Denniston Hill | Joan Mitchell Center

Artist Residency | Joan Mitchell Center

AFRICA’SOUT! has invited nominations for visual artists from the African continent and those in its diaspora for consideration for a 5 week Residency in New York and New Orleans from October - November 2018.

AFRICA’SOUT!’s Artist Residency program supports emerging and mid-career artists from the African diaspora whose work speaks to a social and political engagement with Africa. The artist selected will benefit from the space to create and the exposure to the contemporary art conversations and relationships that AFRICA’SOUT! can offer bringing their unique perspective into conversation with more established artists, curators, and collectors in the New York City art community. These experiences fulfill the AO! mission to support artists to change the narrative around Africa, first and foremost, for themselves.

In partnership with Joan Mitchell Center AFRICA'SOUT! awards: a $5,000 cash grant, and a home for the visiting artist in Brooklyn and home and studio in New Orleans for 5 weeks.

AO! enhances its support of individual artists' projects with our partner Joan Mitchell Center,The Joan Mitchell Center is a program of the Joan Mitchell Foundation, which celebrates the life of abstract artist Joan Mitchell by expanding awareness of her pioneering work and fulfilling her wish to support and provide opportunities for visual artists. Complementing the Foundation's grant programs, the Joan Mitchell Center was developed to host artist residencies, providing working and living space on a two-acre campus in the historic and culturally diverse city of New Orleans. In addition to the Artist-in-Residence Program, which welcomes local, national, and international artists, the Center produces public programming for the broader community of New Orleans, and serves as an incubator, conduit, and resource for partnerships in the arts. Learn more: http://joanmitchellfoundation.org/center.

Daniel Línd-Ramos, Loíza, Puerto Rico
In Residence, 2018

Daniel Línd-Ramos is a painter and assemblage sculptor from Loíza, Puerto Rico. An esteemed artist, Línd-Ramos is most well known for his oil paintings and large-scale charcoal drawings depicting Puerto Rican political and social upheaval. Yet his assemblages of the last 12 years are where Línd-Ramos celebrates the players in Puerto Rican Carnival tradition and the workers in the community, and where he commemorates the historical resistance of Loiza’s people against the British. The pieces are made of organic materials from coconut trees and found objects from Loíza such as textiles, farming tools, cooking utensils and masquerade culture. The role of the black militia of Loiza, along with the Creole and the Spaniards, against the British invasion of Puerto Rico (1797) is a recurrent and powerful theme. The people of Loíza and San Mateo de Cangrejos remain locked in a 200+ year struggle to stay in their traditional regions now resisting gentrification and disaster capitalism.

Línd-Ramos is interested in the shared experiences between New Orleans and Loíza, particularly for black people living in multi-racial communities enduring the most extreme outcomes of climate change and the structural legacies of colonialism and race-based rule. Línd-Ramos explains, “I work with what it means to be black and still living in a colony, and I share that experience, through the construction of visual images that depart from elements and narratives of local and regional context. I am not an artist who denies my experiences to fit in - these experiences inform the work I create and the technique I develop in the process. Each assemblage is based on the labor practices and the materials that shed light on my history, the history of the community of Loíza and the Caribbean in general.”

A painter and assemblage sculptor, Daniel Línd-Ramos obtained a Bachelor of Art degree at Universidad de Puerto Rico in 1975. In 1980, he earned his MFA from New York University. In 1989, he was the first artist to be awarded the Fundación Arana Scholarship, which allowed him to study that year in Paris, France, where he attended Antonio Seguí’s Studio at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. Throughout his career, he received several awards and commendations including, First Prize at the Salon International Val D’or at Hyères in the South of France (1990), the Delegation Prize at the Salón Internacional de Plástica Latina at Meillant, France (2000), an invitation to the World Festival of Black Culture and Arts in Dakar, Senegal (2010), and won the Piña de Oro prize at the Gran Bienal Tropical (2016) at Piñones, Puerto Rico. In 2002, he was selected by Proyecto de Arte Público to develop a series of five mosaic sculptures in the town of Loíza, Puerto Rico in homage to Santiago Apostol Afro festivities. Currently, he is a Senior Professor at Universidad de Puerto Rico, Recinto de Humacao, Puerto Rico. Línd-Ramos has participated both solo and group exhibitions in Dominican Republic, France, French Guyana, Guadalupe, Haiti, Puerto Rico, Senegal and mainland United States.