Wave Hill Announces 2015 Van Lier Visual Artist Fellowships
Wave Hill is pleased to announce that the recipients of its Van Lier Visual Artist fellowships for 2015 are Julian Chams and Beatrice Glow. This esteemed fellowship provides a remarkable experience for two young artists from culturally diverse backgrounds to develop the skills and professional credentials needed to establish a successful career. Chams and Glow will participate in Wave Hill’s Winter Workspace program from February 23 to April 12, 2015, and will present solo exhibitions in Wave Hill’s Sunroom Project Space from September 15 to October 25, 2015. The two artists will also receive mentoring from Wave Hill curators and from celebrated artist Jackie Battenfield, who writes and teaches on professional development strategies within the art world.
Julian Chams
Working in the space between the personal and the systematic, Julian Chams seeks to assuage the anxiety of information overload by creating assemblages of memories, experiences and feelings. The artist captures the sensory data of daily life through a constant photographic habit; these mundane images become newly tactile as they are recombined into seductive sculptural forms. As a Van Lier Fellow, Chams will draw Wave Hill’s environs into his immersive practice, documenting the dynamic landscape with his camera. For his Sunroom Project, he plans to layer the walls with photographs taken in and around Wave Hill’s grounds, New York City and his native Colombia. The installation will also include sculptural objects made of printed fabric and covered with photographic images. A path marked out with commonplace materials will guide the viewer’s route through the space among soft bodies and sharp images, allowing for juxtaposition between the imaged world and corporeal experience. Born in Barranquilla, Colombia, Chams is currently based in Brooklyn. He earned a BFA in painting from the Kansas City Art Institute and has had solo exhibitions at Splatterpool, Brooklyn, NY; ARS Antiqua Galería, Barranquilla, Colombia; and Parallel Gallery, Kansas City, MO.
Beatrice Glow
Beatrice Glow tells invisible and suppressed stories that lie in the long geopolitical shadows of colonialism and migration. Her practice comprises sculptural installations, trilingual publishing, oral interviews and participatory performances. To counter divisive discussions on political and cultural borders, Glow meditates on how all ethnospheres are, like islands, connected underwater. Her research has focused on the pioneering people of Austronesia, a region that encompasses the islands that run from Madagascar to Easter Island. During her residency at Wave Hill, Glow will examine the social history of spices to explore how scent and the imaginary, like the ghost of Gauguin, continue to haunt the tropics by framing the region through a settler-colonist lens. She will concoct and curate scents in order to assemble an aromatic archive that brings to light the unsavory social costs of spices and herbs during the Age of Exploration (15th to 18th centuries). She will also examine the visual language that emerged during this period, looking specifically at the way plant classification mirrors the ethnographic categorization put into effect by foreigners. Glow was born and raised in California and spent parts of her childhood in Taiwan; she now lives in Queens. She earned a BFA in studio art from New York University, and is currently a Visiting Scholar in the University’s Asian/Pacific/American Institute. She recently organized the Floating Library, a pop-up public space with free programming aboard the Lilac Museum Steamship. Glow also launched the Asian Americas workgroup for the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, and, in 2008–9, was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to pursue a research-creation project in Peru on Asian Latin America.
Soon to begin its fourth year, the Van Lier Visual Artist Fellowship at Wave Hill grants mentorship, workspace and exhibition opportunities to promising young artists of culturally diverse backgrounds. Past fellows include Tammy Nguyen and Alexandra Phillips (2014), Onyedika Chuke and Francisco Donoso (2013), and Nova Jiang and Cameron Rowland (2012). Fellows are selected through an open call to artists. The curatorial team, including previous fellows, narrows the pool and conducts interviews to identify the two participants.
Wave Hill’s Visual Arts Program presents artwork in the galleries and on the grounds that engages the public in dialogue with nature, culture and site. Wave Hill’s curatorial team includes Jennifer McGregor, Director of Arts & Senior Curator; Gabriel de Guzman, Curator of Visual Arts; and David Xu Borgonjon, Curatorial Fellow.
Wave Hill’s Van Lier Visual Arts Fellows are supported by a grant from The New York Community Trust’s Edward and Sally Van Lier Fund. Support for the Winter Workspace Program is provided by the New York Community Trust and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. Additional support for the Visual Arts Program is provided by the Milton & Sally Avery Arts Foundation and the Cathy and Stephen Weinroth Commissioning Fund for the Arts.
Wave Hill, Inc. is an independent, non-profit cultural institution governed by a volunteer Board of Directors. The buildings and grounds of Wave Hill are owned by the City of New York. With the assistance of the Bronx Borough President and Bronx representatives in the City Council and State Legislature, Wave Hill’s operations are supported with public funds through the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; the Zoos, Botanical Gardens and Aquariums Grant Program administered by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation; the National Endowment for the Arts; the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation; and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
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