Juan Puntes: WhiteBox Art Space Inaugural East Village Exhibition “Off the Cloth”

Beez And Honey

EXODUS VIII: Off the Cloth Curated by: Karen Cordero Reiman and Juan Puntes March 25 – May 4, March 25 Installation premiere starts April 1. Opening Reception. Panel Discussion and Performances 5 to 8 pm Off the Cloth, curated by Juan Puntes and Karen Cordero Reiman, inaugurates the new downtown location of Whitebox. The exhibit forms a part of Whitebox’s ongoing “Exodus” series highlighting the work of émigré artists living and working in New York City. The show will present an intergenerational dialogue between thirteen women artists whose work refers to their transcultural heritage through the use of or reference to textiles as material and metaphor, and will have a six-week run from the end of March through mid-May 2022. The goal of the exhibit is to establish a sense of communion between the artists’ practice and the audience’s sense of identity, as a consequence of shared cultural, gender-bound or social experiences. Off the Cloth will also include panel discussions with the artists, performances and other activities that will contribute to an active interchange with the community. These artists use aesthetics as the ultimate weapon of political resistance in the face of a fragile and tumultuous world, stitching together our differences. In their work, textiles, combined with other disciplines and media, become a vehicle or reference point for exuberant narratives. The selection highlights the diversity of the participants’ cultural and ethnic backgrounds, and engages in and broadens the timeless dialogue between craft and art. Women’s artistic deployment of skills such as sewing, knitting, and weaving, that are traditionally relegated to the status of domestic craft and separated from “high art”, are celebrated and embraced here without condition. The exhibit will also generate spaces and a variety of instances for multi-directional conversations between the participants and with the curators and other interlocutors, in order to enrich and expand the dialogue generated by the show. Participating Artists: Shiva Lynn Burgos | Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow | Blanka Amezkua | Christine David | Isolde Kille | Sandra Eula Lee | Simonetta Moro | Qinza Najm | Aurora Pellizzi | Eva Petric | Yohanna Roa | Amanda Valdez | Lilia Ziamou WhiteBox established as the first alternative, internationalist art space in nascent Chelsea September 1998 on west 26th street. 1998-2008 Chelsea 2008-2018 LES 2018-2221 East Harlem 2022 - 2033 Alphabet City