Selected Group Exhibitions
Curated by Sadaf Padder
Swivel Gallery | 396 Johnson Avenue, Brooklyn, NY
May 13 - June 17, 2023
Swivel Gallery is pleased to present Memory Garden, a group exhibition featuring artists Aryana Minai, Madjeen Isaac, and Luján Pérez Hernández curated by Sadaf Padder.
Inspired by the method of loci or memory palace, an imaginary location that can store mnemonic images, we propose a garden: a place we may not know but wholeheartedly feel, a place that we can collectively cultivate.
“Memory Garden” offers sculpture, print-making, installation and paintings inspired by environmental materials and historical anecdotes. The three third-culture artists featured in this exhibition keenly observe their immediate surroundings and spiritually alchemize their work with stories and items from their diverse lineages spanning Iran, Spain and Haiti and their familial migrations to cities across the USA. They establish a space of belonging, celebrate resilience and architect bright futures. Read more here.
What it Took to Feed the Village, 2023, oil on canvas, 37 x 52 inches.Video by: Brian Agamie
Photos by Daniel Turna.Curated by Dr. Margarita Lila Rosa
Jenkins Johnson Projects | 207 Ocean Ave Brooklyn, NY
January 28 - March 11, 2023
Jenkins Johnson Projects, New York is pleased to present The Horses Stood Like Men, a group exhibition curated by Dr. Margarita Lila Rosa. The exhibition features artists Franz Caba, Laurena Finéus, Michael Grant, Madjeen Isaac, Esteban Ramón Pérez, JJ Pinckney, and Mark Anthony Wilson Jr.
The Horses Stood Like Men takes its title from Toni Morrison’s novel, Home, where the late author uses animals to illuminate the brutality and beauty of humanity.
…This group exhibition engages with the countryside as a fecund site for exploring the relationship between humans and the natural and spiritual worlds. Countryside mythologies account for the turbulence, violence, and dominance of nature within rural life.
Yet they also account for the abundance, fertility, and spiritual fecundity of the land. In the context of syncretic societies, such as those of the Caribbean, the American south, and the rural west, themes of beauty and bestiality intersect, giving humans the feel of horses, and making horses as beastly, and as unequivocally dangerous, as humans.
The Presence of Gran Bwa, 2022, oil on canvas, 50 x 72 inches.
Photos by Rashida Zagon.