Bailey Contemporary Arts Presents Building a Feminist Archive: A Showcase of Cuban Women Photographers in the US

Bailey Contemporary Arts (BaCA) presents Building a Feminist Archive: Cuban Women Photographers in the US; an exhibition that features ten women artists whose works in photography provide a glimpse into diverse histories of migration, community, activism and resistance. The work will be on view in the Central and East Galleries from November 20 through December 21, 2019. Free Opening reception is December 6 from 6 pm to 10 pm during Old Town Untapped. And then join us for a walkthrough of the exhibition and a conversation with artists and the curator of Building a Feminist Archive: Cuban Women Photographers in the US. December 18th, 2019 at| 7pm. For more information, www.baileyarts.org.

This exhibition is presented as part of the launching activities of Women Photographers International Archive (WOPHA), an emerging organization dedicated to research, promotion, support and education on the role of women, and those identified as women, in photography. It is curated by Aldeide Delgado, art historian and curator whose project Catalog of Cuban Women Photographers collates, for the first time, the works of Cuban women photographers from the 19th Century to the present.

"U.S-based female Cuban artists have flourished as a result of a more openly creative environment which they now live," said Phyllis Korab, Cultural Affairs Director. "The photographs freely explore their experiences without censure."

Archives have traditionally functioned as repositories that legitimize a patriarchal construction of history. These spaces have been confined to institutions with very restrictive access where only a few have the privilege of interpreting its documents.

How can the framework of feminism help to explore and reconstruct historical narratives?

Photography played a fundamental role in the feminist art movement of the late 1960s, in large part because of its accessibility and its direct engagement of political and social issues. By using photography, women artists found a powerful tool to deconstruct the male gaze and to bring private themes into public discussion. Also, photography was a non-traditional medium- a recent one in comparison to painting and sculpture- that expanded the definition of fine arts and incorporated diverse artistic possibilities.

Building a Feminist Archive: Cuban Women Photographers in the US shows the varied contributions of Cuban women artists living and working in the United States since the seventies, when the concept of a collective "Latino" identity became crucial. These artists started to attend art schools and found themselves inspired by and responding to the social movements of their time. They created new images of their communities and examined pluricultural experiences challenging the notion of being exclusively Cuban or American. This show reveals artwork rarely seen or exhibited, and at the same time promotes reflection on the social, cultural and political identities of Cuban Women Artists in the United States within the current discussion of Latinx art.

Aurora de Armendi, Carlotta Boettcher, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Coco Fusco, Nereida García Ferraz, Silvia Lizama, María Martínez-Cañas, Yali Romagoza, Gladys Triana, and Juana Valdés.

Aurora de Armendi is an interdisciplinary artist. She studied at The Cooper Union School of Art (BFA, 2005) and The University of Iowa (MFA, 2009). In 2016, she completed artist residencies at Anderson Ranch Arts Center (Colorado) and Jamaica Flux (Queens), and was a finalist for the Cintas Foundation Fellowship Awards in Visual Arts. Her work has been included on group exhibitions at the Bronx Biennial (NY, 2013), International Print Center (NY, 2009, 2012 and 2013), The Center for Book Arts (NY, 2013) as well as in cities in the United States, Iceland, Hungary, Argentina, Cuba among others.

Carlotta Boettcher pursued her higher education in areas of Philosophy, and Art History at the University of Madrid from 1963 to 1968, and later in Printmaking at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux Arts (Paris, 1968-1971). She earned a BA in Fine Arts with an emphasis on Photography and an MA in Film and Visual Anthropology at San Francisco State University (1977-1985). Her work has been included in the Tucson Museum of Art, New Mexico Museum of Art, and was more recently selected three years in a row for photography awards by AI-AP Latin American Fotografia (2017,2018 and 2019).

María Magdalena Campos-Pons is an interdisciplinary artist working on photography, performance, painting, sculpture, film, and video. She has had solo exhibitions at MoMA, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, and the Peabody Essex Museum, among other distinguished institutions. She has participated in the Venice Biennale, the Dakar Biennale, Johannesburg Biennial, and Documenta 14. In 2017 she received the endowed Cornelius Vanderbilt Chair at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Campos-Pons' works are in over 30 museum collections including the Smithsonian Institution, The Whitney, the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery of Canada, the Victoria and Albert Museum, MoMA, and The Museum of Fine Arts (Boston).

Coco Fusco is an interdisciplinary artist and writer. She is a recipient of a 2018 Rabkin Prize for Art Criticism, a 2016 Greenfield Prize, a 2013 Guggenheim Fellowship, among others. She has participated in outstanding events such as the 56th Venice Biennale, Basel Unlimited, Frieze Special Projects, two Whitney Biennials (2008 and 1993), the Sydney Biennale, and The Johannesburg Biennial. Her works have also been shown at MoMA, The Walker Art Center, KW Institute of Contemporary Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona. Fusco received her B.A. in Semiotics from Brown University (1982), her M.A. in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University (1985) and her Ph.D. in Art and Visual Culture from Middlesex University (2007).

Nereida García Ferraz is a painter, photographer and video maker who graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has received the Ford Foundation Grant (1994), Illinois Arts Council Visual Arts Fellowship (1985, 1986, 1989), MacArthur Foundation Media Grant (1994) as well as The Richard Diebenkorn Teaching Fellowship from the San Francisco Art Institute (2000 - 2001). She co-produced and directed the award winner video-documentary "Ana Mendieta: Fuego de Tierra." The film is in the collection of MoMA, Guggenheim Museum, Yale University, San Francisco Art Institute and many others Museums and Universities around the world.

Silvia Lizama received her BFA degree from Barry University, and her MFA from Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York. Having exhibited in South Florida since 1978, her hand-colored photographs have gained national and international attention and have been included in prestigious exhibitions and collections. Major awards include the Southern Arts Federation/NEA Regional Visual Arts Fellowship Grant (1993) and the South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship for Visual and Media Artists (1992 and 2015), among others. In 1999 she completed a Miami Dade Art in Public Places commission for the Exhibition room of the Trailhead Arrival Facility at Deering Estate in Miami, Florida.

María Martínez-Cañas attended the Philadelphia College of Art (BFA, 1982) and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (MFA, 1984). Her career has been marked by an insatiable drive to experiment with different photographic techniques. Martínez-Cañas has been nominated for a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant and has been the recipient of many awards and grants, including a National Endowment for the Arts grant (1988) and a Civitella Ranieri Foundation fellowship (2014) in Umbertide, Italy. Her photographs are in private and public collections, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, and Museum of Modern Art and Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

Yali Romagoza is a multi-disciplinary artist. She graduated with a MFA in Fashion from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2013-2015) and a BA in Art History from the University of Havana (2001-2006). She has participated in the Gothenburg Biennial (2007), Havana Biennial (2009), and Liverpool Biennial (2010). Romagoza has collaborated with Carmelita Tropicana and Ela Troyano in Post-Plástica, at El Museo del Barrio (NY, 2012) UCRArtsblock (2017), Queens Museum (2019), Leslie-Lohman Museum (2019). She has been granted numerous awards and residencies including Cátedra Arte de Conducta by Tania Bruguera (2007), Bétonsalon Centred'art et de recherché (Paris, 2009), and NYFA Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program (2017).

Gladys Triana completed her B.A. at Mercy College in 1976 and M.A. at Long Island University in 1977. She also studied printmaking at San Fernando University in Madrid, Spain from 1970-1972. Triana has received two Cintas Fellowships in Visual Arts, the Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant, and the Joan Mitchell Foundation's CALL Program grant. Triana's work has been presented in numerous exhibitions at museums such as The Bronx Museum of the Arts, El Museo de Arte Moderno (Santo Domingo), El Museo de Bellas Artes (Santiago de Chile), El Museo de la Ciudad (Mexico), the NSU Art Museum (Fort Lauderdale), and the Frost Art Museum (Miami).

Juana Valdes is a multi-disciplinary artist. She has been an artist-in-residency at Atlantic Center for the Arts, the Lower EastSide Printshop, and the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center International. She is a recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Cuban Artist Fund Grant, and the Pollock-Krasner Grant. She was awarded the Cosby Fellowship to attend Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (1995). Her work has been exhibited at Hudson River Museum, Art in General, El Museo del Barrio, and WhiteBox Gallery. Juana Valdes completed her MFA in Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts (1993) and her BFA in Sculpture at Parsons School of Design (1991).

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