Adults
Adults
Adults
Opening Reception: February 10, 4- 7 pm
Keepsake Gallery. 1127 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn
Who Gets to Be a Horse Girl?” is an interactive ceramic installation that delves into the question, “Who gets to pursue horse riding and ownership as a hobby?” Inspired by a family tragedy involving a horse this past year, the work contemplates disturbances that stand in the way of our oneness with nature. A colorful toy plastic horse or a cowboy hat conjures certain fantasies in us as kids, but as we grow, few have opportunities to ride a horse, and still fewer become a horse girl. Is the desire to be a horse girl inherently fraught with consumerist colonial fantasy? The divine child within us finds nature without conquest, able to fulfill their dreams through love. Community care allows us to imagine, decolonize hobby spaces, and work together through our personal and collective grief.
The interactive floor-to-ceiling ceramic installation features equestrian marionettes, a tear-stained sun, and a large-scale work reimagining mother nature/Gaia/Pacha Mama as a verdant hill replete with the natural elements of earth, sky, river, and sun. Her body becomes the container for feminine trauma, a site for horse girls in precarious positions. Around the base of the sculpture, shown low to the ground, are bowls of teardrop-shaped paper for people to create drawings and text to express hope and release sadness. The teardrops become part of the installation. As the eye moves upward, we see whimsical horse girl marionettes, a fantastical clay horse, lightning bolts, the sun, fluffy cotton clouds, and tiny teardrops all tethered from the firmaments with colorful silky cords.
Rebecca Goyette opens the narrative of this immersive world to Artshack’s students, (ages five to seventeen), and adult artists with developmental disabilities from LAND Studio/Gallery. This colorful patchwork grid resulted from prompts including family, personified animals, characters, and nature-based imagery to tell stories.
Rebecca Goyette studied undergraduate at RISD and received her MFA from SVA in New York. She has shown widely at venues in NYC and elsewhere, including solos at Airplane Gallery, NYC, (Lobsta Porn Theater), Jersey City Museum, Jersey City, NJ, (4-Eva.), the NY Studio Gallery, NYC, (Delicious.) and Galerie X, Istanbul, Turkey (Union/Bulusma.). She has completed residencies at the DNA Summer Residency, Provincetown, MA, the Offshore Project sponsored by Omada Filopappou, in Karamyli, Greece, and Byrdcliffe in Woodstock, NY. Goyette lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.”
ALVA CALYMAYOR b. Mexico City Alva is a visual artist living in New York. Alva makes use of a visual vocabulary that addresses social issues, perceptions of safety as well as patterns of mass consumption. She keeps track of its manifestations and the trace they leave as they are discarded, repurposed or become no longer functional. Her work has been exhibited in: Astral America (curated my Keren Moscovitch, SVA, NY), Chaos/Control (curated by Melinda Wang, Doing Living, NY), Harvest the Night (curated by Leah Dixon, Beverley's, NY), Collective Show Mexico (Casa Maauad, México, D.F.), Spring Break Art Show (NY), at MWOW (curated by Grayson Cox, Knockdown Center, NY). Alva was one of five artists selected for ("Air," Ace Hotel Residency, NY), curated by the BHQFU. She was a Mentor in NYFA's Program Mentorship for Immigrants Program (2014), formed part of the 27th Bronx Artist's in the Marketplace during 2006-2007, and received a Grant from the Stephen Sprouse Scholarship Fund for pushing the boundaries within the printmaking field. Alva has been recognized in several publications for exploring and showcasing art in a non-commercial format, for her collaborations with fellow artists through Eyelevel BQE, project that she co-funded in 2008: Interview Magazine (2013), "Alternative Histories," New York art spaces from 1960-2010, MIT Press (2012), Artists in the Marketplace second Biennial; "The Other Marketplace," Lia Zaalof (2013).
Rebecca Goyette is a NYC-based visual artist, curator and arts educator. Goyette’s feminist, interdisciplinary work combines ceramic sculpture, drawing, costumery, and performative film/video to explore the power dynamics inherent in gender and sexuality. Goyette’s work has been included in solo shows at Shelter Gallery (NYC), SPRING/BREAK Art Show (NYC), Huam-Garok Gallery (Seoul, South Korea), Spektrum: Art, Science & Community (Berlin, Germany), Galerie X (Istanbul, Turkey), Jersey City Museum (NJ), Freight & Volume (NYC) and group exhibitions and performances at Brooklyn Museum of Art, Museum of Sex, Lyman Allyn Art Museum (CT), Kyung-In Museum of Art (Seoul, South Korea), KARST (Plymouth, England), Kunstalle Exnergasse (Vienna, Austria), and Whitney Museum of Art (NYC).
As an educator and curator focused on social justice and community-based art at NYC cultural institutions, Ms. Goyette has developed interactive public programming including experimental films, artist-led symposiums, live performances, large-scale installations, and multimedia conceptual art with diverse communities. She has led projects at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, Kaufman Studios/Museum of Moving Image, and the Museum of Sex.
