In Visible Spaces
In Visible Spaces brings together the work of Pawas Bajaj, Kevin Quiles Bonilla, Johnnie Chatman, Isadora Frost, Yi Hsuan Lai, and Tiffany Smith as they explore spaces–visible and invisible. Each artist tackles their own idea of space, from examining the space that structural oppression and citizenship occupy, to exploring physical and imagined spaces and how we fit within them. The show asks how people view the space they inhabit, and how to shift the space that is given to them.
When gathering these artists together, their stories, although different, engage in a complex conversation with each other. The work of Kevin Quiles Bonilla questions where Puerto Rico stands in relation to the United States, especially after Hurricane Maria while Johnnie Chatman’s portraits, taken throughout different American landscapes, place his form within the frame as a body that cannot be ignored despite how much contemporary America wishes to forget the pervasive racism that still exists. Pawas Bajaj’s sound installations reflect on what spaces feel like home as an Indian living in the US, while Yi Hsuan Lai plays with imagined and constructed spaces as a tool to explore selfness. Isadora Frost plays with the space her own body takes up with her playful performance work, delving into the idea of the physical space we occupy, while Tiffany Smith’s portrait is a fierce declaration of taking space for women and demanding the viewer to acknowledge the experiences of people who have periods surrounded by flourishing life.
To be visible or invisible in a space, to question how your body and identity inhabits a space, to reimagine what a space could look like – the artists within this gallery engage with these questions in their unique way.
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Tue-Fri: 2-6pm
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PAWAS BAJAJ
Pawas Bajaj is a Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary artist with interests in the intersection of technology, sound, and design. His design practice acts as a social commentary to the changing human behavior. Bajaj’s current work investigates the concept of Multi–localism, and the sense of home for migrants in the present geopolitical scenario. He holds a Master of Fine Arts in Graphic Design from Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, MD.
Bajaj’s work has been featured in exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Art (Baltimore, MD 2019), Decker and Meyerhoff Galleries (Baltimore, MD 2019), Chinatown Soup Gallery (New York, NY 2019) and OpenWorks (Baltimore, MD 2018).
KEVIN QUILES BONILLA
Kevin Quiles Bonilla (n. 1992) es un artista visual nacido en San Juan, Puerto Rico. Es egresado de Parsons, The New School of Design en Nueva York con una Maestría en Bellas Artes con honores, y la Universidad de Puerto Rico con un Bachillerato en Bellas Artes magna cum laude. Su producción artística ha sido presentada en exhibiciones tanto individuales como colectivas en Puerto Rico, Estados Unidos, México, China, Bélgica y Japón. En el 2017, fue recipiente del Premio para Artistas Emergentes de el Kennedy Center en Washington, D.C. Recientemente ha presentado su trabajo en Brooklyn Museum, Queens Museum, The Shelly & Rubin Foundation’s 8th Floor Gallery y Leslie-Lohman Museum’s Project Space. Sus exploraciones nacen a raíz de ideas sobre poder, espacio, e historia con su identidad como contexto. Actualmente vive y trabaja entre Puerto Rico y Nueva York.
Kevin Quiles Bonilla (b. 1992) is a visual and performance artist born in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He is a graduate from Parsons, The New School of Design in New York City with an MFA in Fine Arts and the University of Puerto Rico with a BA in Fine Arts. His artistic production has been presented in solo shows as well as collective exhibitions in Puerto Rico, The United States, Mexico, China, Belgium, and Japan. He’s the recipient of a 2017 Emerging Artist Award from The Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. He has recently presented his work at The Brooklyn Museum, Queens Museum, The Shelly & Rubin Foundation’s 8th Floor Gallery and the Leslie-Lohman Museum’s Project Space. He explores ideas around power, space, and history with his identity as context. He currently lives and works between Puerto Rico and New York.
JOHNNIE CHATMAN
Johnnie Chatman (B. 1990) is a lens-based artist residing in New York City. He holds a Master of Fine Arts in Photography, Video & Related Media from the School of Visual Arts in New York and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography from Academy of Art University in San Francisco.
Chatman’s work has been featured in exhibitions across the United States including at Fraenkel Gallery (San Francisco, CA), the De Young Museum (San Francisco, CA), SF Camerawork (San Francisco, CA) and Claremont Museum of Art (Claremont, CA). He has been the recipient of the Beth Block Travel Grant, School of Visual Arts Alumni Scholarship Award, Alice-Beck Odette Scholarship and a department assistantship from the School of Visual Arts. His work has been featured in publications including PDN EDU, All The Best Alice, Rucksack Magazine, The Bold Italic, VoyageLA and Zoetrope All-Story. He is also the founder of Terms & Conditions, a showcase of experimentation in moving image.
ISADORA FROST
Isadora Frost grew up in Brazil, where, in 2009, she graduated from PUC Sao Paulo in Performance Art and Dance. In 2014, Frost completed a second degree in Fine Arts, minoring in Photography at The San Francisco Art Institute. In 2018, she acquired a Master degree in Photography, at Parsons the New school of design at the New School. Frost mixes all those media she learned, having a very complex multimedia practice.
The relationship between the body, space and communities is the main theme of Frost’s work; she explores multiple combinations of body and landscapes. In 2013 she participated in The Arctic Circle Residency. Since 2018 Frost has been internationally featured in Brazil, San Francisco, New Zealand, New York, Russia, China and in 2019 she received an award as the Theme Winner at the Helsinki Photo Festival in Finland.
YI-HSUAN LAI
Yi Hsuan Lai (b,1988) is a photo-based artist born in Taiwan. She is receiving her MFA from the School of Visual Arts in Photography, Video and Related Media, graduating in May 2020. Her background is in graphic design and theatrical performance documentation, which inspires her art processes of performance, staged self-portraits, installations, and sculpture-based photography. Her oeuvre explores her multiple layers of selfness as she experiments with the representation of sensation through physical materiality, manifesting the imagination of her mind.
TIFFANY SMITH
Tiffany Smith is an interdisciplinary artist from the Caribbean diaspora working in photography, video, installation, and design. Using plant matter, design and home decor elements, pattern, and costuming as cultural signifiers, Smith creates photographic portraits, site responsive installations, user engaged experiences, and assemblages focused on identity, representation, cultural ambiguity, and displacement. Visual references from an array of multi-cultural influences inform constructed environments that serve to articulate cultural subjectivities that oscillate between visitor and native roles. Smith’s practice centers on what forms and defines communities of people color, in particular; how they are identified and represented, and how they endure.
Smith received a BFA in Photography from Savannah College of Art and Design and an MFA in Photo/Video from School of Visual Arts. Her work has been exhibited internationally including shows at National Art Gallery of the Bahamas, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, The National Gallery of Jamaica, MassArt, St. John’s University, Smack Mellon, Fjord Gallery, The Wassaic Project, Spring Break Art Show, Garner Arts Festival, Photo NOLA and Photoville. She has presented public art installations in Newark Penn Station through The Gateway Project/P.E.S. and in Marcus Garvey Park during Flux Art Fair. Recent solo exhibitions include Recess Assembly, and Montserrat College of Art. Tiffany Smith is a 2018 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Interdisciplinary Work from The New York Foundation for the Arts, a Bronx A.I.M. (37) alum, and a 2019 EnFoco Photography Fellowship Awardee. Tiffany Smith is currently a Co-Director of Ortega y Gasset Projects and based in Brooklyn, NY.
SHANNON FINNELL
While strongly believing that the key to social change is compassionate relationships that lead to genuine support, Shannon Finnell’s work attempts to embody that lesson through the exploration and deconstruction of supportive gestures and moments. Pulling from her BA in Studio Art and Peace Studies from Goucher College in Baltimore, MD, the marriage of visual art and questioning oppressive social structures is where Finnell finds inspiration for her work. She received an MFA in Fine Art Photography from the Parsons School of Design at The New School in 2018 and continues to engage with concepts of support through experimentation of video, installation, photographic practices and collaboration with modern and contemporary dancers.
Finnell is now the Founder and Director of Arts Connective, an arts organization that aims to strengthen international art conversation through hosting pop-up shows and sharing resources.
Notable exhibitions include the participation and production of Governing Bodies at the Arnold and Sheila Aronson Galleries (New York City, NY 2017) and Rosy-Crimson with Kim Hoeckele at Queens International at the Queens Museum (Queens, NY 2018). Recent curatorial projects include Value of Space at Living Artist Gallery (Queens, NY 2020).