Fire and Ice
CUE Teen Collective
September 12th - 13th, 2020
Hours:
Saturday, 9/12 from 12pm-3pm
Sunday 9/13 12pm-5pm
Location:
The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center
LES Gallery, Ground Floor
107 Suffolk Street
New York, New York 10002
Please see visitor safety guidelines below
CUE Art Foundation is proud to announce the third annual CUE Teen Collective final exhibition. The subject of destruction comes up again and again in the year 2020, as global catastrophes—both literal and figurative—flood the headlines and invade our consciousness. We are bombarded by news of environmental disasters, political upheaval, a global health crisis, and much more. In Fire and Ice, ten teenagers from all over New York City explore the difficult topic of destruction and transform trauma into art. Made in a range of mediums such as drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, and illustration, the artworks in this exhibition also vary in their content; some depict narratives of personal destruction—investigating family issues and subjects like substance abuse—while others portray broader or collective notions of destruction, exploring the impacts of climate change and racism. The works also differ in their approach to destruction: some are fable-like warnings of future destruction, some are eulogies of things past, and others are flat depictions of ruination without offering any solutions.
Unifying the pieces are the artists’ roles as both creators and destroyers. They examine and harness their powers to expose, initiate, and terminate destruction through their artistic practices. The exhibition includes work by Anayi Charles-Pierre, Anna Dawn, Anja Drakulovic, Sophie Foley, Aurora Hidalgo, Cassandra Junio, Anastasia Mantel, Diana Paniagua, Oliver Sheehan, and Jiahe Wang.
Curatorial statement by Jiahe Wang, CTC 2019-20
An online version of the exhibition was held on Exhibbit from June 27-August 13, 2020. The show is curated by CTC Lead Educator Amanda Adams-Louis with assistance from CTC student Jiahe Wang and features work by:
Anayi Charles-Pierre is a junior in high school with a passion for music and art. She loves learning new things and spends her free time reading. A seventeen-year-old girl from Bed-Stuy who surrounds herself with a diverse community of people, she is open about the many social and political injustices that affect people of color and has begun to get more involved in the activist community. Charles-Pierre is influenced by the work of James Baldwin and the impact he has had with his powerful words. Through a podcast that she created, Charles-Pierre explores Baldwin’s writings and representations as an African American living in a complicated, beautiful world. She wants to create art that makes people think about today’s reality and the hope of the future.
Anna Dawn is a sixteen-year-old artist. She is a rising junior at the Chapin School in New York City, where she was born and raised. Dawn is a multimedia artist who works in painting, drawing, photography, video, sculpting, and collage. She has completed pre-college courses in figure drawing, digital photography, and film photography at The School of Visual Arts. Dawn has also completed the intensive art summer program at The Oxbow School, where she specialized in video art. She is interested in studying fine arts in college and is invested in learning more about New York City’s rich arts culture and history.
Anja Drakulovic is a seventeen-year-old art student at Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School. At age fourteen, she moved to New York City from a small country in Southeast Europe. Drakulovic enjoys every form of art and takes advantage of its lack of rules. She has had her work exhibited in Manhattan and Queens. Drakulovic’s goal is to major in art and she is currently interested in graphic design and painting.
Sophie Foley has lived in Brooklyn her entire life and is a junior at the NYC iSchool in Manhattan. Her house is very close to the Brooklyn Museum, which she visits often with her family and friends. Currently, she is a work-study assistant in the museum’s Gallery-Studio Program, helping with younger students’ art classes. She has taken a variety of art classes since middle school, primarily at the Pratt Institute, Art Studio NY, and the Brooklyn Museum. Foley carries her notebook around with her everywhere she goes, and for the past year and a half, she has published a variety of zines which she distributes at school to her friends and teachers. Foley uses art as a way to channel her anxieties about the world.
Aurora Hidalgo is a sixteen-year-old junior and fine artist who works primarily with acrylics, charcoal, and graphite. She is a first generation Latina raised in Queens and finds a lot of inspiration from her experiences as a person of color as well as that of those around her. Her work often incorporates themes about the challenges people of color face and mental health. Hidalgo focuses on facial expressions and body language to create a sense of empathy and sympathy in her work.
Cassandra Junio is a Filipina-American born in Honolulu, Hawaii. She moved to the mainland when she was one year old and was raised in the Bronx, New York. She is a straight-A student who currently attends Central Park East High School in East Harlem where she continues to be creatively involved within her school and home community. She seeks creative opportunities to test her artistic ability both in and out of school through her involvement in art programs such as CUE, as well as clubs and competitions. Junio takes major inspiration from local street art, using acrylic paint as her medium of choice to express her vast appreciation of street style contemporary art through her paintings and her shoe and denim customs.
Anastasia Mantel is a sixteen-year-old student at St. Jean Baptiste High School. Mantel was born and raised in New York. She is constantly influenced by artists who use their environment and history to build upon their work. For this exhibition, Mantel decided to work in a different medium--clay--instead of her usually watercolors and pencil. In the future, she hopes to become an art therapist to help children express themselves through different processes.
Diana Paniagua is a fifteen-year-old sophomore attending St. Jean Baptiste High School. She makes manga art and watercolor illustrations. Paniagua grew up in Queens and has been drawing for as long as she could remember. She was influenced to draw in manga styles after watching Japanese TV shows and cartoons and uses watercolor, colored pencils, and markers to create illustrations. Paniagua aspires to be a manga artist.
Oliver Sheehan is a sixteen-year-old abstract artist from Brooklyn, New York. His goal when creating paintings, collages, and sculptures is to give the viewer a glimpse into his thoughts and thought process. Sheehan’s work often combines two or more mediums, usually collage and paint. Although most of his work is small, the pieces vary in size, the largest being a mural in a stairwell at his school. Sheehan likes to create abstract forms, exploring the fundamental relationship between the shapes and the space they occupy. He invokes the theme of connection in much of his work, specifically the connections between people or objects and their environment.
Jiahe Wang is a typical third-culture kid. She was born in China, has lived in Nigeria and Los Angeles, and currently attends Stuyvesant High School in New York. She works with traditional mediums such as acrylic paint and charcoal, as well as mixed media pieces involving linoleum carvings and photography. Her work deals with her confusion about cultural identity, inspired by her travels around the world.
Wang is the assistant curator of this year’s show. She is an editor of The Stuyvesant Spectator and has reported on events such as the TriBeCa Film Festival and New York Fashion Week. She has won a national silver medal and two Gold Keys for her photography in the Scholastic Arts and Writing Contest, and was the assistant director of costumes for the student-run theater production, SING!.
About CUE Teen Collective
CUE Teen Collective (CTC) is a free, year-long after-school program for high school students who are passionate about visual culture and interested in exploring careers in the fine arts. Through the program, students investigate various aspects of the contemporary art world, develop and refine their artmaking and critical thinking skills, and conceptualize and create artwork for a final group exhibition presented at CUE’s gallery space. CTC offers behind-the-scenes access to the New York art world, demystifying career paths in the arts while inspiring students to develop their own personal artistic voices. The program consists of talks with artists and curators, trips to gallery and museum shows, visits to art fairs, hands-on studio sessions, and more. Participants have the opportunity to learn from working arts professionals and build sustainable and rewarding careers of their own in the arts.
Participants form a community with their peers over the course of the academic year, sharing their work with each other and exchanging meaningful feedback on artistic concepts, techniques, and processes as they work together to develop and refine their artistic practices. At the culmination of the program, students present original artwork as part of a group show, for which they collectively decide upon the theme and content. Students also learn how to communicate their work through the development of visual and written materials for the final exhibition, including curatorial statements, artist statements, and artist biographies. Through this process, students learn how to envision, produce, install, and communicate an art exhibition in the same manner as working artists, organizations, and galleries all over the world.
For more information about the CUE Teen Collective see here and learn how to apply.
Artwork Images
Installation Images
