Farouk Oni (MFA AP 2021), Enfreakment Shoot III: BITCH In Their Dungeon, 2021
ArtPort Kingston presents a selection of artworks from recently graduated Master of Fine Arts (MFA) candidates in the Art Practice program at the School of Visual Arts in New York (SVA). After an intense and challenging final year of the MFA degree, this is an opportunity to “expose” each of the artists’ works, old and new, to a new audience. The exhibition is organized by Stefan Saffer, co-director of ArtPort Kingston, who taught these students as a faculty member and thesis advisor for the program.
Heather Ariyeh (USA ) lives and works in Oklahoma City. She engages in materials-based investigations of social problems and the social constructions of lived realities. Her background in sociology, gender-based violence/sexual assault advocacy, as well as public health inform her interest in systems. Shelley Lake (USA) experiments with art and technology in order to create new completely artificial people to explore the relations of us, our bodies, our conscious and unconscious influence on our lives. Farouk Oni (USA) a Brooklyn native, raised in a Nigerian household exposes in his works the false narratives surrounding the Black body and Black reality. Through his work he imagines future contexts in which the Black body, and in turn, all bodies are respected equally and equitably. Lamar Robillard (USA) shows a photographic body of work investigating the global idea of “black culture” through the use and exploration of materials classified as (a) “black thing(s),” arguing that these “black things” could be an extension of black iconography. Nayven Vignette (USA ) creates paradigm-breaking experiences that blur the lines between performance and installation. He recently designed a card game to be played with friends or strangers in order to investigate social boundaries and self-inflicted problems. The works of Peter Weiler (Hungary) highlight the political and emotional aspects of life in Hungary, deeply rooted melancholy for loss of time, and the changing cultural scenery that is apparent in design, architecture and the human interaction. Hyeju Kim (Korea) finds inner peace and happiness through the ordinary. She presents a piece of her writing which lets us dive into the everyday of eating and food.
ArtPort Kingston is following CDC Covid recommendations and requests everyone to follow the rules: masks and safe distancing. They will limit the amount of visitors inside at one time. They want everyone to be safe and healthy. ArtPort is a mixed media/cultural space in the historic Cornell Steamboat Building along the Rondout Creek in Kingston located at 108 E Strand. ArtPort’s aim is to be a destination for art experiences and unconventional interaction between contemporary art and a wide range of audiences.
The work is on view through August 15th.