Event

Please join us for a conversation with artists Joiri Minaya and Adrienne Elise Tarver moderated by Larry Ossei-Mensah, exploring a myriad of topics including the intersection of art with nature and the role of immersive tropical environments both artists utilize in their practice.

This program is part of the Art and Nature series, which was launched on the occasion of Storm King’s 60th Anniversary. It is now a monthly virtual program in which artists and special guests come together to discuss the power of art in nature.

Event Registration

Access:
Automated closed captioning in English is available for all virtual public programs. ASL interpretation is available upon request with ten business days advance notice. Requests made with less notice will be accommodated whenever possible. Contact info@stormkingartcenter.org to make a request.

About the Presenters:

Larry Ossei-Mensah uses contemporary art as a vehicle to redefine how we see ourselves and the world around us. The Ghanaian-American curator and cultural critic has organized exhibitions and programs at commercial and nonprofit spaces around the globe from New York City to Rome featuring artists such as Firelei Baez, Allison Janae Hamilton, Brendan Fernades, Ebony G. Patterson, Modou Dieng, Glenn Kaino, Joiri Minaya and Stanley Whitney to name a few. Moreover, Ossei-Mensah has actively documented cultural happenings featuring the most dynamic visual artists working today such as Derrick Adams, Mickalene Thomas, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Federico Solmi, and Kehinde Wiley.

A native of The Bronx, Ossei-Mensah is also the co-founder of ARTNOIR, a 501(c)(3) and global collective of culturalists who design multimodal experiences aimed to engage this generation’s dynamic and diverse creative class.  ARTNOIR  endeavors to celebrate the artistry and creativity by Black and Brown artists around the world via virtual and in-person experiences.  Ossei-Mensah is a contributor to the first-ever Ghanaian Pavilion for the 2019 Venice Biennial with an essay on the work of visual artist Lynette Yiadom-Boakye.

Ossei-Mensah is the former Susanne Feld Hilberry Senior Curator at MOCAD in Detroit. He co-curated in 2019 with Dexter Wimberly the critically acclaimed exhibition at MOAD in San Francisco Coffee, Rhum, Sugar, Gold: A Postcolonial Paradox in Spring/Summer 2019. Ossei-Mensah currently serves as Curator-at-Large at BAM, where he curated the inaugural exhibition When A Pot Finds Its Purpose featuring the work of Glenn Kaino at the Rudin Family Gallery. He will be co-curating with Omsk Social Club 7th Athens Biennale in Athens, Greece in 2021.

Ossei-Mensah has had recent profiles in such publications as the NY Times, Artsy, and Cultured Magazine, and was recently named to Artnet’s 2020 Innovator List. Follow him on Instagram at @larryosseimensah  and Twitter at @youngglobal.

Joiri Minaya is a Dominican-United Statesian multi-disciplinary artist whose recent works focus on destabilizing historic and contemporary representations of an imagined tropical identity. Minaya attended the Escuela Nacional de Artes Visuales in Santo Domingo (2009), Altos de Chavón School of Design (2011) and Parsons the New School for Design (2013). She has participated in residencies at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Guttenberg Arts, Smack Mellon, the Bronx Museum’s AIM Program and the NYFA Mentoring Program for Immigrant Artists, Red Bull House of Art, the Lower East Side Printshop, ISCP, Vermont Studio Center and Art Omi. She has received awards, fellowships and grants from Jerome Hill, Artadia, the BRIC’s Colene Brown Art Prize, Socrates Sculpture Park, the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Rema Hort Mann Foundation, the Nancy Graves Foundation, amongst other organizations. Minaya’s work is in the collection of the Museo de Arte Moderno and the Centro León Jiménes in the Dominican Republic.

Adrienne Elise Tarver has exhibited nationally and abroad, including shows at the Bronx Museum of the Arts and Children’s Museum of Manhattan, as well as solo exhibitions at Ochi Projects in Los Angeles; Wave Hill in the Bronx, NY; Victori+Mo in New York; BRIC Project Room in Brooklyn; and A-M Gallery in Sydney, Australia. She has been commissioned for an upcoming New York MTA project, selected as a Google Artist-in-Residence, and received the inaugural artist commission prize for Art Aspen in 2019. She has been featured in online and print publications including the New York Times, Brooklyn Magazine, ArtNet, Blouin Art Info, Whitewall Magazine, and Hyperallergic, among others.

She is currently the Associate Chair of Fine Arts at Savannah College of Art and Design’s Atlanta Campus (SCAD Atlanta).  She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and BFA from Boston University.

Photo credits:
Larry Ossei-Mensah by Aaron Ramey
Joiri Minaya by Auri Minaya
Adrienne Elise Tarver by Ian Witlen