Opening Reception:
Sometimes My Accent Slips Out by Bhen Alan
Mentor: Jade Yumang
Curatorial Guidance: Jon Santos

Thursday, April 4, 2024 from 6–8 pm
137 W. 25th Street, New York, NY
RSVP

Please join us for the opening reception for Sometimes My Accent Slips Out, a solo exhibition by Bhen Alan with mentorship from Jade Yumang and curatorial guidance from Jon Santos. The exhibition, presented at CUE’s gallery space, is the first New York City solo show by the artist, who is one of the awardees of CUE’s 2024 open call for solo exhibitions.

RSVPs to the opening reception are requested but not required. The event is free and all are welcome.

This exhibition will continue until May 18, 2024. CUE's gallery space is open Wednesdays through Saturdays from 12–6 pm. Please feel free to stop by at your convenience during these times; no registration is required.

Read more about the exhibition here, and see below to RSVP to the opening reception.

About the Artist
Bhen Alan (b. 1993, Cagayan Valley, Philippines) is a visual artist, dancer, and educator who grew up weaving and learning traditional folk dances. He immigrated to Toronto, Canada, when he was 17 years old, before settling in the United States. He received U.S. citizenship in 2019. Alan’s work draws from his upbringing and diasporic experiences to incorporate multiple disciplines and mediums that reflect both his cultural heritage and recent contemporary investigations.

Alan holds an MFA in Painting and a Certificate in Collegiate Teaching in Art and Design from the Rhode Island School of Design, and a BFA in Painting from the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. From 2022-23, he received a Fulbright scholarship to conduct artistic research in the Philippines, working alongside master weavers of indigenous tribes to research mat weaving culture.  

His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston (Boston, MA), Praise Shadow Gallery (Brookline, MA), Real Art Ways (Hartford, CT), 808 Gallery at Boston University (Boston, MA), Rhode Island School of Design (Providence, RI), Hunter Gallery (Middletown, RI), E.I.K. Gallery at Yale University (New Haven, CT), Culture Lab LIC (New York, NY), Providence Public Art Library (Providence, RI), St. Botolph Club Foundation (Boston, MA), John B. Aird Gallery (Toronto, Canada), Shockboxx Gallery (Hermosa Beach, CA), Providence Art Club (Providence, RI), Bowersock Gallery (Provincetown, MA), and New Bedford National Historical Park (New Bedford, MA), among many others.

About the Mentor
Jade Yumang (b. Quezon City, Philippines) grew up in Dubai, United Arab Emirates; immigrated to unceded Coast Salish territories in Vancouver, Canada; and currently lives in Chicago, IL, which sits on the traditional homelands of the people of the Council of Three Fires: the Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Odawa, as well as the Menominee, Miami, and Ho-Chunk nations.

Jade received an MFA at Parsons School of Design with Departmental Honors in 2012 and a BFA Honors at the University of British Columbia in 2008. Jade has shown nationally and internationally in several museums and galleries, such as the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, the Museum of Arts and Design, Craft Contemporary, the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, the Des Moines Art Center, Western Exhibitions, and ONE Archives. Jade is a recipient of several grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the BC Arts Council, and is an Associate Professor in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Graphic Design: Corinne Ang

Opening Reception:
worried notes by Keli Safia Maksud
Mentor: Abigail DeVille

Thursday, January 25, 2024 from 6–8 pm
137 W. 25th Street, New York, NY
RSVP

Please join us for the opening reception for worried notes, a solo exhibition by Keli Safia Maksud with mentorship from Abigail Deville. Maksud is one of the awardees of CUE’s 2023 open call for solo exhibitions.

RSVPs to the opening reception are requested but not required. The event is free and all are welcome.

This exhibition will continue until March 16, 2024. CUE's gallery space is open Wednesdays through Saturdays from 12–6 pm. Please feel free to stop by at your convenience during these times; no registration is required.

Read more about the exhibition here, and see below to RSVP to the opening reception.

About the Artist
Keli Safia Maksud is an interdisciplinary artist and writer working in sound, sculpture, installation, printmaking, and embroidery. Concerned with histories of colonial encounters and the effects of these encounters on memory and identities, Maksud’s practice favors the space of in-between and its threshold — working toward destabilizing received histories in order to expose fictions of the state.

Maksud earned a BFA in Painting from the Ontario College of Art and Design University, a Diploma in Art and Curatorial Studies at the New Centre for Research and Practice, and an MFA in Visual Arts at Columbia University. Her work has been shown at Goodman Gallery, ACUD Galerie, Salon 94, Huxley Parlour, the Bamako Biennial, the National Museum of Contemporary Art – Seoul, Galería Nueva, and the Biennial of Contemporary Art Sesc_Videobrasil. Maksud has been awarded fellowships and grants from Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Council for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts. Her writing has been published in and for OCULA Magazine, the Swiss Institute, LEAP Magazine, and A Space Gallery.

About the Mentor
Abigail DeVille (b. 1981, New York, NY) is known for her site-specific installations, sculptures, and performances that conjure vast universes from discarded objects and fragmented archives. In a seemingly boundless practice that transcends codified space, DeVille often sites her dense assemblages anywhere between museums, theaters, public parks, and city streets. By honoring and amplifying the memory of those that once used the everyday components preserved in her work, DeVille urges a reconsideration of what constitutes a historical record and who contributes.

DeVille’s most recent solo exhibitions include Bronx Heavens at the Bronx Museum of the Arts and In the fullness of time, the heart speaks truths too deep for utterance, but a star remembers at JTT, New York, NY (2023). She has also had solo exhibitions and commissions at Madison Square Park, New York, NY (2020-21); Crystal Bridges Museum, Bentonville, AR (2021); the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC (2021-22); Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Portland, OR (2018-19); Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL (2017-18); the Whitney Museum, New York, NY (2017); Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA (2017-18); and The Contemporary, Baltimore, MD (2016). Her work has been included in numerous group shows, and she has received awards and fellowships from United States Artists (2018); the American Academy in Rome (2017-18); Creative Capital (2015); Harvard University (2014-15); The Studio Museum (2013-14); and the Joan Mitchell Foundation (2012). DeVille teaches at Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore and Yale School of Art. Her work is in many collections, including the Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York; Centre National des Arts Plastiques, Paris; Kadist Art Foundation, San Francisco; Kaviar Factory, Henningsvaer; Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis; Pinault Collection; and The Studio Museum (New York). DeVille received an MFA from Yale University and a BFA from the Fashion Institute of Technology. She was born in New York and works in the Bronx.

Sketching with Street Dancers Volume 5 (Hip-Hop)

Saturday, August 12th
2:00 – 4:30 pm
Arts Connection Residency House
Governor’s Island
408B Colonel’s Row

Sketching with Street Dancers Volume 5 (Hip-Hop) is a drawing session presented by Kut The Rug Institute in partnership with CUE Art Foundation and Arts Connection. The event is part of a series that connects movement, mark making (drawing), and music. This session (Volume 5) features Bboy Spydey and popper Mr. Ocean as drawing models. DJ KS 360 will deliver the soundtrack, and Noelle Salun will demonstrate drawing techniques to use to track, trace, and transmit movements by the dancers. Aurora Hidalgo will serve as the session time keeper. The drawing session will be followed by a gallery walk for sketchers and dancers to see the results of their collaboration in real time.

Plain paper, clipboards, and pencils will be provided; attendees are encouraged to bring their own favorite materials and art supplies (paper, pastels, markers, ink pens) to add color, flavor, and soul to their drawings.

This program is free and open to everyone. No RSVP is required. More information can be found here.

About the Organizer

Lafotographeuse (Amanda Adams-Louis) is a Brooklyn based photographer, educator, curriculum/program designer, cultural producer, house music aficionado, club kid and street dance scholar. She earned her BFA in Photography from Pratt Institute and is a Studio Art alumna of the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. Born in the U.S. and raised in Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean, Lafotographeuse’s oeuvre is informed by her experiences living, learning, and creating between multiple continents and cultures during her formative years. Her creative practice exists at the nexus of art, education, and archive.

Her bodies of work celebrate dance forms developed from movement vocabularies, music, and performance traditions defined by Black, LGBTQIA, and Latinx communities in New York City. Lafotographeuse collaborates with dance artists to create images, exhibitions, workshops, and panels that highlight Black pleasure, play, leisure, and joy in motion. Her imagery, research, and production work is dedicated to illuminating the legacies of indigenous NYC dance subcultures developed to the sounds of Disco, Funk, House, Hip-Hop, R&B, Philly Soul, and other musical genres from the African diaspora.

Credits

“Sketching with Street Dancers” is created and produced by Lafotographeuse. This session, Volume 5, is co-produced by Mugen. It will be documented by Bboy Static, and the sound system is provided by Karlala Soundsystem. The event venue is courtesy of Arts Connection, who serves as a partner of the event along with CUE.

Traveling to Governor’s Island

Ferries to Governor’s Island are available from Manhattan Battery Maritime Terminal daily and from Brooklyn (Pier 6 and Red Hook) on weekends. Ferry schedule and fare information can be found here.

The program will be held at the Arts Connection Residency House at 408B Colonel’s Row on Governor’s Island.

When exiting the ferry from Manhattan, walk straight ahead and then make a right on Andes Road. Once at the end of that road, make a left onto Tampa Road which will lead into Colonel’s Row. The Arts Connection house is on the left side of the houses at 408B with an Arts Connection banner displayed in front.

See a map of Governors Island and the location of the Residency House on Arts Connection’s website here.

Opening Reception: Remnants of an Advanced Technology by Alisha B Wormsley
Mentor: Joeonna Belladoro-Samuels
RSVP

Please join us for the opening reception for Remnants of an Advanced Technology, a solo exhibition by Pittsburgh-based artist Alisha B Wormsley, with curatorial mentorship from Joeonna Belladoro-Samuels. The exhibition, presented at CUE’s gallery space (137 W. 25th Street) is the first solo show by the artist in New York City. During the opening reception, Li Harris, Jasmine Hearn, and Jamila Raegan—artists and longtime collaborators of Wormsley’s—will each host a ritual offering to bless the Children of NAN archive.

The show will remain on view until October 22nd, 2022. Attendance during gallery hours (Wed-Sat, 12-6 pm) is free; no reservations are required.

Read more about the exhibition here, and RSVP below.

About the Offerings

Li Harris, Jasmine Hearn, and Jamila Raegan, artists and longtime collaborators of Wormsley’s, are all part of the Children of NAN archive. They have inspired Wormsley immensely through their craft, practice and love. At the opening reception, each of the artists will host a ritual offering to bless the Children of NAN archive. 

Lisa E. Harris (Li) is an independent and interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker, creative soprano, performer, composer, improvisor, writer, singer/songwriter, researcher and educator who makes time and space to dream. 

Jasmine Hearn is an interdisciplinary artist, director, choreographer, organizer, and teaching artist who develops and shares solo and ensemble dance theater performances rooted in the facilitation of creative spaces for remembering, feeling, and imagining.

Jamila Raegan is an interdisciplinary artist whose work addresses inequity and violence–a marker of her personal and cultural experiences–and creates works that provide a space for mourning and collective healing.

About the Artist
Alisha B Wormsley (Pittsburgh, PA, USA) is an interdisciplinary artist and cultural producer. Her work contributes to imagining the future of arts, science, and technology through the black womxn lens. She challenges contemporary views of American life through whichever medium she feels is the best form of expression: creating an object, a sculpture, a billboard, performance, or film. She thrives in collaboration. 

Wormley’s work has been exhibited widely, most recently at the Oakland Museum, VCUArts Qatar, Speed Museum, Artpace, Times Square Arts, and the Carnegie Museum of Art. Over the past few years, she has created several park designs and public art initiatives in downtown Pittsburgh. She also created a public program called There Are Black People In the Future, which gives mini-grants to open up discourse around displacement and gentrification. In 2020, she launched an art residency for Black creative mothers, Sibyls Shrine, which received support from the Heinz Endowments. 

Wormsley’s newest project, D.R.E.A.M. A Way to Afram, created with longtime collaborator Li Harris, was awarded a 2022 Guggenheim Fellowship. She has also received fellowships from Monument Lab and the Goethe Institute, the Sundance Interdisciplinary Grant, and the Carol Brown Achievement Award, among others. Wormsley has an MFA in Film and Video from Bard College and is currently a Presidential Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

About the Mentor
Joeonna Bellorado-Samuels is a Director at the Jack Shainman Gallery where she manages artists within the gallery roster including Hank Willis Thomas, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Nina Chanel Abney and Meleko Mokgosi, among others. Belladoro-Samuels is also the founder of We Buy Gold, a roving gallery that presents exhibitions, commissioned projects, and public events. The project seeks to encourage the dissection and deconstruction of structures of power by artists working in a cross-section of media. 

She is on the curatorial team of The Racial Imaginary Institute, which seeks to change the way we imagine race in the U.S. and internationally by lifting up and connecting the work of artists, writers, knowledge-producers, and activists with audiences seeking thoughtful, innovative conversations and experiences. She is also a member of the National Advisory Council of the Center for Art and Public Exchange at the Mississippi Museum of Art.

Previously, Belladoro-Samuels was a Founding Director of For Freedoms in 2016. For Freedoms is the first artist-run Super PAC in the United States, and uses art to inspire deeper political engagement for citizens who want to have a greater impact on the American political landscape. It accomplishes this mission through civic engagement, discourse, and direct action for artists in the United States.

Access Notes
This event is free of charge. Water and other beverages will be served. CUE Art Foundation is wheelchair accessible. There is an all-gender, ADA compliant, single-stall bathroom in the gallery. The closest wheelchair-accessible MTA subway stations are Penn Station and Herald Square. If you have additional access questions or needs, please contact info@cueartfoundation.org.

Money Has No Smell
CLOSING RECEPTION AND FILM SCREENING:
Wednesday, August 31st, 2022
6:00 – 8:00 pm (screening to begin at 6:15 pm)
137 W. 25th St, NYC [map]

RSVP here.

CUE and ACOMPI present a screening of La Desaparición (The Disappearance), a film by artist Liv Schulman, followed by a closing reception to celebrate the artists and curators. In the film, Schulman (Argentinian, b. 1985) travels to the triple frontier—a tri-border area along the junction of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay—where she exchanges Argentine pesos for Brazilian reales for Paraguayan guaraníes until the money disappears due to the cumulative effect of commissions from currency exchange.

Drawing upon the themes present within the exhibition, the film highlights the fickle fungibility of value, offering a space for further reflection on the social construct of money on a global scale.

After the screening, drinks will be served. We encourage guests to join us at any time throughout the evening. Attendance is free and open to all; RSVPs are requested.

Read more about the exhibition here.

About the Participants 

ACOMPI is a New York City-based, globally focused curatorial practice founded by Jack Radley and Constanza Valenzuela. The name ACOMPI derives from the Spanish word acompañado, meaning “in company.” ACOMPI highlights interdisciplinary practice and collaboration, and serves as a youth-oriented, community-ingrained platform to expand the intersection of independent curatorial practice and site-responsive public engagement. ACOMPI celebrates narratives of immigrants, youth, and artists working in interdisciplinary means not satiated or supported by the current market.

Recent projects by ACOMPI include: Ocultismo y barro, Miriam Gallery (Brooklyn, New York); Mariana Parisca: Corriente, Más Allá (Bogotá, Colombia); Crispy Tostones: Oro, Pari Passu Gallery in collaboration with Sabroso Projects (Queens, New York); Transient Grounds in collaboration with NARS Foundation on Governors Island; Diana Sofia Lozano: Suspended in the Iris, Home Gallery (NYC); Shanzhai Lyric: Canal Street Research Association in collaboration with Wallplay; and “What Can NYC Art Museums Do For Immigrants?” a colloquium at NYU Steinhardt. ACOMPI’s work has been featured in The New York Times, Artforum, New York Magazine, artnet, The Brooklyn Rail, Elephant, and Hyperallergic, among other publications. They can be found at @acompi.nyc.

Opening Reception: Money Has No Smell
Ignacio Gatica, Mariana Parisca, Gabriella Torres-Ferrer
Curated by ACOMPI
Mentor: Rosario Güiraldes

Please join us for the opening reception for Money Has No Smell, a group exhibition that presents the work of three artists: Ignacio Gatica, Mariana Parisca, and Gabriella Torres-Ferrer. Curated by ACOMPI (Jack Radley and Constanza Valenzuela) and mentored by Rosario Güiraldes, the exhibition brings together recent works that trace flows of currency to and from the artists’ places of origin, in the process addressing the complexity of globalized and interdependent financial systems. 

Read more about the exhibition here, and RSVP below.

Access Notes
This event is free of charge. COVID-19 vaccination is required to attend, and guests are asked to bring a mask. Water and other beverages will be served. Art Foundation is wheelchair accessible. There is an all-gender, ADA compliant, single-stall bathroom in the gallery. The closest wheelchair-accessible MTA subway stations are Penn Station and Herald Square. If you have additional access questions or needs, please contact info@cueartfoundation.org.

Artist Talk + Closing Reception:
In the Shadows by Fereidoun Ghaffari
Saturday, July 9th, 5:00 - 7:00 pm
RSVP HERE

Join us for a closing reception and talk with artist Fereidoun Ghaffari marking the conclusion of his debut solo exhibition, In the Shadows, at CUE Art Foundation. The artist will be joined by exhibition mentor and Publisher/Artistic Director of The Brooklyn Rail Phong Bui as well as visual artist and filmmaker Shoja Azari.

Years in the making, this exhibition represents the first time Ghaffari has invited a public audience to witness the outcomes of his private and solitary practice. This conversation will locate the artist’s work within a broader history of self-portraiture, and address the meaning of his longstanding process of painting himself based on sight alone, stripped bare of any markers that might suggest a particular culture, space, history, or ethics.

After the conversation, guests are invited to join us for a closing reception with light refreshments to celebrate the artist and the exhibition. Attendance is free and open to all; RSVPs are requested.

Read more about the exhibition here.

About the Participants 

Fereidoun Ghaffari was born in Tehran, Iran. He studied painting at the University of Art in Tehran, earning a BFA in 1998 and an MFA in 2002. In 2003, he attended a special studies program at Konstfack, University College of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm, Sweden. He returned to Tehran in 2004 and taught in universities there until 2006, when he moved to New York and enrolled in the New York Academy of Art, attaining his second MFA in painting in 2008. In 2013, Ghaffari had a solo show of self-portraits at the Tarahan-Azad Gallery in Tehran. His group exhibitions include EDGE (Emkan Gallery, Tehran – 2018); In Between, Contemporary Iranian Art (MANA Contemporary, Jersey City – 2017); VISAGE: Image of Self (O Gallery, Tehran – 2016); and SELF: Portraits of Artists in Their Absence (National Museum Academy of Fine Arts, New York – 2015). Ghaffari lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Phong H. Bui is an artist, writer, independent curator, and Co-Founder and Publisher/Artistic Director of the Brooklyn Rail, Rail Editions, River Rail, and Rail Curatorial Projects. He has organized more than sixty exhibitions since 2000, and has been named one of the “100 Most Influential People in Brooklyn Culture” by Brooklyn Magazine. Bui has been a Curatorial Advisor at MoMA PS1, as well as a senior critic in the MFA programs at Yale, Columbia, and University of Pennsylvania. He has taught graduate seminars in the MFA programs for Writing and Criticism and Photography, Video, and Related Media at the School of Visual Arts. He has received numerous awards and has served as a board member of many organizations. Bui lives in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

Shoja Azari was born in Shiraz, Iran in 1958. As a teenager, Azari experimented with short films, and after the 1979 Islamic Revolution involved himself in underground culture – literature, theater, and politics. After moving to New York in 1983, he received a Master’s degree in Psychology from New York University. In his work, Azari confronts broad themes of gender, politics, and piety, drawing inspiration from and re-interpreting religious icons. Azari’s work has been exhibited globally, with solo shows throughout Europe and North America. He has participated in exhibitions at the Venice Biennale, at museums such as Germany’s Haus der Kulturen and the MUSAC in Spain, and at art fairs including Art Basel, Switzerland, ARCO, Spain, and Art Dubai. His works are in the permanent collections of various museums and foundations, including the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in the United States, and the Farjam Collection in the UAE. He lives and works in New York.