“My interdisciplinary practice interrogates the history of displacement in the Americas, starting with Indigenous dispossession and genocide to current issues around gentrification and homelessness. At its root, however, it is a critical reflection on the commodification of land as private property and the issues that arise out of this. I articulate these subjects through printmaking, installation, and sculpture, to outline the contested use of space and the ways that social and political policies have shaped our contemporary urban environment. In my estimation, current efforts to stop gentrification begin with this struggle over land ownership, which is itself a colonial construct that runs counter to indigenous notions of land stewardship. Moreover, as an artist with a background in history, I use my previous training as a historian to find a mode of creative production that taps into the collective constant re-imagining of the past. In my work, for instance, I use representational figuration in order to conjure iconographic placeholders that speak to particular understandings of the past, and our relationship to it, and make the case that understanding change across times helps to better elucidate our contemporary political moment. My goal is to exercise my own historical imagination and disrupt the notion that writing is the only, or primary, way of producing historical knowledge.”

— Álvaro D. Márquez

www.alvarodmarquez.com | Instagram: @alvarodmarquez

“I negotiate American history and its erasure of black people, through narratives, exploration of identity, portraiture, and language. My paintings depict my perception of what it’s like to be African-American in today’s world. The paintings I make reflect the discomforting feeling that, because of my race, my life is in jeopardy. Through both abstraction and representation, I use my memories to depict the experience of being raised in a lower-middle class black community. My parents divorced when I was three so I was raised by my father during the week and my mother on weekends. That led me to feel I was living two different lives every week. Now when I recreate scenes from that reality, multiple perspectives come into focus. My work invites viewers to look at these experiences both literally and metaphorically, echoing my upbringing.I’m interested in the history of coded language in the African-American community. Historically, the coding started during slavery through songs, language and the underground railroad. In my own work I investigate this in two ways. First, through iconography and symbols, and second, through materials. The domino is an example of both a symbol and a material. I anthropomorphize them to talk about the human race in both a contemporary and historic setting. I change the color of the dominos since society categorizes us by colors. I use actual dominoes as a material in my work. I think about the concept of the domino effect as a metaphor to depict the continuous cycle of friends I have lost to gun violence in my community. I use cardboard because it’s common for homeless citizens to make signs in order to have their voices heard. I dissect sneakers and attach them to my paintings. I place viewers either in my shoes or in someone else’s shoes. I believe that the world, as a whole, would be a better place if people could take on one another’s perspective. When I’m placing the viewer in my shoes, I recreate scenes from my experience, past or present. My ultimate goal in getting viewers to see things from various perspectives is to help them stop turning a blind eye to society’s problems. W.E.B Dubois introduced the idea of double consciousness. “Always seeing oneself through the eyes of another.” In my work I want to expand this concept for the viewer. I not only want people to see scenes from my life, but also to feel what it's like to be a part of my larger community and maybe even feel what it’s like be black in America.”

— Jonah Elijah

Website | Instagram: @jonah.elijahx