Cornelius Tulloch, Body and Space Collage Study 01, 2018.
Closing Program: Rooted Wanderings
In celebration of Vendah by Cornelius Tulloch
Date: Friday, October 20, 2023
Time: 5:00–8:00 pm
Event Schedule:
5–6 pm: Walkthrough hosted by ArtNoir and led by exhibition mentor Danny Baez
6–6:15 pm: Performances by Iyanna James-Stephenson and Coco Villa to a sound arrangement by DJ Young Wavy Fox
6:15–8 pm: Closing reception
Please note that the performances will take place promptly from 6:00-6:15 pm.
Please join us for Rooted Wanderings, a special event to mark the culmination of the solo exhibition Vendah by Cornelius Tulloch. The event begins with an exhibition walkthrough led by exhibition mentor Danny Baez and hosted by ArtNoir. Following the walkthrough, Iyanna James-Stephenson and Coco Villa will perform to a sound arrangement by DJ Young Wavy Fox that creates a journey through the diasporic sounds of the Caribbean – from reggae to dancehall, dembow, hip hop, and more.
Through the work in his solo exhibition at CUE, Cornelius Tulloch reflects upon questions that feel simultaneously personal and global. How does culture adapt and evolve while maintaining certain distinguishable characteristics? What new identities emerge as cultural boundaries blur through continual exchange?
Rooted Wanderings explores these questions, creating a dialogue between movement, sound, and visual arts. The performances are inspired by Édouard Glissant’s writings on rhizomatic thought, drawing upon the complex histories, lived experiences, and imagined futures of the Caribbean. Reflecting on multiplicities, the event brings together activations that address shifting and fluid identities, and that seek to understand the ways in which people navigate between tradition and adaptation to new landscapes.
This event is free and open to all. Performances will be followed by a closing reception. RSVPs are requested but not required.
About the Performers:
Iyanna James-Stephenson (Iyanna the Model) is a Jamaican/American muse, speaker, performance artist, filmmaker, and bartender. She has spent nearly a decade honing in on her craft, focusing on the freedom of expression through the body, especially with dance and film. She is the creator of AfroBurlesque, a style of burlesque dance coupled with West African drumming. Her short film, Sacred Energy Exchange: A Personal Story on Polyandry, Kink, and Masturbation, was awarded Best Original Story at the 2022 Cannes Shorts Film Festival in France. She has had an unconventional journey as an independent model who is now represented in both her hometown of Miami, Florida and New York City. She is often sought after for her natural elf-like features, ethereal energy, fluid poses, and sensual strength.
Coco Villa leads an interdisciplinary art-research practice that is tightly bound to identity, heavily influenced by analog photography and dance, and that investigates relations between body, object, and landscape. Their work spans disciplines of performance, fashion design, installation, photography, and film. They utilize material and movement languages to tell autobiographical stories, explore human intimacy, and build familial archives through self-portraiture and choreography. Driven by historical and scientific discovery, Villa thrives in the ocean, woods, dance studio, photo and design lab, film set, and library, playfully creating by hand.
About the DJ (Sound Mix):
Young Wavy Fox (Kaysy Gotay) is a DJ, producer and entrepreneur based in NYC. Her Afro-LatinX roots exude in her eclectic music selection. She uses the art of DJing to express the multifarious dimensions of her creativity and personality. Wavy’s smooth groove has made her the go-to DJ for major art events. She has curated sounds at events hosted by artists and public figures such as Kehinde Wiley, Mickalene Thomas, and Naomi Campbell. She has also DJed events at The Met, Brooklyn Museum, Bass Museum, and MoMA PS1. Wavy’s fashion sense and DJ skills have landed her features in publications such as Vogue, Essence, ELLE UK, Time Out, ARTnews, WWD, Huffington Post, Coveteur, and more.
About the Artist:
Cornelius Tulloch is a Miami-based interdisciplinary artist and architect. His work transcends boundaries of photography, fine art, and architecture. Tulloch combines and subverts creative mediums to tell powerful stories. Cinematic moments, spatial complexity, light, and color are important characters in his practice. His work explores the importance of cultural identity within built environments and how space shapes culture, which in turn cultivates landscapes.
Tulloch’s work has been shown in institutions such as the Kennedy Center, Washington D.C.; NYU Center for Black Visual Culture, New York; Faena Art Project Room, Miami; and the MAXXI, Rome. He was a 2016 Presidential Scholar in the Arts, and his work is presented as part of the permanent collection of the Studio Museum in Harlem. Tulloch has won numerous prizes and residencies; he was named an Emerging Visionary Grantee by Instagram and the Brooklyn Museum’s Black Visionaries Program in 2022, is a two-time Oolite Ellies Award recipient, and received the 2023 YoungArts Jorge M. Perez Award.
Many of Tulloch’s projects have been grounded in his upbringing and communities in Miami, as well as inspired by his Jamaican and African-American heritage. His work expresses the ways in which bodies exist between cultures and borders. Tulloch’s multidisciplinary practice seeks to redefine and reshape the boundaries of art and space.
About the Mentor:
Danny Baez is a Dominican-born, NYC-based cultural producer and curator. Baez is currently the Head of Arts at Kickstarter. He is also director and founder of REGULARNORMAL gallery, one-half of the founding duo behind MECA (Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic's premier art fair), co-founder and board member of ARTNOIR, member of the Young Collectors Council of El Museo del Barrio, Board Member of ISCP (International Studio & Curatorial Program), Board Member of New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA), and former External Affairs Representative for Gavin Brown Enterprise. He firmly believes in the power of building and working in practice with community. Baez has organized various exhibitions in New York since 2010.
About ArtNoir:
ArtNoir started as a group of friends organizing “field trips” to museums, galleries and art fairs around the globe. In it, we discovered the power of numbers, and friendship, to make traditionally exclusive art world spaces feel colorful, inclusive and welcoming. We also discovered a passion for ensuring that the next generation of Black and Brown creators, curators, and collectors are connected in community, and contributing to each other’s success. Today, ArtNoir is a female-majority and black + brown owned, NYC based global collective and 501(c)(3) with a mission to celebrate and highlight the work of creatives of color while catalyzing cultural equity across the arts and culture industries. We seek to empower artists, enthusiasts, curators, forward thinking organizations, storytellers, designers and patrons, to explore alternative perspectives to the traditional arts narrative, while leveraging the intersectionality of art and culture to develop new access points for discussion, exploration and collaboration.