MCAD JEROME FELLOWSHIP FOR EARLY CAREER ARTIST
MCAD Gallery, January 17th - March 1st, 2025. Info and accessibility here
2023/24 MCAD–Jerome Foundation Fellowships for Early Career Artists: Zoe Cinel, Leeya Rose Jackson, Prerna, and Ziba Rajabi.
The artists were selected from 94 Minnesota-based applicants by a panel of arts professionals that included Alex Buffalohead (Bdewakantowan Dakota), Director of Communications, Branding, and Partnerships at the Native American Community Development Institute and All My Relations Arts Gallery; Carol A. Stakenas, Director and Chief Curator of Providence College Galleries; and Jade Yumang, artist and Associate Professor in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Altar #1 - Audio description, acknowledgments, statement and quotes
Rest With Me #2 - Audio description, acknowledgments and statement
Natura Morta With - Audio description and statement
Three Weeks Calendar - Audio description and statement: click here
CONVERSATIONS ABOUT CARE
Series of community events, 2022 - 2024
Come as you are for a community chat/tea time and share what CARE means to you, what forms of care you see happening in your community and how to extend these practices to our society. The liberating, empowering words of queer, BIPOC disability activists, chronically ill artists and revolutionary healthcare practitioners, will be our conversation starters to discuss intersectionality, forms of resistance to capitalism and ableism and radical interdependence.
No pre-reading is expected to attend this event, just an interest in sharing and listening.
This project is funded through a 2023 - 2024 MRAC Arts Impact for Individual Grant, supported by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.
Thank you to Second Shift, New Arab American Theater, Fresh Eye Gallery, Mill City Museum, and MCAD MFA for hosting the events.
Image description: on a pale green background are 5 images in rounded frames with fuzzy borders. The images are photographs from previous conversations: a shelf with books, a table with snacks, participants sitting and reading, quotes from attendees printed on cyanotype saying "care is in the details". Below the images, in the center, written in a font resembling stitching thread, text recites: "Conversation About Care. September 25, 4 PM - 6 PM. Mill City Museum, 704 S 2nd St, Minneapolis. Info and registration here: https://forms.gle/ft2kKS8pieaf18XR8
A group of people sitting in a circle on chairs, armchairs and couches read books.
Snacks, tea, and lights on a green tablecloth
On a white background is written in orange and grey metro regional arts council
THE ART OF DISABILITY JUSTICE NOW
Group/Community-curated exhibition, 2024-2025
The Art of Disability Justice Now is a community-led exhibition that was physically installed at the Mill City Museum from July 2024 to January 2025. The show was curated and organized by local disabled artists, activists, and organizers. This exhibition served as a snapshot of what Disability Justice is now in the Twin Cities, and why it’s important. I participated as an artist and community curator.
Click here to access the exhibition website with audio descriptions, pictures and statements about the artworks and recordings of the programs.
Press: PBS Almanac (aired on August 16, 2024), CBS News (updated on July 30, 2024, by Susan Elizabeth LittleField), MPLSART.COM (publised on September 25, 2024, by Benjamin Merritt).
Photos by Chris Juhn
CHRONICLES OF THE CHRONIC
Curated exhibition, 2023 - 2024
Chronicles of the Chronic is a group exhibition that celebrates the creativity and resilience of the chronically ill community. It features regional, national and international artists whose practice reflects holistically upon the experience of living with a chronic health condition. Eight of the thirteen artists were invited by the Curator Zoe Cinel, and the remaining five were selected through a juried process from a pool of eighty-one applicants. The jury was composed of a diverse group of artists, curators and healthcare professionals, including Alison Berglom Johnson (artist, curator, educator and disability advocate), Keisha Williams (MCAD Gallery Director and Curator), Victor Montori M.D. (founder of Patient Revolution and author of Why We Revolt) and Zoe Cinel (Rochester Art Center Curator and Curator for the exhibition).
Featured artist: Anna Cowley Ford, Anna Hite, Benjamin Merritt, Brothers Sick (Ezra and Noah Benus), Drew Maude-Griffin, Geography of Illness (Emma Jones), Emma MacLean, Jennifer Bastian, Kym McDaniel, Lauryn Youden, May Ling Kopecky, Weng San Sit.
Click here for documentation, full statement and recordings of the online programs.
LESS IS ENOUGH
Solo exhibition, 2023
Less is Enough is a solo exhibition of new artworks created during the year-long residency at Second Shift Studio Space of Saint Paul. The work presented explored chronic illness, care, and softness from my individual and from a communal standpoint.
Foto by Emily Dzieweczynski
Foto by Emily Dzieweczynski
Foto by Emily Dzieweczynski
Foto by Emily Dzieweczynski
Foto by Emily Dzieweczynski
TOO HOT TO HANDLE
Solo exhibition, 2021
This exhibition features new installations that visualize the experience of living with RA (Rheumatoid Arthritis)*, an autoimmune inflammatory disease I inherited from my maternal grandmother. Being diagnosed in 2020 during a pandemic and the upbringing in Minneapolis, I experienced the fatality of negotiating life with chronic pain, medications and a defeating health care system as an immigrant. This show was a coming out: raw, clinical yet intimate. A celebration of the many times I was made way too aware of the existence and the clash of my own cells. The exhibition took place at the RCTC Gallery in Rochester, MN.
Press:Article on Post Bulletin, feature on R-Town (Episode 1909)
Video documentation by Chris Rackley, pictures by Rik Sferra
ODE TO MY MEDICAL BILLS #1
Multimedia installation, 2022
It features fake flowers, a still life with a pillow, used medications and flowers and a video with images of my body during a flare + medical images.
GRADUAL ASCENT
Group exhibition, 2021-2022
From the exhibition statement: "Gradual Ascent is a year-long project that invited twelve photographers to reflect on obstacles, changes, and joys throughout one particular month. The month-long format provided an opportunity to share the ebb and flow of how individuals processed and found their way during the second year of the pandemic. Their perspectives are an acknowledgment of our varied and ever-changing situations, offering moments of connection and meaning as we slowly emerged from a time of great uncertainty." The exhibition was curated and hosted by the Augsburg College Gallery.
About my work: "Rheumatoid arthritis, or RA, is an autoimmune and inflammatory disease leading the immune system to attack healthy cells in your body by mistake, causing inflammation (painful swelling) in the affected parts of the body. RA mainly attacks the joints, usually many joints at once. In summer 2020, at age 28, I was diagnosed with RA. This is a portrait of myself through the lens of pain and a retrospective of the chronic disease. Photography has helped me document moments in which my body looked swollen, red and hurt. These images are a reminder of how far I have come in the journey with pain.”
View the show at: www.designandagency.com/gradual-ascent
