Faena Hotel Miami Beach
Faena Festival
Talk Series: Welcome to the Supper Club
Wednesday, December 4, 2019
11:30am-12:30pm
Location: Screening Room, Faena Hotel Miami Beach,
3201 Collins Ave., Miami Beach, Florida, 33140
Elia Alba and Sara Reisman discussed their book Elia Alba: The Supper Club with artist Juana Valdes, who is featured in the book. A book signing followed the discussion.
Bios
Elia Alba was born in Brooklyn, New York. She received her Bachelor of Arts from Hunter College in 1994 and completed the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in 2001. She has exhibited throughout the United States and abroad. Those include The Rhode Island School of Design Museum; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; The Science Museum, London; ITAU Cultural Institute, Sao Paolo; National Museum of Art, Reina Sofía, Madrid; and the 10th Havana Biennial. She is a recipient of numerous awards and residencies for example, Studio Museum in Harlem Artist-in Residence Program in 1999; New York Foundation for the Arts Grant, Crafts 2002 and Photography 2008; Pollack-Krasner Foundation Grant, 2002; Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant 2002 and 2008; Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) Workspace Program, 2009, and Recess Analog, 2012. Her work is in the collection of the Smithsonian Museum of Art, El Museo del Barrio, and Lowe Art Museum to name a few. For the past 6 years, she has been working on a project titled The Supper Club. The project brings together artists, scholars and performers of diasporic cultures, through photography, food and dialogue to examine race and culture in the United States. A book on The Supper Club, produced by The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation and published by Hirmer was released in Spring 2019. She is currently Artist-in-Residence at The Andrew Freeman Home in the Bronx.
Juana Valdes is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work traces, recollects, and records her own personal experience of migration. Her artwork is informed by her Afro-Cuban ethnicity and the experience of growing up in America. Throughout her career, Valdes has participated in a range of exhibitions and residencies most currently at the European Keramic Work Center in the Netherlands (2012), the Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning (2009), the Artist Residency at the Center for Book Arts (2007), and the Smack Mellon Studio Program (2004). Past exhibitions include a solo show at SENSEI Gallery as part of the SENSEI Exchange Series Part 008: In the Fold in New York (2013), and travelling exhibitions Multiplicity: Contemporary Ceramic Sculpture (2007-08) and Multiple, Limited, Unique: Selections from the Permanent Collection of the Center for Book Arts (2011-13).