COLLECTIVE PRESENCE CURATORIAL KICK-OFF

Please join DiverseWorks for the opening of Collective Presence on Thursday, February 21, in the gallery at MATCH, featuring a curator’s talk, music, and hands-on art activities.

This spring, DiverseWorks is proud to present Collective Presence, a curatorial initiative led by DiverseWorks Assistant Curator Ashley DeHoyos. Collective Presence is a hub for creative and cultural activity to address topics related to social, political, and environmental issues of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean.

Collective Presence will kick-off in the MATCH Gallery (3400 Main Street) on Thursday, February 21, from 7 – 9 pm featuring a Curator’s Talk by Ashley DeHoyos at 7:30 pm, followed by a DJ set with DJ MLE of MLE Music. Artists Laura Napier and Monica Villareal will be on-site leading hands-on art-making activities.

Through a series of micro-residencies, workshops, and community discussions, invited artists will join DiverseWorks from February 21 – April 14, 2019, to create new work on site and in conversation with each other. Rabéa Ballin (Houston), Rafa Esparza (Los Angeles), Joshua Rios (Chicago) and Awilda Rodríguez Lora (San Juan, PR) will each be at DiverseWorks for 10-day micro-residencies.

Programs will be presented throughout the run of the project in a community flex space in the gallery with events hosted by community partners Raul Edwards and Reinaldo Costa of Strictly Street Salsa, S Rodriguez and Sara Balabanlilar of Paraspace Books, Lisa E. Harris of Studio Enertia, Risa Puleo, Laura Napier, and Monica Villareal.

Collective Presence seeks to bring together multiple perspectives and interdisciplinary approaches to creative leadership and critical inquiry. Through the artistic practices of those involved, a collective call and response will be activated in the MATCH Gallery to address the current trends of futurism and decolonization practices. This project continues the curatorial thinking of Dehoyos’s previous projects Cultural Platform for Resistance, curated as part of VisArts Emerging Curator program in Rockville, Maryland, and Journey to Aztlan: Contemporary Conversations with the Land at Sam Houston State University.