We are very pleased to kick off our 2019 emerging artist series YES with a screening of video works by artists Rachelle Mozman Solano and by Ezra Wube, two artists currently based in Brooklyn and working with multiple artistic mediums.
The program includes the three most recent video projects “Opaque Mirror” (2017), “The Dying Cavendish” (2017), and “Loneliness Lonely” (2015) by Mozman Solano and a selection of several short videos by Wube, from his 2008 “When we all met” to his latest “Pattern Synthesis” (2018).
Although employing different techniques — Mozman Solano works with sets and actors while Wube with stop-motion animation — both artists combine realistic with fantastic storytelling in their works, with narratives stemming from current events and historical occurrences. Among the range of subject matter addressed are life experiences as an immigrant, shifts in status quo, and Western colonialism with its environmental and socio-economical ramifications, especially in relationship to the origins of the commercial production of crops: in Solano’s “The Dying Cavendish” (2017) the focus is the banana trade; in Wube’s “Kaled” (2014) it is coffee.
The artists approach their moving image works with painterly sensibilities. Wube’s animations are often based on a single canvas that he repaints over and rephotographs multiple times. In Mozman Solano’s staged short videos, the scenery, sculptural elements as well as the actors’ makeup and clothing — collaged from multicolored fabrics — are meticulously juxtaposed compositions, which in “Opaque Mirror”, for example, become a revisitation of Gauguin’s work as well.
Mozman Solano and Wube will be in attendance and available for Q&A following the screening.
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Rachelle Mozman Solano grew up in New York City of parents who shared the experience of immigration. She works between New York and Panama, the country of her maternal family. Starting often from her biography and family history, Mozman Solano explores how culture shapes individuals and how environment conditions behavior. Her work is deeply informed by her clinical work in psychoanalysis and is positioned at the intersection of mythology, history, economics, and the psyche through the use of photographs and films that confound fact and fictional narrative. Mozman Solano’s work is currently featured in the solo exhibition Metamorphosis of Failure at Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY, and was recently included in El espejo opaco de Gauguin in Arteconsult, Panamá, Panamá, LARA (Latin American Roaming Art), Panamá, Panamá, the X Bienal Centroaméricana, Do/Tell at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, and Portraiture Now: Staging the Self at Americas Society, among others. Mozman Solano has been awarded residencies at LMCC workspace, Smack Mellon, The Camera Club of New York, and Light Work. Mozman is a Fulbright Fellow, and has exhibited among others at the National Portrait Gallery at Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC; Americas Society, New York; National Hispanic Cultural Center, Albuquerque, New Mexico; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Chelsea Museum, New York; DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, MA; Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach, CA; Shore Institute of Contemporary Art, Long Branch, NJ; Festival de la luz at the Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Instituto Cultural Itau, São Paulo, Brazil; the Friese Museum, Berlin, Germany; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago, Chile; Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales, Montevideo, Uruguay; Centro Cultural de España, Mexico City, Mexico; Festival Biarritz, Biarritz, France; as well as the IX Bienal de Cuenca, Ecuador. Her work has been published in the Light Work annual Contact Sheet, Presumed Innocence, Exit magazine and numerous other publications.
Ezra Wube (b. 1980, Ethiopia) is a mixed media artist based in Brooklyn, NY. His work references the notion of past and present, the constant changing of place, and the dialogical tensions between “here”and “there”. His exhibitions include Gwangju Biennial, Gwangju South Korea (2018), Museum of the Moving Image, Queens, NY (2017); The 13th Biennial de Lyon, Lyon, France (2015); Dak’Art 2014 Biennale, Dakar, Senegal (2014); The 18th International Festival of Contemporary Art SESC_Videobrasil, São Paulo, Brazil (2013); and At the Same Moment, Time Square Arts Midnight Moment, New York, NY (2013). His residencies and awards include Open Sessions Program, The Drawing Center, New York, NY (2016); Wave Hill, Winter Workspace, Bronx, NY (2016); Rema Hort Mann Foundation; and the Triangle Arts Association Residency, Brooklyn, NY (2015). Ezra received his BFA (2004) from Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, MA and an MFA (2009) from Hunter College, New York, NY.