Artists Archive
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Erika Vogt (b.1973, East Newark, New Jersey) is a Los Angeles based artist represented by Overduin and Kite in Los Angeles and Simone Subal Gallery in New York City. She received an MFA from California Institute of the Arts and a BFA from New York University. Solo exhibitions include: The Engraved Plane, Simone Subal Gallery, New York (2012); Geometric Persecution, Overduin and Kite, Los Angeles (2010); Room Gallery, University of California at Irvine, Irvine, CA (2010); and Daniel Hug, Los Angeles, CA (2008). Selected screening and group exhibitions include: Affective Turns at Pepin Moore, Los Angeles (2012) and Made in L.A. at The Hammer, Los Angeles (2012), Foam, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2011); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA (2011); Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, WA (2010); Whitney Biennial, New York, NY (2010) and Anthology Film Archives, New York, NY (2009).
Learn moreMariana Valencia | Photo credit Ian Douglas
Mariana Valencia, (creator/performer) has held residencies at Chez Bushwick (2013), New York Live Arts Studio Series (2013-14), ISSUE Project Room (2015) and Brooklyn Arts Exchange (2016-18). Nationally, she has held residencies at Show Box LA and Pieter Pasd (2014) in Los Angeles; and was part of PICA’s 2018 Creative Exchange Lab. Valencia is a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Award to Artists grant recipient (2018), a Jerome Travel and Study Grant fellow (2014-15), a Yellow House Fund of the Tides Foundation grant recipient (2010-13) and a Movement Research GPS/Global Practice Sharing artist (2016/17). Her ethnographic research has taken her to Belize, Mexico and the Balkans and she has performed in works by Jules Gimbrone, Elizabeth Orr, Kate Brandt, AK Burns, Em Rooney, robbinschilds, Kim Brandt, Fia Backstrom and MPA. Valencia is a founding member of the No Total reading group and she has been the co-editor of Movement Research’s Critical Correspondence (2016-17). She holds a BA from Hampshire College in Amherst, MA (2006).
Learn moreMaya Vivas is a multidisciplinary artist working in a variety of mediums, such as ceramic, performance, painting, and installation. Maya has exhibited work, spoken on panels, and hosted workshops throughout the United States, including venues and institutions such as The National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts, Louisiana State University, and Yale. Vivas is also co-founder of Ori Gallery. Whose mission is to redefine "the white cube" through amplifying the voices of Queer and Trans Artists of color, community organizing and mobilization through the arts
Maya is a 2022/3 Golden Spot Residency awardee.
Learn moreMona Vatamanu (Romania) and Florin Tudor (Switzerland) live in Bucharest, Romania, where they have been working together since 2000. Their practice spans film, photography, painting, performance, and installation, and reflects the social upheavals of post-communist Eastern Europe. The duo has had solo exhibitions throughout Europe and North America, and has been featured in the 2008 Berlin Biennial and in the Romanian Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007. Vatamanu and Tudor have had residencies at Basis Voor Actuele Kunst in Utrecht, AIR Vienna, and Project Room at Ludwig Museum in Budapest, among others. They received first prize in the 2006 Fair:Play Video Festival in Berlin. Vatamanu and Tudor are represented by Lombard Fried Projects, New York.
Peripheries
Moscow's Poplar Curse, New York Magazine, April 17, 2011.
Learn moreBorn in 1970, Philippe Quesne received his education in Visual Arts. For 10 years he designed sets for theater, operas and exhibitions. In 2003, he created the Vivarium Studio Company, and directed his first show, La Démangeaison des ailes, based on the acts of taking off and falling down. Philippe Quesne hunts the marvelous, the tiny, and pushes to the extreme experiences of our daily lives as well as the relationship between mankind and nature. As he did as a child, collecting insects, he now works and studies small communities under his microscope. The scenography is used as an ecosystem in which he immerses his actors into. His shows, such as La Démangeaison des ailes (2003), Des expériences (2004), D’après nature (2006), L’Effet de Serge (2007), La Mélancolie des dragons (2008), Big Bang (2010), Swamp Club (2013), Next Day (2014), compose a repertory that tours all over the world. In addition to his work for the theater, he creates performances and interventions in public spaces or natural sites, and displays his installations in the context of exhibitions. Since January 2014, he has been serving as the co-director of Nanterre-Amandiers, National Dramatic Center. In 2016, he will create Caspar Western Friedrich at Kammerspiele in Munich and Welcome to Caveland! at Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels
BIO PAGE IMAGE/S:
La Mélancolie des dragons 1 @ Martin Argyroglo
La Mélancolie des dragons 5 © Pierre Grosbois Learn moreRonaldo V. Wilson, PhD, is the author of Narrative of the Life of the Brown Boy and the White Man (University of Pittsburgh, 2008), winner of the 2007 Cave Canem Prize, Poems of the Black Object (Futurepoem Books, 2009), winner of the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry and the Asian American Literary Award in Poetry in 2010. His latest books are Farther Traveler: Poetry, Prose, Other (Counterpath Press, 2015), finalist for a Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry and Lucy 72 (1913 Press, 2017). Co-founder of the Black Took Collective, Wilson is also a mixed media artist, dancer and performer. His Off the Dome: Rants, Raps, and Meditations, an online album, exists on The Conversant. His short films “Grey,” “White,” “Blue,” “Red,” “Green,” “Brown,” “Pink,” “Black,” can also be found online at the Center for Art and Thought. Wilson is currently an Associate Professor of Creative Writing and Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz, serving on the core faculty of the Creative Critical PhD Program, and co-directing the Creative Writing Program. He splits his time between Santa Cruz, CA and Long Island, New York.
Learn morevanessa german is a self-taught citizen artist working across sculpture, performance, communal rituals, immersive installation, and photography, in order to repair and reshape disrupted systems, spaces, and connections. The artist’s practice proposes new models for social healing, utilizing creativity and tenderness as vital forces to reckon with the historical and ongoing catastrophes of structural racism, white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, resource extraction, and misogynoir.
A visual storyteller, german utilizes assemblage and mixed media, combining locally found objects to build protective ritualistic structures known as her power figures or tar babies. Modeled on Congolese Nkisi sculptures and drawing on folk art practices, they are embellished with materials including beading, glass, fabric, and sculpted wood, and come into existence at the axis on which Black power, spirituality, mysticism and feminism converge.
Based in Homewood, Pittsburgh, german’s artistic practice is intertwined with and inextricable from her dedicated role in activism and community leadership. In 2011, german founded the Love Front Porch, an arts initiative for the women, children, and families of the local neighborhood that began after she moved her studio practice onto the front steps of her home. Three years later, in 2014, german opened the ARThouse, which combines a community studio, a large garden, an outdoor theatre, and an artist residency.
Upholding artmaking as an act of restorative justice, german confronts and begins to dismantle the emotional and spiritual weight imposed by the multi-generational oppression of African American communities. As a queer Black woman living in the United States, german has described this as a deeply necessary process of adventuring into the wild freedom that the inhabitation of such identities demands. This activist instinct emerges in german’s work to postulate powerful narratives of freedom and love.
german has been awarded the 2015 Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant, the 2017 Jacob Lawrence Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the 2018 United States Artist Grant and, most recently, the 2018 Don Tyson Prize from Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
Her work is held in private and public collections including the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the West Virginia University Museum, Everson Museum of Art, Figge Art Museum, Flint Institute of Arts, Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, David C. Driskell Center, Snite Museum of Art, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, and Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College. german’s fine art work has been exhibited widely, most recently at the Figge Art Museum, The Union for Contemporary Art, The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia, Flint Institute of Arts, Mattress Factory, Everson Museum of Art, Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Studio Museum, Ringling Museum of Art and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
Learn moreBorn in Harlem in 1986 to Dominican-Ecuadorian parents, Venus X grew up in Washington Heights and has recently made a name for herself in NYC’s underground music and art scene. She’s been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, Vibe, ArtForum, Modern Painters, V Magazine, and Fader for her multi-faceted sounds. She performed at various New York Fashion Week after-parties and composed soundtracks for runway shows (earning the title of “Fashion Week’s Most Extreme DJ” from Rolling Stone for her Gerlan Jeans set), scored a performance by K8 Hardy for the Whitney Biennial, and has performed various times at MoMA, the New Museum, and other similar institutions. She has toured with Gang Gang Dance and Theophilus London, starred in music videos for A$AP Rocky, and worked as a researcher and consultant for Shakira.
Selected Press
Venus X: I don't like pretending to be stupid,
Sampling Rap, Salsa, and Al Jazeera, Alex Hawgood, The New York Times, April 18, 2012.
The X Factor: Meet Venus, Fashion Week's Most Extreme DJ, Colleen Nika, Rolling Stone, September 19, 2011.
Learn moreVictoria Fortuna is Assistant Professor of Dance at Reed College. Her teaching and research interests include Latin/x American concert and social dance, dance as a mode of political and community organization, collaborative creation methods, and cultural histories of dance in transnational perspective. Victoria is currently working on a book that examines the relationship between Buenos Aires, Argentina based contemporary dance practices and histories of political and economic violence from the 1960s to the present. She is trained in modern and contemporary dance techniques and collaborates with several Buenos Aires based dance collectives. She has received grants and awards from Fulbright, the Society of Dance History Scholars, the American Society for Theatre Research, and the Latin American Studies Association. Victoria holds a PhD in Performance Studies from Northwestern University.
Learn moreVictoria Hunt is an Australian-born Maori performance artist. Her ancestral affiliations are to Te Arawa, Rongowhaakata, Kahungunu, Irish, English and Finnish. She works to reinstate the power of Indigenous creativity and knowledge into contemporary staging, exploring liminal spaces through provocative interdisciplinary and intercultural collaboration. Victoria has a BA (Photography, Griffith University 1996) and First Class Honours in Performance Studies (UNSW 2016). Since 1999 she has trained and worked with BodyWeather pioneer Tess de Quincey as a founding member of De Quincey Co performing in over 40 productions. Her work has been presented at Liveworks Festival (Syd); Dance Massive (Melb); Origins Festival of First Nations (Lon/UK); Ecocentrix: Indigenous Arts, Sustainable Acts (UK); In-between Time Festival (Bristol/UK); IMPACT 15 (On/CA); Scène Contemporaine Autochtone, Festival TransAmériques Arts Centre (Montreal/CA); Biennale of Sydney; Ngiyagina Festival (Wagga); Gathering Ground (Syd); and Peats Ridge (Syd) among others.
Learn moreVivian Phillips is Director of Marketing and Communications for Seattle Theatre Group, the largest performing arts organization in the Puget Sound Region, where she serves as chief spokesperson and oversees all marketing and communication functions for more than 750 annual events presented by STG. Vivian chairs the Seattle Arts Commission and previously served as Director of Communications to Seattle Mayor Paul Schell, overseeing citywide public information and emergency operations communications functions including WTO.
As a seasoned broadcast professional, Vivian produces and hosts award-winning arts programming for King County television, and previously hosted public affairs programs for the ABC and PBS affiliates in Seattle. She regularly hosts/moderates live conversations, most recently moderating a conversation with best-selling author Ta-Nehisi Coates for a sold out crowd of 2900. Other noted interviews/conversations, live and for television, include: Harry Belafonte, Ruby Dee, Sherman Alexie, Magic Johnson, Charles Johnson, Alex Rodriquez, Mechell Ndegeocello, Dan Savage, Terry McMillan, Jesmyn Ward, Gloria Steinem, Eve Ensler, Congressman John Lewis, among others.
Vivian has represented the Seattle Theatre Group to the Africa Consortium for 11 years.
Learn moreAlthough the Magnolia Housing Projects have long been demolished, a light post still stands at the corner where youth like Vockah Redu (Javocca Davis) gathered to rap and create beats. The light post marks one of the birthplaces of Bounce music, a genre of rap specific to New Orleans that has invigorated crowds throughout the South. Vockah Redu and the Cru animate the stage with their dynamic revival of dance, music, and art from the street corner to the club. More than your typical hip-hop act, this theatrical performance sets the stage for a sweaty, hands-down, booty-up good time, transforming any party, bar, or dance floor in your neighborhood.
The original Cru formed in 1997 and was composed of the Ave Girls: Joi Jadah (Joi Denise Sessions), Teedy Booh (Tasha Marie Butler), Ninny (Shanita Davis), and Grahonda Pooh (Madonna Melissa Oliver). Currently the Cru is composed of Shortee Whop (Glendell Weir), Energyzah (Clarence Mosley), and Taveion Rodeo (Donte Brown). The Cru dominates the stage with electrifying choreography, costumes, skits, and superb street style.
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