Praxis is pleased to present Stories of Wonder: When the Sea is my Land, a solo exhibition by Scherezade Garcia (b. Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic). The exhibition will be open from September 16th until November 13th 2021. We are open to the public Tuesday to Saturday, 10am to 6pm at 501 W 20th Street, New York, NY, 10011.
As a Latinx contemporary artist, Scherezade Garcia’s work is concerned with the creation of narratives that are essential to the understanding of America and the American experience. Her work intends to unveil the many ongoing cultural encounters that continuously shape and reshape how we view, perceive, and color America. Her work is centered on the politics of inclusion. History plays a central role in her artistic practice of decoding and deconstructing visual narratives of power. Garcia engages history and historical ethnography to pay close attention to traditions, methods, and dominant societal points of view to visually bring forth other voices. Through the deconstruction, the juxtaposition of symbols of constructed Americaness, nationhood and freedom embedded in slavery and oppression, she aims to present the most outrages signs of resistance through the mixing of race, through a fierce Optimism.
Race, the politics of color (formally and conceptually) is essential to her work. The cinnamon figure has been a constant in Garcia’s trajectory since 1996. Mixing all the colors in a palette is an inclusive action, the outcome of such activity is cinnamon color. The new race, represented by her ever-present cinnamon figure, states the creation of a new aesthetic. This unique aesthetic with new rules originated by the lush landscape, the transplantation, appropriation, and transformation of traditions. Also, the catholic iconography with her mixed- race warrior/angels is a way of colonizing the colonizers, by appropriating, transforming and creating new icons.
The Artist
Scherezade García is a painter, printmaker, and installation artist whose work often explores allegories of history, migration, collective and ancestral memory, and cultural colonization and politics. A co-founder of the Dominican York Proyecto GRÁFICA, she holds an AAS from Altos de Chavón School of Design, a BFA from Parsons School of Design | The New School, and an MFA from The City College of New York, CUNY.
García has been featured in solo and duo exhibitions at the Art Museum of the Americas, Clifford Art Gallery at Colgate University, Miller Theater at Columbia University, Lehman College Art Gallery, Crossroads Gallery at the University of Notre Dame, Museo de Arte de Santo Domingo and others. She has participated in the Havana Biennial, the International Biennial of Paintings at Haute de Cagnes, the IV Caribbean Biennial, Trienal Poli/Gráfica de San Juan, Latin American Biennial, BRIC Biennial, Venice Autonomous Biennial, and international fairs. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Art Museum of the Americas, El Museo del Barrio, The Housatonic Museum of Art, El Museo de Arte Moderno in Santo Domingo, and others. García is the recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant (2015) and the Colene Brown Art Prize (2020). An edited monograph on her work ‘Scherezade García: From This Side of the Atlantic’, was published in 2020 by the Art Museum of the Americas. She is a member of the Artist Advisory Council of Arts Connection and No Longer Empty. She sits on the Board of Directors of the College Art Association (2020-2024). García is represented by Praxis Art Gallery in New York. Garcia is an Assistant Professor at The University of Texas @ Austin. Her artist’s papers can be found at the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. She currently lives in Brooklyn, NY, and Austin, TX.
