Bronx River Art Center (BRAC) - JUSTICE Exhibition at BRAC

 

Bronx River Art Center presents: JUSTICE Curated by Juanita Lanzo October 26 through December 12, 2020 Join us tonight for Artists’ and Community Reception! 6:30 - 8pm RSVP for Timed Tickets Mask-wearing and social distancing will be required. or go to BRAC's Facebook page to attend virtually via Facebook Live Bronx River Art Center (BRAC), is pleased to announce this Fall’s exhibition JUSTICE in which four artists will activate the windows and gallery space at BRAC to create artworks that document, illustrate, converse and capture our shared humanity, pain, and joy, daily life struggles, and resilience. The works in the exhibition will be developed by ongoing public interactions by the artists in everyday or regular encounters with Bronx residents, visitors, and students at BRAC. Participating artists Laura Alvarez, Rejin Leys, Tijay Mohammed, and Tammy Wofsey will create work in the space that will be installed on the windows and other spaces at BRAC, in a wide array of media (from paintings, drawings, and mixed-media installations that will be seen by West Farm Square/East Tremont Ave area residents and beyond).  JUSTICE will be a work in progress exhibition that takes place while NYS has been in lockdown, due to COVID-19, and has partially re-opened for families to work, go to school, and live in socially distanced terms, until further notice. The artists will present work that creates a dialogue around the racial and social disparities that were exacerbated by the Pandemic, resulting in the loss of thousands of Black, Brown, Asian and Indigenous lives, the disruption or total lack of education and social services to working-class and poor families, food insecurity and urban violence and police brutality.  Laura Alvarez will be creating a DNA inspired painting, reflecting our shared humanity, what we have in common, our sameness. Rejin Leys will present a bilingual (English/Kreyol) number book, produced during the Covid-19 crisis with support from Haiti Cultural Exchange. Tijay Mohammed's installation of masks will display the responses by individuals to these times ranging from gratefulness, resourcefulness, pain, struggles, joy, and hope.  Tammy Wofsey’s prints will comment on the relationships between health care, race, class, and environmental issues. Join us for Artists’ and Community Reception Tonight - 6:30 - 8pm RSVP for Timed Tickets Mask-wearing and social distancing will be required.

Artwork: Tijay Mohammed, BLACK BLACK BLACK, 2020, Acrylic, resin, glitter glue on Baltic birch plywood About the Artists: Laura Alvarez was born in Valencia, Spain and received an MA in Fine Arts in Spain and England. In NYC, she juggles between her city job, her artist career, and her commitment to her Bronx community. Laura is the Co-Founder, Vice-President and COO of BxArts Factory, a non-profit organization whose mission is to make art accessible to everyone in the Bronx. They believe everyone is an artist and they will help you unlock it. She has received several awards and grants that she has used to continue promoting the arts among the Bronx youth and to create work that starts a conversation, touching issues like ecology, womanhood, racism, tradition, inequality or immigration. She has exhibited all over Europe and New York in collective and solo shows. In most of her shows she tries to program free workshops to pass along her love for art and her mantra: “everyone is an artist“. Rejin Leys is a mixed media artist and paper maker based in New York, whose work has been exhibited at such venues as Centro Cultural de España, Santo Domingo, DR; Kentler International Drawing Space, NY; Queens Museum, NY; and Les Ateliers J.R. Jerome, PaP, Haiti. Her work is in the collections of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Yale University, and Rutgers University Caribbean Studies Department, and she is a recipient of a fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts. Ghanaian-born artist Tijay Mohammed has exhibited his works nationally and internationally, including features at Katonah Museum of Art NY, Hudson River Museum NY, Materials for the Arts NY, Art League Huston, Longwood Art Gallery NY, Green Drake Art Gallery PA, and The National Museum of Ghana. In addition, he has received numerous accolades and residencies from The Laundromat Project NY, Children’s Museum of Manhattan NY, Hudson River Museum NY, Materials for the Arts NY, Ravel d’Art Cote d’ivore, Harmattan Workshop Nigeria, Global Crit Clinic and Asiko Artist Residency Ghana. Among many grants, Tijay is a recipient of Arts Fund, Artist for Community and New Work grant from the Bronx Council on the Arts, and the Spanish Embassy Ghana Painters Award. He is committed to working with the diverse communities with which he surrounds himself. The artist currently resides in The Bronx NY and also maintains a studio in Ghana. Tammy Wofsey is a visual artist with a focus in printmaking and book arts. She established Plotzing Press, a publishing press and printmaking studio in the Mott Haven section of the South Bronx. Her work varies in size and type, from elaborate, hand-bound art books to large, multi panel prints based on natural forms. The paper-based prints are both visual and tactile, combining strong images based on natural forms with deep embossed surfaces. The artist's work has been installed in libraries, public spaces and private collections.

Artwork by Tammy Wofsey. Published by the artist at PlotzingPress.