Vendah by Cornelius Tulloch
Mentor: Danny Baez
September 7 – October 21, 2023

Opening Reception
Thursday, September 7th, 6–8 pm

Closing Event: Rooted Wanderings
Exhibition walkthrough by Danny Baez presented in partnership with ArtNoir; performances by Iyanna James-Stephenson and Coco Villa, with sound arrangement by DJ Young Wavy Fox
Friday, October 20th, 5–8 pm

Associated Program: Tides: Spatial Memory of Being
A site-specific installation at NADA House on Governors Island
September 1st – October 1st

Vendah is a solo exhibition by Miami-based artist and architect Cornelius Tulloch, with mentorship from Danny Baez. The exhibition presents new works by Tulloch that investigate the social and spatial formation of culture. Through layered explorations that draw upon narratives of Caribbean markets, Tulloch blurs the boundaries of photography, painting, printmaking, and installation. Visible within this new body of work are tactile stories of hybridity and fluidity – of people, objects, and structures that represent what renowned Martinican philosopher Édouard Glissant referred to as “new beings in a different space.” 

Vendah transforms CUE’s gallery space into a vibrant site of exchange. Reflecting upon his own Jamaican and African-American heritage as well as Glissant’s writings about Antillanité (Caribbean-ness) and the subsequent theory of Créolité (Creole-ness), Tulloch explores vernacular marketplaces from Kingston to Miami to New York. In his works, he incorporates found materials such as wood, tarp, and fabric. With additive textural interventions, he collages, builds, and reveals informal architectures, uprooted produce, and complex relationships between people. Playing with legibility and opacity, he portrays his subjects in glimpses and moments that make them at once recognizable and yet not fully perceptible, as if rendered from a hazy photograph or a distant memory. 

Amidst this obscurity, however, the image of the vendah emerges as an emblem of embodied exchange, an arbiter of cultural symbolism that deftly navigates dynamics of nationalism, ethnicity, class, social hierarchy, and interpersonal relations in interactions with market visitors, both local and from afar. Tulloch plays with this context, composing a space in which guests act as both observer and participant. A site-specific installation within the exhibition invites us in, serving as a welcoming interior to share stories of cultural memory in the form of recipes. Encouraging contributions that draw from the landscapes we each call home, Vendah empowers us to contemplate the histories and spaces we embody, and the forms of culture and identity we celebrate, uplift, subvert, and obscure. 

Vendah is the artist’s first solo show in New York City, and is accompanied by Tides: Spatial Memory of Being, a site-specific installation on Governors Island as part of NADA House. Through these projects, Tulloch creates an homage to diasporic movement as perceived through the senses – the spaces we inhabit, the food we cultivate, and the landscapes of our existence…and our imagination.

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.

Exhibition Video

Exhibition Materials

Press Release
Click here to download a PDF version of the exhibition press release. For more info or press materials, email press@cueartfoundation.org.

Catalogue
Vendah is accompanied by an exhibition catalogue with texts by artist Cornelius Tulloch and exhibition mentor Danny Baez, as well as an interview with the artist by Kalila Ain (mentored by Dr. Joan Morgan). The catalogue is available to read online, and a print version is available free of charge to gallery visitors.

Kalila Ain’s interview with Cornelius Tulloch is also available to read on our website.

Tote Bag

As part of Vendah, CUE has released a limited edition screenprint tote bag with artwork by Cornelius Tulloch and graphic design by Jenni Oughton. Tote bags are available at CUE’s gallery or in our online shop. Proceeds from all sales benefit our mission and programs to support emerging and underrepresented artists and art workers.

Artwork Images

Installation Images

Opening Reception Photos

Closing Program Photos

Exhibition Credits and Support

Vendah by Cornelius Tulloch with mentorship from Danny Baez. Catalogue interview by Kalila Ain, mentored by Dr. Joan Morgan. Graphic design by Jenni Oughton Surasky. Presented by CUE Art Foundation, 2023.

This exhibition was organized as part of CUE’s annual open call for solo exhibitions. Cornelius Tulloch was awarded the opportunity to present a solo exhibition at the gallery during our 2023 open call. For more information about the open call program, see here.

Programmatic support for CUE Art Foundation is provided by Evercore, Inc; ING Group; The Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation; The William Talbott Hillman Foundation; and Corina Larkin & Nigel Dawn. Programs are also supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council; the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature; and the National Endowment for the Arts.