McDowell Traveling Scholarship, as well as fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and the New York Foundation for the Arts.
Valdes, a multimedia installation artist, explores African diasporic identities, female beauty and Cuban history in her works, which range from sculptural installations to handcrafted works of fabric, photography, and video. A graduate of the Parsons School of Design, she earned a master of fine arts degree from the School of Visual Arts. She has won numerous awards, including a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, and a Cuban Artist Fund Grant, and was awarded the Cosby Fellowship to attend the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.
Anreus, who was born in Cuba, earned a bachelor’s degree from Kean University and master’s and doctoral degrees in art history at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Before joining the William Paterson faculty in 2001, Anreus was a curator at the Montclair Art Museum and the Jersey City Museum, as well as a critic-in-residence at the Latino Center for Art and Culture, Rutgers University. He is the author of Ben Shahn and the Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti, Orozco in Gringoland: The Years in New York, and The Social and The Real: Political Art of the 1930s in the Western Hemisphere, which he co-edited with Diana L. Linden and Jonathan Weinberg. His articles have appeared in Art Journal, Third Text, Art Nexus and Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana.
The exhibit is one of two exhibits on view concurrently in the Ben Shahn Galleries. “Concurrent,” a touring exhibit featuring four artists who have devoted their careers to abstraction, is on view in the East and South Galleries. This exhibit is made possible in part by funds from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts.
The Ben Shahn Galleries are wheelchair-accessible. Large-print handouts are available. For additional information, please call the Ben Shahn Galleries at William Paterson University, 973-720-2654.
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January 26 , 2009
www.wpunj.edu
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