Juana Valdés
Born1963 (age 60–61)
Cabañas, Pinar Del Rio, Cuba
EducationSchool of Visual Arts
Parsons School of Design
WebsiteJuanaMValdes.com

Juana Valdés (born 1963) is a multi-disciplinary artist and an associate professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.[1] Her works examine Afro-Cuban[2] migration through the lens of material culture and personal experience. Valdés's work in ceramics, printmaking, video, and installation explores the colonial and imperial economies that tie the transoceanic movement of people and political ideologies across Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas.[3] Her installations and photographs of mass-produced decorative objects chart the history of colonial trade in conversation with her sub-Saharan and East Asian ancestry, demonstrating that the ancestry of black and brown populations is inextricably linked to trade and globalization.[4] Valdés works with a wide range of source material that reflects the impact of global networks of exchange on contemporary issues of transcultural identity, displacement and migration, and the climate crisis.[5][6]

Biography

Valdés was born in Cabañas, Pinar Del Rio, Cuba in 1963. She migrated to Miami with her mother, brother and sister in 1971; her father arrived a year later.[7] Her work is, in part, informed by this early experience of migration, her childhood memories of Cuba, and adjusting to life in the United States.[8]

Education

She received her B.F.A. in Sculpture from the Parsons School of Design in 1991 and her M.F.A. in Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts in 1993. She attended the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture in 1995 after receiving a Cosby Fellowship from the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, in Maine, United States.[9]

Academic career

Valdés’ career as an academic started in 1996 when she was invited by Bard College to teach Studio Art and exhibit a site-specific installation in the Fisher Arts Building, where Judy Pfaff and William Tucker were co-chairs the department.[10] From 2002 to 2005 Valdés participated in the Artist-Teacher MFA program in the Visual Arts Department at Vermont College of Norwich University. During that time, Valdés led a Digital Screen Print Workshop in the Yale School of Art at Yale University in 2004. Starting in 2005, Valdés taught sculpture as an adjunct professor in the College of Arts and Letters Art and Technology program at the Stevens Institute of Technology. Between 2005 and 2010 Valdés taught Studio Art at Brooklyn College, City University of New York (CUNY) before joining the faculty at Florida Atlantic University as an assistant professor of Printmaking in the Department of Visual Arts and Art History from 2010 to 2015. In 2015, Valdés was an associate professor of Printmaking in the Department of Art in the College of Humanities and Fine Arts at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she was awarded tenure.[11]

Artistic Practice & Critical Reception

Valdés's work has been exhibited in over 100 museums and galleries nationally and internationally, including spaces such as El Museo del Barrio, Whitebox Gallery, and P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center.[12]

Her work is held in museums and private collections throughout the United States, including the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Newark Museum of Art,[13][14][15] and the Pérez Art Museum Miami.[16]

Her work has been favorably reviewed in journals such as Art in America,[17] Frieze,[18] Latinx Spaces, Miami Herald,[19][20] Berlin Art Link,[21] Santa Fe New Mexican,[22] South Florida Sun-Sentinel,[23] Newcity Art,[24] El Nuevo Herald,[25] The New Tropic.[26]

Valdés's work is also the subject of several scholarly publications including Bending Bone China: Juana Valdes’ Politics of the Skin by Josune Urbistondo (2015)[27] and Latinx Art: Artists/Markets/Politics by Arlene Dávila.[28][29]

Awards

Juana Valdés has received several awards from the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 1995, the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures Fund for the Arts grant in 2016,[30] the Pollock-Krasner Foundation,[31] Cuban Artist Fund,[32] New York Foundation for the Arts, Netherland-America Foundation, Faculty Research Mentoring Program, Lifelong Learning Society, Oolite Arts Ellies Award,[33][34][35] Joan Mitchell Foundation,[36] and Anonymous Was A Woman Award,[37][38] among others.

Publications

Her work can be found in many books including Women and Migration: Responses in Art and History,[39] Relational Undercurrents: Contemporary Art of the Caribbean Archipelago,[40] Four Generations: The Joyner Giuffrida Collection of Abstract Art,[41] Much Wider Than a Line,[42] and Multiplicity: Contemporary Ceramic Sculpture.[43]

Rest Ashore

With Rest Ashore (2020)[44] at Locust Projects, Valdés incorporated video into her practice for the first time.[45][46] The multimedia installation at Locust Projects explores how the refugee crisis has been documented and disseminated in mass media throughout the years, both past and present.[47]

The exhibition also featured Waves of Migration: a multimedia sculpture of CRT televisions facing opposite each other, each screen depicting different decades of Cuban migration—the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s—through archival footage to tell the story of each wave of migration. The project continues Valdés's thematic exploration of bodies of water, which have always played a significant role in her practice and the way she perceives and reimagines the Caribbean.[48]

Throughout her career, Valdés has reexamined her personal experience of migration and how it relates to the current global refugee crisis.[49][50] According to Valdés, “My recent work focuses on migration because I see it as one of the most significant issues of the 21st century. 79.5 million people were forcibly displaced worldwide at the end of 2019. I recently heard on the news that Venezuela would soon replace Syria with the largest number of displaced people. And it is not just countries in war or political conflict. The future will bring climate change refugees, as it already happened with hurricane Katrina.”[51]

Terrestrial Bodies

Terrestrial Bodies (2019) resulted from a multi-year process of collecting mass-produced collectible porcelain objects from around the world.[52][53] Working with the language of anthropology and archeology, Valdés demonstrates how the legacy of colonization is entrenched in institutions, social structures, and, most importantly, in objects.[54] A timeline of her mother's ancestry, compiled by the genetic testing service 23andMe, roots my family heritage at a crossroads between Africa, Asia, and the Americas, revealing how the ancestry of black and brown populations is inextricably linked to trade and globalization.[55]

Colored Bone China Rags

Valdés created The Colored Rag series by adding skin-toned powder pigments in the clay prior to firing, thereby manipulating its chemical composition and changing its color.[56][57] The intention is to question the mythology of whiteness as pure relative to notions of Mestizaje in the Caribbean, and link bodies to the physical constitution of bone china and its extraction and displacement as a raw material and commercial good. The Colored China Rags also create visual analogs between rags used by cleaning women, the suppleness of a woman's body, and the range of skin tones in ethnically mixed communities.[58] Subsequently, arranged, the work presents the myth of post-racial America as an increasingly far-fetched utopia.

Solo exhibitions

List of solo exhibitions [59]
Year Title Place
2029Rest AshoreLocust Projects, Miami, FL
2019-20Terrestrial BodiesMiami Dade College Special Collection, Cuban Legacy Gallery, Miami, FL
2019Round 49: penumbras: sacred geometries, 'terrestrial bodies: roteiro,'Project Row Houses, Houston TX
2017The Colored Bone ChinaHerter Gallery, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA
2015An Inherent View of the WorldMindy Solomon Gallery, Miami, FL
2015From Island to Ocean: Caribbean and Pacific DialoguesCenter for Cultural Analysis at Rutgers, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ.
2015Mettre Noir Sur BlancGuttenberg Arts, Guttenberg, NJ.
2014Remnants- “What RemainsThomas Hunter Project Space, Hunter College, CUNY, NY.
2013SENSEI Exchange Series @ “The Cellar” of Little Fox Café, Part 008In The Fold, NY.
2009Past/Present Tense — Tiempos del SubjuntivoJamaica Center for Arts & Learning, NY.
2006Looking Back 1994 – 2004paul sharpe contemporary art, New York, NY.
2006The Land that time forgotDiaspora Vibe Gallery, Miami, FL.
2002Juana Valdes/Pedro VelezBronx River Art Center, Bronx, NY.
2000Haarlem/Harlem-Transported IllusionsBegane Grond Kunstcentrum, Utrecht, Netherlands.
2000Empty SpaceThe Avram Gallery, Southampton College-Long Island Unv. Southampton, NY.
1998YUCAMiami Dade Community College, Inter-American Gallery, Miami, FL.
1997Sweet Honesty- Tender PinkPhoenix Gallery Project Room, NY.

References

  1. ↑ "Department of Fine Arts: Juana Valdes". University of Massachusetts Amherst. Archived from the original on 2 October 2016. Retrieved 10 December 2017.
  2. ↑ Gómez-Upegui, Salomé (2022-07-07). "10 Cuban Artists Who Are Shaping Contemporary Art". Artsy. Retrieved 2023-05-20.
  3. ↑ "Reference at ylef61fq8sw4803ci1ap5hl1-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com" (PDF).
  4. ↑ "Juana Valdes:An Inherent View of the World – Mindy Solomon Gallery".
  5. ↑ "Latinx Spaces | Redefining Latinx Media – Artist Juana Valdes offers Refuge in 'Rest Ashore'". 4 March 2021.
  6. ↑ "PBS For The Arts | Latinx Voices Respond to the Moment". PBS.
  7. ↑ Harris, Allison; Valdes, Juana (2020). "'There's a Part of Me That Must Remain Truthful to the Story': An Interview with Juana Valdes1". Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal. 16. doi:10.33596/anth.374. S2CID 216299655.
  8. ↑ "24. Making Latinx Art: Juana Valdes at the Crossroads of Latinx and Latin American Art". Women and Migration - 24. Making Latinx Art: Juana Valdes at the Crossroads of Latinx and Latin American Art - Open Book Publishers. OBP collection. Open Book Publishers. 12 September 2019. pp. 273–282. ISBN 9791036538070.
  9. ↑ "Juana Valdes". Dialogues in Cuban Art. Retrieved 10 December 2017.
  10. ↑ "STUDIO ART".
  11. ↑ "Juana Valdés". Department of Art : UMass Amherst.
  12. ↑ Urbistondo, Josune (2015). "Bending Bone China: Juana Valdes' Politics of the Skin". Miradas-Revista Digital de Historia del Art y Cultura Iberica IberoAmericana. 2: 56–67. doi:10.11588/mira.2015.0.22432.
  13. ↑ "Pérez Art Museum Miami renames endowment fund for Black art to reflect the wider diaspora". 8 February 2021.
  14. ↑ "Sin/Without, from the portfolio AQ/Art Quake". Smithsonian American Art Museum.
  15. ↑ "VALDÉS". Retrieved 21 February 2018.
  16. ↑ "PAMM Announces Polyphonic: Celebrating PAMM's Fund for African American Art • Pérez Art Museum Miami". Pérez Art Museum Miami. Retrieved 2023-02-22.
  17. ↑ "William Cordova on Juana Valdes in "Relational Undercurrents" at MOLAA – ARTnews.com". 25 July 2017.
  18. ↑ "SITElines.2016: New Perspectives on Art of the Americas | Frieze". 19 August 2016.
  19. ↑ "Reference at www.miamiherald.com". Miami Herald.
  20. ↑ "Reference at www.miamiherald.com". Miami Herald.
  21. ↑ "Nature // Getting Down to Earth at Site Santa Fe's 'much wider than a line' | Berlin Art Link". 19 July 2016.
  22. ↑ "Juana Valdes: The color of clean | Art | santafenewmexican.com". 15 July 2016.
  23. ↑ "Artists confront 'Intersectionality' at MOCA". South Florida Sun-Sentinel. 15 June 2016.
  24. ↑ "Eye Exam | Newcity Art". 26 May 2016.
  25. ↑ "Reference at www.elnuevoherald.com".
  26. ↑ "Why it's so hard for women in the art world - The New Tropic". 2 December 2015.
  27. ↑ Urbistondo, Josune (2015). "Bending Bone China: Juana Valdes' Politics of the Skin | Miradas - Zeitschrift für Kunst- und Kulturgeschichte der Amérikas und der iberischen Halbinsel". Miradas - Zeitschrift für Kunst- und Kulturgeschichte der Amérikas und der Iberischen Halbinsel. 2: 56–67. doi:10.11588/mira.2015.0.22432.
  28. ↑ "Reference at www.dukeupress.edu".
  29. ↑ "How Latinx Artists Were Shut Out Of Art History". 18 August 2020.
  30. ↑ "2016 NFA Grantees: Juana Valdes". national association of latino arts and culture. Archived from the original on 10 December 2017. Retrieved 10 December 2017.
  31. ↑ "Juana Valdes | Works | Pollock Krasner Image Collection".
  32. ↑ "Visual Arts — CUBAN ARTISTS FUND".
  33. ↑ "The Ellies: Miami's Visual Arts Awards". Oolite Arts. Retrieved 2023-05-20.
  34. ↑ "Interview With Oolite Arts' 2018 Ellies Creator Juana Valdes — Create! Magazine". Archived from the original on 2021-07-24. Retrieved 2021-07-24.
  35. ↑ "Juana Valdes - Oolite Arts".
  36. ↑ "Juana Valdes | Joan Mitchell Foundation". 12 December 2018.
  37. ↑ "Juana Valdés Wins Anonymous Was A Woman Award for Significant Contributions in Art". UMass Amherst. 30 November 2020.
  38. ↑ "Anonymous Was a Woman Names 2020 Award Recipients - Artforum International".
  39. ↑ Willis, Deborah; Toscano, Ellyn; Brooks Nelson, Kalia, eds. (2019). Women and Migration: Responses in Art and History - Open Book Publishers. Open Book Publishers. doi:10.11647/obp.0153. ISBN 978-1-78374-565-4. S2CID 159187937.
  40. ↑ "Reference at www.dukeupress.edu".
  41. ↑ "Pamela Joyner Is Rewriting the Role of Black Art". 10 November 2016.
  42. ↑ Much Wider Than a Line ARTBOOK | D.A.P. 2016 Catalog SITE Santa Fe Books Exhibition Catalogues 9780985660239.
  43. ↑ "Reference at works.bepress.com".
  44. ↑ "LOCUST PROJECTS".
  45. ↑ "Things to Do In Miami: Juana Valdes "Rest Ashore" at Locust Projects". Miami New Times.
  46. ↑ "Juana Valdes". Creative Capital.
  47. ↑ "REST_ ASHORE_h264_1929x1080_09_11_20". 13 September 2020.
  48. ↑ "Latinx Spaces | Redefining Latinx Media – Artist Juana Valdes offers Refuge in 'Rest Ashore'". 4 March 2021.
  49. ↑ "PBS For The Arts | Latinx Voices Respond to the Moment | PBS". PBS.
  50. ↑ "Things to Do In Miami: Juana Valdes "Rest Ashore" at Locust Projects". Miami New Times.
  51. ↑ "Finding One's Own Place on the Edge of the Edge".
  52. ↑ "Freedom Tower's 'Terrestrial Bodies' takes on mighty task in a deceptively modest way".
  53. ↑ "Juana Valdes 2 Minotti". Archived from the original on 2021-08-01. Retrieved 2021-08-01.
  54. ↑ "Round 49".
  55. ↑ "Juana Valdes Explores 'Terrestrial Bodies' in New Exhibit at Freedom Tower". Miami New Times. 28 November 2019.
  56. ↑ "The Colored Bone China : Herter Art Gallery : UMass Amherst".
  57. ↑ "The Colored Bone China: New Work by Juana Valdés". Repeating Islands. 16 October 2018.
  58. ↑ "Juana Valdes: The color of clean | Art | santafenewmexican.com". 15 July 2016.
  59. ↑ "juana valdes". Retrieved on 21 Feb 2018
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