Miatta Kawinzi, Video still from SHE GATHER ME, 2021. HD color video, 16mm color film transferred to video, two-channel audio: vocalization, cassette tape recordings, synthesizer, original electronic score, 10 minutes 50 seconds.
Opening Reception with Miatta Kawinzi and Ronny Quevedo
Saturday, April 10, 2-5pm
RSVP here
Please join us for an opening reception with artist Miatta Kawinzi and curator-mentor Ronny Quevedo in conjunction with Kawinzi’s solo exhibition, Soft is Strong. Visitors can make appointments for 30-minute slots to view the exhibition, pick up a catalogue, and speak with the artist and curator-mentor. A maximum of 8 people will be admitted at a time.
Kawinzi’s practice employs multimedia installation, video, and prints to consider conditions of fragmentation, multiplicity, and softness within the African diaspora as sites for belonging, possibility, and regeneration. Born in the Southern United States to a Liberian mother and Kenyan father, the New York-based artist’s work explores cultural hybridity, motifs of doubling, and linguistic experimentation in conversation with Black feminist literary traditions, uplifting a poetics of liberation that simultaneously holds space for loss while imagining paths towards reparation and renewal.
Health and safety protocols for gallery visitors during opening reception
Visitors will be limited to no more than 8 people at a time. Masks or face coverings are mandatory upon entry. Stay six feet apart from others. An optional hands-free thermometer is available upon entry. Hand sanitizer will be available. Checklists and press releases are available on our website. Limited printed copies will be available upon inquiry. If you think you have a fever, have tested positive for COVID-19 in the past 14 days, or have had close contact with anyone who is confirmed or suspected of having COVID-19, please don’t visit the gallery.
If there is space, walk-ins will be able to view the exhibition. We do not require appointments during regular gallery hours.
Access Notes
CUE Art Foundation is wheelchair accessible. There is an all-gender, ADA compliant, single-stall bathroom in the gallery. The space is not scent-free, but we do request that people attending come low-scent. The closest wheelchair accessible MTA subway stations are Penn Station and Herald Square Station. If you have additional access questions or needs, please contact info@cueartfoundation.org (ideally with at least 48 hours before the event) and we will do our best to accommodate you.
Miatta Kawinzi (she/her/they/them) is a Kenyan-Liberian-American multidisciplinary artist, writer, and educator raised in Nashville, TN, and Louisville, KY, and based in NYC. She received an MFA in Studio Art from Hunter College and a BA in Interdisciplinary Art & Cultural Theory from Hampshire College. Her work has been presented at the Studio Museum in Harlem, MoMA PopRally, Red Bull Arts Detroit, BRIC, Maysles Cinema, and the Museum of the Moving Image, among other spaces. She has been awarded artist residencies in spaces including the Tulsa Artist Fellowship (Tulsa, OK), POV Spark in partnership with the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History & Culture (NYC, DC, and Venice, Italy), Red Bull Arts Detroit (Detroit, MI), the Cité internationale des arts (Paris, France, with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council), Beta-Local (San Juan, Puerto Rico), the Bemis Center (Omaha, NE), and the Bag Factory (Johannesburg, South Africa). Kawinzi has been awarded a 2021-22 Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship, the 2019 Bemis Center Alumni Award, and the 2018 Barbara Hammer Lesbian Experimental Filmmaking Grant administered by Queer|Art. She has taught art at Hampshire College and the University of Richmond and worked as a museum, youth, and community arts educator throughout NYC.
Ronny Quevedo (b. 1981, Guayaquil, Ecuador) works in a variety of mediums including sculpture and drawing. He received his MFA from Yale University (2011) and BFA from Cooper Union (2003). Quevedo's work has been exhibited at the Denver Art Museum (2021), the Albright Knox Gallery (2021), Foxy Productions (2021), Upfor Gallery (2019), James Fuentes Gallery (2019), the Whitney Museum of American Art (2018), Socrates Sculpture Park (2017), and the Queens Museum (2017). Solo presentations include Silueta, Rubber Factory (2019); Field of Play, Open Source Gallery (2019); and no hay medio tiempo / there is no halftime, Queens Museum (2017). Group exhibitions include ACE: Art on Sports, Promise, and Selfhood, University Art Museum at Albany (2019); Pacha, Llaqta, Wasichay: Indigenous Space, Modern Architecture, New Art at the Whitney Museum (2018); and the traveling exhibition Monarchs: Brown and Native Contemporary Artists in the Path of the Butterfly (2017-19). His work has been reviewed in Artforum and Hyperallergic, and is highlighted in Latinx Art: Artists, Markets, Politics by Arlene Davila (2020). His work is held in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Denver Art Museum, and other world-renowned cultural institutions. Quevedo is a recipient of a Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship, Queens Museum/Jerome Foundation Fellowship for Emerging Artists, and A Blade of Grass Fellowship for Socially Engaged Art.