FROM OPEN CALL 2022

Review Panel:
Monica Johan Bose and Camilo Godoy.
Monica Johna Bose: Seven Minutes on the B67
Camilo Godoy: Debtor

The Panel selected one solo show for 2022 and 3 hotpicks. The proposal Sunk Shore by Carolyn Hall and Clarinda Mac Low got chosen for a solo show in 2022.

HOTPICKS:

Judy Giera (she/her)

Judy Giera (she/her) is a New York City based interdisciplinary artist working through performance, video, costume, painting, drawing, and collage to address complex notions of gender, sexuality, othering, desire, violence, power, transition, and transformation. Staunchly against any notion of “the death of the author” in any media, Giera’s work is grounded in realities of her existence as a mentally-ill, transgender woman, but doesn’t serve as direct autobiography. Drawing on her past as an extensively trained theatre artist, never quite realized drag queen, and once-and-always queer teen stuck in a catholic school, Giera’s art is materially adventurous, physically layered and holds a general antagonism towards correctness and normativity in all forms through a lens of sardonic pageantry and tongue-in-cheek humor. If nothing else, she is funny to herself and hopes to thoroughly annoy classically aesthetic fine artists. Giera’s visual art has been shown at the Hudson River Museum, Bronx Art Space, Trestle Gallery, Ceres Gallery, Local Project, LIC Arts Open, and more and her performance works have been included in programming at Radiator Gallery, Ideal Glass Studios, Dixon Place and SVA, to name a few. Her full length performance and soundscape ‘Blanche On A Winter’s Eve’ was an award winning presentation at the 2016 United Solo Theatre Festival and curated as part of the inaugural programming for the International Human Rights Arts Festival. She holds an MFA in Art (Painting) from Lehman College/CUNY and an MFA in Theatre from Pace University. Giera shares a studio space at The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts where she also works as Program Manager for EFA Project Space, the foundation’s cross-disciplinary gallery program. She resides in Brooklyn with her cat and a well-worn Hitachi Magic Wand.

SUMMARY OF PROPOSAL:
The Site of Playful Excavations (or rather, looking back later we were certain the view)
Creating an immersive, glittery and colorful toy wasteland, artist Judy Giera invites viewers to contemplate the role our common playthings do in upholding rigid gender norms while creating space through programs and initiatives to reimagine how toys could create a gender expansive and inclusive future.

Jordana Btp

Jordana Bermúdez is a freelance documentary photographer and storyteller based in New York.

SUMMARY OF PROPOSAL:

Girls Can’t Skate spotlights an all-female skateboarding community in New York City. By exploring these women’s shared passion and resilience, it celebrates female empowerment in contrast to the machismo culture and normalized violence against women that plagues much of the world.

These women are challenging barriers of the traditionally male-dominated sport at a historic moment for skateboarding, which will be part of the next Olympic Games. The images were captured before the COVID-19 pandemic, and then during the lockdown via FaceTime.

Ana Vallejo

I’m a conceptual documentary photographer from Colombia based in NY. Having a background in biology, I am fascinated with the brain, human consciousness and its ability to expand and transform. I am interested in marginal spaces, that which resides outside of the status quo and is often excluded and defined by a rigid stigma. Growing up with a schizophrenic father, in an anxious family system and in a country that has normalized violence, I am drawn to how trauma affects our emotions and relationships. I am fascinated by the potential that art and social bonding have to heal traumas.
My work has been exhibited in Colombia, NY, LA, Germany, India, Italy, and Malaysia. I have been published in media outlets such as Vice, Architectural Review, Lensculture and Ph Museum. In 2020 I was selected to be part of Addis FotoFest in Ethiopia and Foam Talent 2021. In 2019, I was nominated for the World Press Photo’s Joop Swart Masterclass, and 6×6 global talent program in Latin America and in 2018 I was selected an emergent talent by Lensculture.

SUMMARY OF PROPOSAL:

My name is Ana and I am a love addict. All my life, I have been trapped in a loop of rejecting the partners who want me and obsessing over the ones who don’t. It’s been painful and exhausting. In march 2020 a global pandemic severely hit NY and I was suddenly trapped in my apartment with my fears and anxieties.
This ignited a cathartic process of looking inward and creating in silence.
I photographed my partners and others going through intense romantic experiences.
I started collecting anonymously sourced testimonies about people’s fears, desires and memories regarding love. I am currently collaborating with a data scientist in order to analyze patterns and trends in this data.
I exhaustively researched neuroscientific and psychological journals to understand connections between trauma, emotion regulation and addictions and how these factors affect intimacy.
By photographing other people who struggle with intimacy I am transcribing raw emotions around these experiences into a visual language and merging it with data and research. Through this interdisciplinary scrutinization of dysfunctional relationships, I hope to bring insight to others who find themselves in the contradiction of desiring a deep romantic connection but also pushing it away.
Humans need meaningful social bonds in order to survive. The project delves into dysfunctional relationships to ultimately highlight why healthy relationships are essential for our well-being.

Featured Image: Ana Vallejo: from the proposal My name is Ana and I am a love addict