Aoko—born away from home: ArteFuse

Installation view, Aoko—born away from home, curated by Klaudia Ofwona Draber, 2024. Photo by Argenis Apolinario.

Aoko—born away from home: Claiming and Creating Identity at EFA Project Space, NYC

“Aoko—born away from home is a powerful multimedia group show at EFA Project Space until November 16. The exhibition includes visual art, video, and writing from artists about the experience of being mixed race. This show was very personal to me, as I am a mixed-race person, and it touched on themes that people outside of this demographic often overlook. Oftentimes, mixed-race people feel like they are not enough of one thing to identify with any one identity because of the way their peers react to them. Aoko—born away from home touched on this feeling while fighting for our right to claim our heritage. Additionally, I have found community with other mixed-race people regardless of ethnic background, and the exhibition captured this solidarity by representing many different mixed-racial and ethnic identities.”

—Bash Ortega for ArteFuse

Read more

Melissa Joseph: Artsy

Portrait of Melissa Joseph in her studio, 2024. Photo by Ryan Lowry for Artsy.

The Artsy Vanguard 2025: Melissa Joseph

“It’s hard to know where to look first in Melissa Joseph’s midtown Manhattan studio. Perhaps the work table, piled with tufts of wool in an array of colors that would make the Crayola 64-pack blush? Perhaps the heap of tires in the corner, or the knickknacks that line the windows overlooking 39th Street. Or maybe a small, figurative felt piece displayed in a shadow box frame, depicting a sunset, as filtered through the frame of a cell phone screen.

Joseph didn’t make this work—her eight-year-old niece, Olive, did. Even so, it feels particularly emblematic of the artist’s personality and practice. A “pathologically extroverted” (her words) former art teacher still eager to nurture the creativity of those around her—including, I would come to find out, visiting journalists—Joseph radiates warmth that is equally present in her felt compositions. These works, which often depict her family members, are cocoons of memory and heritage, deeply concerned with materiality and the afterlife of images. Joseph has worked across a variety of media, including ceramics and paper pulp, but it is her fiber portraits—created using a distinctive needle-felting technique and often paired with found objects—that have become her signature..”

—Olivia Horn for Artsy

Read more

Vicky Colombet: Artnet

Vicky Colombet in her studio, 2024. Courtesy of the artist and Fernberger.

Vicky Colombet Finds a Sense of ‘Home’ in Her Aerial-Inspired Paintings

“French-American artist Vicky Colombet (b. 1953) has made the flight between New York and Paris many times. But the sight of the mammoth waves of the Atlantic Ocean from tens of thousands of feet above, abstracted into inky scribbles and scrawls in shades of blue has never failed to amaze her.

The vastness of these elemental forces— the ocean, the cosmos, the earth itself—is what inspires much of the artist’s enigmatic abstractions. Earlier this month, the artist opened “Flying Home” her West Coast solo debut at Fernberger Gallery in Los Angeles. Colombet presents some of her most nuanced works to date, monumental pieces made of pigment, oil, and alkyd on linen in a limited palette of blues and blacks.”

—Katie White for Artnet

Read more

Stephanie Santana at Robert Blackburn (Booth N8): NY Times Armory Show Review

Prints by Stephanie Santana, a founder of Black Women of Print, at Booth N8 include “As Above So Below” (2024), second from left. Credit.: Karsten Moran for The New York Times

The Armory Show

Booth N8 | Javits Center
September 6–8, 2024

NEW Print Edition & Textile Works by Stephanie Santana; including selections from the archives: Betye Saar, Dindga McCannon, Emma Amos and Mavis Pusey

“Art fairs, with their commercial focus, usually make space for nonprofits, and there is a whole section devoted to them here. One of the particularly good ones is the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, one of the longest-running community print shops in the United States. (Founded in 1947 by Blackburn, the son of Jamaican immigrants, the workshop is now run by the Elizabeth Foundation in Chelsea.) The artist Stephanie Santana, a founder of Black Women of Print, has drawn from the Blackburn archives and is showing Betye Saar, Dindga McCannon, Emma Amos and Mavis Pusey alongside her own lithograph, “As Above So Below” (2024), whose upside-down-downside-up figure refers both to Black matriarchal ancestors and the intersections of material and spiritual worlds.”

—Martha Schwendener for The New York Times

Read more

Carlos Motta: Gravidade at Vermelho

Galeria Vermelho
Rua Minas Gerais, 350, 01244-010
São Paulo/SP, Brasil

July 31 – September 28, 2024

On August 1st, Vermelho opens Gravidade, Carlos Motta's second solo exhibition at the gallery.

This series of works includes a large-scale drawing in five parts that serves as the score for a new video performance to be produced in Brazil in June 2024. The video features Alessandro Aguipe, Ana Musidora, Flow Kountouriotis, Karen Marçal, Mariana Taques, Tadzio Veiga, Vitor Martins Dias and Vulcanica Pokaropa. Cinematography is by Flora Dias, with original score and sound design by Luisa Lemgruber.

Read more

Xin Song: New Start, New Hope at Garment District Alliance

New Start, New Hope
Broadway Plaza
Between 37th and 38th St

Opening: July 10, 9 PM

A series of ornate, illuminated lanterns are sparkling above the Garment District as part of the Garment District Alliance’s (GDA) latest public art installation, New Start, New Hope. Created by EFA Studio Artist Xin Song, the installation brings light – both literally and figuratively – to the Broadway plazas in the heart of Midtown Manhattan.

Located on the Broadway plazas in the Garment District between 36 th and 39 th Streets, the free installation will be available to the public through January 2025. In addition to enhancing the overall pedestrian experience, New Start, New Hope invites city-goers to pause and revel in a moment of tranquil reflection amidst the hustle and bustle that surrounds them.

Read more