CONVENING
CONVENING
CONVENING
spotlights young artists born from global diasporas,
as they draw from personal & layered histories to re-manifest new cultures and imagery.
Across varied mediums, each artist creates from a decolonized ripple-effect
of digital art, sculpture, photography, painting, and music.
After the disruption that underlies the diasporas of non-western cultures,
CONVENING seeks out the need for mystical imagination from the descendants of colonized peoples, facing life and abundance in the wake of historical erasure.
In this digital exhibition, the past and future of non-western existence are harnessed by complex rituals, sounds, and technological interplays.
From this virtual place,
Cameron patricia Downey, Caroline Douville, Duendita, alexis williams, taÍna cruz, hooz, and meliana julien
will CONVENE as makers of a nostalgic futurity.
cameron patricia downey
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cameron patricia downey 〰️
Identifying herself as an “anti-disciplinary” artist, CAMERON PATRICIA DOWNEY stands firmly within the role. Downey weaves between photography, film, sculpture, and installation in recurring altar-like mechanisms which find new forms and functions in every work.
Downey’s installations forge a complex layering of materials, often inverting conventional layouts, as if to trick the viewer’s eye into perceiving visual materialities before the physical. Personal and collective images of black life are centered in many works, as Downey conjures a dynamic history of documentation within spatial and psycho-somatic realms.
613 Fountain (2023), dye, botulates, pine, mattress. 76" x 68" x 45".
Jackie On The Floor (2023), ink on linoleum, wood, glass. 91" x 68" and 22" on the floor.
Clarity, impossibly slow/The Way of The Bear (2023), carpet, pine, resin, dust. 70" x 70" x 15".
Blue Orchid (2023), hoodies, aluminum, steel. 76" x 61" x 22".
Blue Orchid (2023), hoodies, aluminum, steel. 76" x 61" x 22".
duendita
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duendita 〰️
DUENDITA, also known by their proper name, Candace Camacho, makes music that is soulful, grounded, and straight from the gut. An Afro-Latina singer with a dedication to their communities, duendita’s voice is a healing, spiritual force. Live performances prove the mystical impact of electronic layering in their work, while music videos like “Magdalena” depict a dream-like ode to her personal lineage. Influenced by R&B and the blues, duendita’s music expands outside of traditional genres and flows through a layered nexus of meditative sounds and somatic word-play.
bio (2021), music video, directed by Sandy Ismail, 4:14sec.
Magdalena (2019), music video, directed by Sandy Ismail & Godfred Sedano, 3:49sec.
alexis williams
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alexis williams 〰️
ALEXIS WILLIAMS’ paintings present a color-rich microcosm of the artist’s spiritual imagination. Dense with mystic imagery, each work becomes a space of psychic expansion and transformation. Williams’ art depicts animals, objects, human, and extra-human figures with a hyper-smooth stroke of the brush. The painter’s abstract settings and complex figurations are further shaped by a symmetrical format that highlights visual narratives of self-reflection and existential awareness. The use of color is striking and bright, marked by hues that denote a natural and symbolic world. Skin tones are painted in blue, pink, and purple, as a thematic gesture towards the cosmic renderings that unfold from each new work.
I Contain Multitudes (2021), oil on canvas. 44" x 44".
Fortune Teller (2021), oil on canvas. 30" x 40".
Moment of Eternity (2021), oil on canvas, 56" x 50".
caroline douville
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caroline douville 〰️
CAROLINE DOUVILLE is an artist whose work transcends and delineates history through painting, collage, and installation. As a second-generation Haitian artist, Douville’s practice presents as a complex, research-driven endeavor into visual world of black diasporas.
With metal frames that resemble found materials and building awnings, these color-dense amalgamations of collage and painting are underpinned by photographic transfers of black life and imagery. Graphic and mass-produced image formats deeply influence works that uses airbrushed effects to subvert traditions of painterly image-making.
Haïti December 24th 1945 (2023), acrylic, oil and image transfer on canvas, aluminum sheet. 27 x 33cm.
Ti Kouri 6 (2023), oil, acrylic and image transfer on canvas, metal sheet. 9 x 9in.
Reunion (2023), acrylic and image transfers on canvas, metal sheet. 83 x 92cm.
TAÍNA CRUZ
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TAÍNA CRUZ 〰️
TAÍNA CRUZ is a painter and video artist who is deeply influenced by history, visual culture, and pop culture. While her paintings represent a daunting world of contemporary folklore, her video art practice extends itself as an abstract study in image-and-history-making. Skilled in 3D rendering, Cruz creates videos with layered imageries and slow-paced moments of meta-observation, wherein the construction of each scene is felt by her viewers. An anonymous landscape is overlaid with a fire pit which traverses the artist’s frame, followed by a drone which hovers above. These sensory moments are felt and studied, as objects, animals, and natural forces are collaged within Cruz’s meditative scenes.
Maximum Requirement (2020), video, 1:55sec.
hooz
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hooz 〰️
HOOZ is a multidisciplinary artist with an affinity for object-making across various media including wearable textile, and ceramics. Their ceramics practice is centered in this exhibition as we delve into the mythical world of figuration that hooz has constructed from clay. From winged-dog figures to creatures with lizard-like tails, these mystic animals refer to a metamorphosed natural realm, beyond the fundamental re-working of earthen material that each work embodies. A life-sized fountain, filled to the brim with reflective water, only enhances hooz’s textured approach to ceramic glazing, which leaves space for the natural surface of clay to reveal itself. Overall, hooz’s world-building is physical, and uniquely divine.
Hellhound (2023), ceramic. 7.5 x 4 x 5in.
Prayer Vessel (2021), ceramic. 15 x 20 x 18in.
Sleepy Dragon (2021), ceramic. 14 x 6 x 13in.
Meliana Julien
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Meliana Julien 〰️
MELIANA JULIEN documents her community of friends and family with an admiring lens, capturing moments of leisure and adornment with a sense of intimacy that extends beyond the frame. Seemingly inspired by the aesthetic advancements of technological imaging in the early 21st century, Julien often utilizes low-resolutions and graphic imagery as the frame and format of her photographs. Nature permeates her images’ settings as a decorative motif that transcends any specific form; house plants, digitized florals, and leafy chalk murals all conjure a sense of the outer world. Julien’s sensibility as a photographer is thus layered with both a nostalgic penchant for the organic, and an appreciation for the technological.
Nails by Marilyn / a collaborative piece with @mari.cures (2023), digital photograph.
My Sister's An Angel / Photograph of Ruqiyah (2023), digital photograph.
Lanmou Lanmè / Photograph of Nicki (2024), digital photograph.