We Are Here

Hernandez Jasmin Hernandez

Description

Profiles and portraits of 50 artists and art entrepreneurs challenging the status quo in the art world Confidently curated by Jasmin Hernandez, the dynamic founder of Gallery Gurls, We Are Here presents the bold and nuanced work of Black and Brown visionaries transforming the art world. Centering BIPOC, with a particular focus on queer, trans, nonbinary, and BIWOC, this collection features fifty of the most influential voices in New York, Los Angeles, and beyond. Striking photography of art, creative spaces, materials, and the subjects themselves is paired with intimate interviews that engage with each artist and influencer, delving into their creative process and unpacking how each subject actively works to create a more radically inclusive world across the entire art ecosystem. A celebration of compelling intergenerational creatives making their mark, We Are Here shows a path for all who seek to see themselves in art and culture. #weareherebook

Informations

• Publié par: ABRAMS BOOKS
• Date de parution: 02 février 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781647001681
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 15 Mo

Extrait

To all BIPOC artists creatives, in all your beautiful identities, please start that thing you ve been wanting to do. You are laying the foundation for your next chapter.
CONTENTS
Foreword by Kasseem Swizz Beatz Dean
Introduction
AYANA EVANS
HIBA SCHAHBAZ
GABRIELLA SANCHEZ
MAR A BERR O
SHYAMA GOLDEN
INDIE 184
CONNIE FLEMING
HEIN KOH
GENEVIEVE GAIGNARD
KT PE BENITO
DEVAN SHIMOYAMA
MOHAMMED FAYAZ
RAMIRO GOMEZ
DAVID ANTONIO CRUZ
FIRELEI B EZ
DERRICK ADAMS
DANNY B EZ
NATALIE KATES
JOEONNA BELLORADO-SAMUELS
ERIN CHRISTOVALE
LARRY OSSEI-MENSAH
NAIMA J. KEITH
RICK GARZON
LUCIA HIERRO
TOYIN OJIH ODUTOLA
KENNEDY YANKO
TOURMALINE
KIA LABEIJA
DEREK FORDJOUR
HUGO MCCLOUD
PATRICK MARTINEZ
KENTURAH DAVIS
RENEE COX
JASMINE WAHI
LAUREN ARGENTINA ZELAYA
LEGACY RUSSELL
SUHALY BAUTISTA-CAROLINA
ESSENCE HARDEN
MASHONDA TIFRERE
DIYA VIJ
JAMEA RICHMOND-EDWARDS
FELIPE BAEZA
LUNA LUIS ORTIZ
NONA FAUSTINE
LOLA FLASH
TATYANA FAZLALIZADEH
GABRIEL GARC A ROM N
UZUMAKI CEPEDA
SAYA WOOLFALK
UNTITLED QUEEN
Acknowledgments
A detail of a work in progress titled Togetherness (Eclipse) (2019) by Devan Shimoyama photographed at his studio in Pittsburgh. Shimoyama is an artist collected by Dean in The Dean Collection.
FOREWORD
by Kasseem Swizz Beatz Dean Creative, Disruptor, and Founder of The Dean Collection
My genuine passion for art and collecting were activated by immersing myself in the community itself. From the time that I had begun connecting personally with artists and creative professionals in the field, I realized how powerful the experience of art-from behind-the-scenes to opening day-truly is. It is a gift to not only be able to collect the work that inspires me, but to also build an extended family from the creators of the work and the people responsible for bringing it to light.
The individuals featured in We Are Here reflect a larger community of people who do not take no for an answer. They constantly disrupt and challenge us to think deeper and be better for ourselves and for each other.
As I continue my own journey in disrupting and continuing to build platforms that support artists and creatives, my hope is that the next generation will feel empowered to be even bolder in seeing the possibilities demonstrated by these visionaries of our time.
Jasmin Hernandez photographed at A/D/O by MINI.
INTRODUCTION
by Jasmin Hernandez
I m the founder and editor-in-chief of the well-loved indie art website Gallery Gurls, which celebrates womxn, BIPOC, and QTPOC, yet I have zero professional experience in the art world. I ve never worked for a top gallery or an important museum, and I don t have a fancy graduate degree in art history or visual arts criticism. I m a former fashion show producer and photo editor with an insatiable appetite for contemporary art and a voice that is unorthodox, frank, and intentionally not rooted in academia. My mission with Gallery Gurls, since founding it in 2012, was straightforward. As a Black woman, I want to solely cover womxn, BIPOC, and QTPOC in the art world in the most accessible way possible, with curiosity and Wi-Fi being all that is required.
My attraction to fashion and art is organic and pure, and started very early. Growing up as a poor, first-generation Afro-Dominican, artsy girl in Queens, it was just the three of us-my Dominican single mom, my younger brother, and myself. My mom cherished literacy, so the only abundance in our household came in the form of books. There were wall-to-wall shelves filled with trashy novels, historical fiction, artist monographs, and photography books, and I read them all incessantly. When I was twelve, my world was forever changed when my mom gifted me a subscription to Sassy magazine, a budding feminist s dream. I m an eighties baby and nineties teen, so my universe was shaped by the hours spent locked in my room plastered with Spice Girls posters, poring over issues of Vibe , The Source , Elle , and Vogue , and devouring MTV, VH1, BET, and E! twenty-four seven.
I visited a museum for the first time in 1997 at age seventeen to see a Gianni Versace exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Versace, who was tragically killed that year, was my favorite fashion icon and this was my chance to see his dazzling designs up close. My high school fashion teacher-a Colombian Nina Garc a doppelg nger-encouraged me to see art in Manhattan and keep a journal that detailed how I felt about it. In many ways, this was a precursor to my blogging and writing that would happen a little over a decade later. So I kept observing, consuming, discovering, and interacting with art, and eventually I got it into my head I would pursue a creative career and apply to art school.
During my four years at Parsons School of Design, studying fashion and marketing among mostly rich white kids, my art education primarily focused on dead white men-Monet, Manet, Seurat, Picasso, Man Ray, de Chirico, Ernst, and Warhol. One rare exception was a surrealist women artists class I took my junior year, where I was introduced to Claude Cahun, Leonor Fini, Lee Miller, and Meret Oppenheim, and where I first fell in love with Frida Kahlo. While the class was unforgettable, it failed to include any Black womxn. I soaked all this up while habitually visiting all the major New York museums-the Met, Guggenheim, Whitney, MoMA, and the New Museum-especially once I discovered suggested admission and weekly free nights. I yearned for Blackness in art and fashion, but I wasn t learning much about famous BIPOC artists or fashion designers in class or finding them on museum walls. It was magazines like Trace (where I was an intern), Honey , and Suede (which would come years later) that fed me that Black invigorating creativity I desperately craved.
As a twentysomething in the 2000s, it was exhibits like Kara Walker s 2007 solo show at the Whitney that gripped me. I m pretty sure that was the first time I ever saw a solo exhibit by a Black female artist. Seeing a Basquiat retrospective in 2005 at the Brooklyn Museum had that same visceral effect, too. By 2009, Kehinde Wiley was already a king, an artist whose work shook me to my core, so going to see his Black Light exhibit at Deitch Projects was an unmissable event. Over the years, my attachment to art grew deeper and deeper, and no one was going to make me feel like an Afro-Latinx girl from a low-income working-class background didn t belong in culturally privileged spaces. Even during all those years when you could count on one hand how few BIPOC were present at packed art openings in Chelsea. I simply wouldn t allow it.
By 2012, it was time to write about art. I had seen enough, lived enough, traveled enough, and had formed an aesthetic. I d gazed at Klimts at the Belvedere in Vienna, mentally wrestled with Francis Bacon s dark canvases at El Prado in Madrid, and swooned over Dawoud Bey s images of Harlem at the Studio Museum in Harlem. Most of all, I loved vibrant, figurative work by Black and Brown artists-that s what resonated with me. That s what Gallery Gurls was going to be about. I abandoned my personal blog that I started in my late twenties in 2010, my tiny little corner of the Internet dedicated to musings on contemporary art, fashion, and pop culture. Instagram was crucial at this point; it became a major research tool for finding new artists both globally and locally in New York City. So I roamed Instagram, at first seeing artists work on a tiny screen and then seeking it out IRL at a gallery, museum, or in their studio. Whatever their work made me feel in my gut, I spit out onto a published post. My words were raw and pure; I didn t overthink it. But the art world wasn t just being shaped by artists, it was also being shaped by independent curators, cultural producers, and art entrepreneurs who were young and BIPOC just like me. It was essential to capture them, too.
We Are Here: Visionaries of Color Transforming the Art World is a graduation of sorts, both for myself and for many of the fifty featured subjects. Many of us met through social media in the early 2010s, followed each other online, and formed relationships IRL. I went to their openings, featured them on Gallery Gurls, and wrote about their work for big mainstream publications. We attended each other s panels or spoke on panels together, discussing topics like equity, access, and representation in the art world. We collaborated and supported one another. We all came up together. I m a blogger and writer, and now debut author. They ve become agents of cultural change through their art and activism. Everyone grinded, and this book is the evidence.
I selected an impressive array of BIPOC and QTPOC artists and art influencers to be a part of We Are Here . They are from all over the world and are mostly based in New York and Los Angeles. A multitude of stories are told here, since there is no single, definitive path to making it in the art world. Some are PhD candidates or have dual BFA and MFA degrees, others have a single degree, are college dropouts, or attended zero college at all. This is an intergenerational group of artists and creatives, from baby boomers to millennials, including established icons, unsung heroes, rising stars, and those on the come up. They are painters, photographers, sculptors, installation artists, collagists, performance artists, filmmakers, multidisciplinary artists, digital artists, fashion illustrators, and so on. Including emerging curators, gallerists, and art entrepreneurs was also vital; while artists make impactful art, these influencers get their art out into the world.
My eye is always seeking out intriguing art in both typical and unexpected places. I looked beyond prominent artists repped by big galleries and into other worlds, like the ballroom community and QTPOC nightlife. These are worlds that have shaped me since I was a teen