Bruno Casiano
Born in Gary, IN
Lives and works in Cleveland, OH
As a child growing up in the Island of Puerto Rico, I encountered the wild rural life of a small town called Juana Diaz. This has been the motivating factor of my artwork, composed of subconscious interpretations of mountains, mangos, ceiba trees, caves, and the awareness of being on an island. This is the key part of the process of my work, which dips into these memories seen through the eyes of a young kid, where depth of a brilliant sky becomes entangled with leaves, branches, water, colors, forms, and high contrast.
Born in Gary, IN
Lives and works in Cleveland, OH
As a child growing up in the Island of Puerto Rico, I encountered the wild rural life of a small town called Juana Diaz. This has been the motivating factor of my artwork, composed of subconscious interpretations of mountains, mangos, ceiba trees, caves, and the awareness of being on an island. This is the key part of the process of my work, which dips into these memories seen through the eyes of a young kid, where depth of a brilliant sky becomes entangled with leaves, branches, water, colors, forms, and high contrast.
Back to Bi-Lingual
in collaboration with Paloma Dallas
Born in Santiago de Cuba, Cuba
Lives and works in Yellow Springs, OH
Born in Springfield, OH
Lives and works in Yellow Springs, OH
Language is both the vehicle one uses for communicating and the filter one has for understanding. It cannot be disentangled from the cultural and historical baggage that comes with it. Recognizing that along the borderlands of language is where the binomial of memory-identity is most strongly triggered, we explore the consequences of physical displacement—the migration of language—and the complex and painful process of insertion and adaptation in a new social context. Our own process of migration and language acquisition are set against a vast human history of migration and transculturation.
Back to Bi-Lingual
V. Robin Grice
Born in Atlanta, GA
Lives and works in Ann Arbor, MI
Nicole Marroquin
Born in San Antonio, TX
Lives and works in Chicago, IL
This collaborative installation is a part of an ongoing conversation between two artists about the multi-dimensional realities and requirements of being women of color in contemporary American society. Through the figure and various constructed objects, we're attempting to locate the everyday realities of patriarchy, racism, and class bias, and to connect these systems of oppression to our particular stories of girlhood, family relationships, and work life. While we tell very different stories, our goal is to explore what it means to be marginalized within the rubric of post-modernity as well as to imagine and acknowledge the possibilities for true diversity.
Born in Atlanta, GA
Lives and works in Ann Arbor, MI
Nicole Marroquin
Born in San Antonio, TX
Lives and works in Chicago, IL
This collaborative installation is a part of an ongoing conversation between two artists about the multi-dimensional realities and requirements of being women of color in contemporary American society. Through the figure and various constructed objects, we're attempting to locate the everyday realities of patriarchy, racism, and class bias, and to connect these systems of oppression to our particular stories of girlhood, family relationships, and work life. While we tell very different stories, our goal is to explore what it means to be marginalized within the rubric of post-modernity as well as to imagine and acknowledge the possibilities for true diversity.
Spanish text coming soon ...
Back to Bi-Lingual
Back to Bi-Lingual
Saskia Jorda
Born in Caracas, Venezuela
Lives and works in Arizona, Wisconsin, NY
In a world where a six-hour airplane flight can transplant a person into a completely alien world, cultural identity is retained through rituals surrounding clothing, language, and food. Having relocated from my native Venezuela to the United States as a teenager, I became aware of the layers of ”skin” that define and separate cultures—one’s own skin, the second skin of clothing, the shell of one’s dwelling place—all these protecting the vital space of one’s hidden identity. As an interdisciplinary artist, my site-specific installations and performances map the tension between retaining one’s identity and assimilating a foreign persona, while referencing obscure anatomy and the body as an alternate artifact.
Born in Caracas, Venezuela
Lives and works in Arizona, Wisconsin, NY
In a world where a six-hour airplane flight can transplant a person into a completely alien world, cultural identity is retained through rituals surrounding clothing, language, and food. Having relocated from my native Venezuela to the United States as a teenager, I became aware of the layers of ”skin” that define and separate cultures—one’s own skin, the second skin of clothing, the shell of one’s dwelling place—all these protecting the vital space of one’s hidden identity. As an interdisciplinary artist, my site-specific installations and performances map the tension between retaining one’s identity and assimilating a foreign persona, while referencing obscure anatomy and the body as an alternate artifact.
![Saskia Jorda, [karto gra'fia], 2008](ANCHOR_IMAGES/JORDA_anchor.gif)
Back to Bi-Lingual
Michelangelo Lovelace
Born in Cleveland, OH
Lives and works in Cleveland, OH
The paintings I produce are visual documentation of life in many of America’s inner cities. I continue to explore concerns of cultural, racial, and economic tensions between the haves and have nots—with the overall theme being the community. My paintings depict what it is really like living in a community where anything can happen at any time, and where life can often be fast, poor, and short. My paintings deal with many of the issues that affect poor inner-city communities in the United States: issues like poverty, crime, drugs, education, police brutality, health care, and other day-to-day happenings.
Born in Cleveland, OH
Lives and works in Cleveland, OH
The paintings I produce are visual documentation of life in many of America’s inner cities. I continue to explore concerns of cultural, racial, and economic tensions between the haves and have nots—with the overall theme being the community. My paintings depict what it is really like living in a community where anything can happen at any time, and where life can often be fast, poor, and short. My paintings deal with many of the issues that affect poor inner-city communities in the United States: issues like poverty, crime, drugs, education, police brutality, health care, and other day-to-day happenings.
Back to Bi-Lingual
Sana Musasama
Born in New York, NY
Lives and works in New York, NY
My development as a ceramic artist has been animated by an impulse to explore the world. In my course of inquiry into the clay cultures of the globe, I have mastered various techniques, firing atmospheres, and surfaces. Enriched by this exploration, my work emerges from and exists in a domain of IMAGINATIVE FREEDOM that is deeply hospitable to diverse influences and concepts.
Born in New York, NY
Lives and works in New York, NY
My development as a ceramic artist has been animated by an impulse to explore the world. In my course of inquiry into the clay cultures of the globe, I have mastered various techniques, firing atmospheres, and surfaces. Enriched by this exploration, my work emerges from and exists in a domain of IMAGINATIVE FREEDOM that is deeply hospitable to diverse influences and concepts.
Back to Bi-Lingual
Akosua Adoma Owusu
Born in Alexandria, VA
Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA
Within my videos and films, a rhythm is generated both visually and musically. The pacing and editing become a soundtrack. Patterns and montages are integral to the work. Different cultural sites are continually layered atop one another and back again. The heart of my sculptures, films, and videos are loaded with intersections of identity and cultural appropriation. I collect an archive of sources that I often weave in my films to excavate and organize visual texts of cultural ethnicity and historical issues, which I then filter through my subjectivity. I am formed by at least two cultures: Ghana as homeland and living in the United States in an immigrant family. I think of myself as a “walking contradiction” and make use of my cultural hybridity in my film “investigations.” That being said, I do not hesitate to move readily back and forth between similar mundane activities in West Africa and North America, ever aware of my constant insider/outside status.
Born in Alexandria, VA
Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA
Within my videos and films, a rhythm is generated both visually and musically. The pacing and editing become a soundtrack. Patterns and montages are integral to the work. Different cultural sites are continually layered atop one another and back again. The heart of my sculptures, films, and videos are loaded with intersections of identity and cultural appropriation. I collect an archive of sources that I often weave in my films to excavate and organize visual texts of cultural ethnicity and historical issues, which I then filter through my subjectivity. I am formed by at least two cultures: Ghana as homeland and living in the United States in an immigrant family. I think of myself as a “walking contradiction” and make use of my cultural hybridity in my film “investigations.” That being said, I do not hesitate to move readily back and forth between similar mundane activities in West Africa and North America, ever aware of my constant insider/outside status.
Spanish text coming soon ...
Back to Bi-Lingual
Back to Bi-Lingual
Shani Richards
Born in Akron, OH
Lives and works in New York, NY
This body of work is a satire of the hip-hop culture. The media has exaggerated “gangsta” culture. Rappers play on the popularity of the “gangsta” scene, manipulating the consumer for their own gain. They use hot words, such as bitches, ass, hoes, and niggas to gain attention. This body of work glamorizes these words to reflect the commercialization of black stereotypes. With every style of music, a culture is created. The power of the influence that hip hop holds now far surpasses the mass cultural domination of any preceding commercial music form. Around the world people are falling in the trap of holding hip hop culture up as a window on reality. According to the Internet news mill, there is a hip-hop clothing store in Malawi, Africa, called Niggers. This body of work is an attempt to expose the exploitation of Black people by the boys who created rap music and corporations who profit off it. It is a critique on a society, which refuses to learn from its past.
Born in Akron, OH
Lives and works in New York, NY
This body of work is a satire of the hip-hop culture. The media has exaggerated “gangsta” culture. Rappers play on the popularity of the “gangsta” scene, manipulating the consumer for their own gain. They use hot words, such as bitches, ass, hoes, and niggas to gain attention. This body of work glamorizes these words to reflect the commercialization of black stereotypes. With every style of music, a culture is created. The power of the influence that hip hop holds now far surpasses the mass cultural domination of any preceding commercial music form. Around the world people are falling in the trap of holding hip hop culture up as a window on reality. According to the Internet news mill, there is a hip-hop clothing store in Malawi, Africa, called Niggers. This body of work is an attempt to expose the exploitation of Black people by the boys who created rap music and corporations who profit off it. It is a critique on a society, which refuses to learn from its past.
Spanish text coming soon ...
Back to Bi-Lingual
Back to Bi-Lingual
Rafael Valdivieso-Troya
Born in Ecuador
Lives and works in Cleveland Heights, OH
Our languages tie us to our world, our experiences and our beliefs. Worlds are opened and limited by language. Different tongues render untranslatable variations that describe the subtleties of the human essence. Amid the efforts to cultivate my creative freedom and to promote reflection, my work becomes the outcome of my desires and experiences. My tongues—Spanish, Quechua, English—build dialogues that seem the same but in reality reveal different paradigms. They show me that life can be experienced from different vantage points. … My mission is to create channels of communication between the inside and the outside of these worlds. … Today I present three pieces in large format, three pieces that disclose with visual codes the collective experience of my history.
Born in Ecuador
Lives and works in Cleveland Heights, OH
Our languages tie us to our world, our experiences and our beliefs. Worlds are opened and limited by language. Different tongues render untranslatable variations that describe the subtleties of the human essence. Amid the efforts to cultivate my creative freedom and to promote reflection, my work becomes the outcome of my desires and experiences. My tongues—Spanish, Quechua, English—build dialogues that seem the same but in reality reveal different paradigms. They show me that life can be experienced from different vantage points. … My mission is to create channels of communication between the inside and the outside of these worlds. … Today I present three pieces in large format, three pieces that disclose with visual codes the collective experience of my history.
