Estelle Maisonett, The New Yorker, 2019
Please join Gloria’s for an artist talk with John Ahearn, Estelle Maisonett, and Kiara Ventura, moderated by Glendalys Medina. The discussion will focus on the works and themes in Estelle Maisonett’s show Assumed Identity, curated by Stephanie A. Lindquist.
Drawing from the many identities she carries as a Mexican-American-Puerto-Rican-queer woman, Estelle Maisonett creates large-scale mixed-media collages that explore how identity is fabricated through our choices as consumers. Maisonett traverses the urban landscapes of New York City, collecting our detritus and archiving her findings. Making use of the city's refuse—old clothes, crushed cans, magazine covers, protest signs—she recreates the domestic spaces and neighborhood hangouts of her native New York and populates these scenes with faceless figures. Without a body, how do we interpret these all-too-common leftovers of an American metropolis? Who are these individuals? And why do we identify them as such? Asking these questions, Maisonett's work highlights our limited perceptions of identity and the continued influence of American capitalism on our collective subconsciousness.
Gloria’s will open at 12pm on Sunday, May 26th, and we encourage you to visit the show prior to the talk at The Footlight, conveniently located across the street from the gallery. Food will be available for purchase from Valentine's, prepared with ingredients from local Ridgewood businesses. To RSVP and to become a Gloria’s member, please visit our WithFriends page.
John Ahearn was a founding member of Collaborative Projects, Inc., and co-organizer of the Times Square Show (1980). In the 1980s, Ahearn and his collaborator Rigoberto Torres created several outdoor community murals in the Bronx. Their large survey exhibition South Bronx Hall of Fame, organized by the Houston Contemporary Arts Center in 1991, traveled to museums in Europe and North America. They collaborated on two large-scale wall murals at the Inhotim Centro de Arte Contemporãnea, Brazil (2004-06). In May 2012, Ahearn participated in the Special Projects section of the Frieze Art Fair on Randall's Island, where he presented a reconstruction of his 1979 exhibition at Fashion Moda, South Bronx Hall of Fame. Ahearn's work was been included in group exhibitions at the New Museum of Contemporary Art (1980); the Institute of Contemporary Art, London (1982); the Whitney Museum of American Art (1985); and Greater New York at MoMA PS1, New York (2015). Ahearn and Torres had a show at Alexander and Bonin Gallery, New York, in September 2017.
Estelle Maisonett is a mixed-media interdisciplinary artist who uses found objects to document the journey of the consumer and explore how identity is perceived through consumption. Estelle has exhibited at The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Silent Barn, Chashama, and SUNY Purchase College, amongst others. Maisonett has worked in the Bronx and New York City as a teaching artist, guest lecturer, and arts program administrator. She has created arts programming geared toward community building and social practice with organizations including the Department of Education, the Neuberger Museum of Art, The National Parks Service, and Bronx Children's Museum. She received her BFA from SUNY Purchase College in 2013, was a 2018 Artist in the Marketplace Fellow at The Bronx Museum of the Arts, and 2018 BronxArtSpace Summer Artist in Residence.
Born in Puerto Rico and raised in the Bronx, Glendalys Medina is an interdisciplinary artist who received her MFA from Hunter College. Medina's work has been presented at such notable venues as PAMM; Artists Space; The Bronx Museum of Art; El Museo del Barrio; The Museum of Contemporary Art in Vigo, Spain; and The Studio Museum in Harlem. Medina is a recipient of a Bemis Center residency and Jerome Hill Foundation Fellowship (2019), an Ace Hotel New York Artist Residency (2017), a SIP Fellowship at EFA Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop (2016), a BACK IN FIVE MINUTES: Artist Residency at El Museo Del Barrio (2015), a residency at Yaddo (2014, 2018), the Rome Prize in Visual Arts (2013), a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Interdisciplinary Art (2012), and The Bronx Museum of the Arts Artist in the Marketplace residency (2010).
Kiara Cristina Ventura is a Dominican-American journalist and curator from the Bronx who aims to be a support for emerging artists, especially those from underrepresented communities in the art world. Ventura graduated with a B.A. in Art History and Journalism from NYU in May 2018. In the past, she has worked at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cosmopolitan Magazine for Latinas, ArtForum International, Grey Art Gallery, and the Brooklyn Museum. In 2018, she won the BAS Bronx Emerging Curators Open Call and launched a series of art history classes teaching contemporary artists of color through her platform, ArtsyWindow. She has taught at VICE headquarters, Gavin Brown's Enterprise, Ghetto Gastro, 8-Ball Community, and more. Earlier this month, she curated the exhibition Still Here alongside Larry Ossei-Mensah and Dexter Wimberly at the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco. Ventura is a self-made art history professor, a curatorial assistant for Larry Ossei-Mensah, an art critic for ArtForum International & Performa Magazine, and an independent curator currently working on exhibitions that will take place in the Bronx and feature a majority of young Bronx artists.