ARTISTS BIOGRAPHY
David Antonio Cruz
INTERDISCIPLINARY ARTIST
David Antonio Cruz (b. Philadelphia, PA, 1974) received his BFA from Pratt University in 1998 and
his MFA in Painting from Yale University in 2009.
His work has been featured in group exhibitions at the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution (Washington, D.C.), The Bronx Museum and El Museo del Barrio in New York. Cruz’s work was most recently featured in the exhibition Figure and Form: Recent Acquisitions to the Permanent Collection at El Museo del Barrio.
Cruz lives and works in New York.
Rashaad Newsome
INTERDISCIPLINARY ARTIST
Rashaad Newsome (b. New Orleans, LA, 1979) received his BFA from Tulane University in 2001.
Solo exhibitions of Newsome’s work have been held at the Studio Museum of Harlem (New York), the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans, the Savannah College of Art & Design (SCAD), the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art (Hartford, CT), and The Drawing Center (New York).
He participated in the 2010 edition of the Whitney Biennial and the 2011 edition of the Venice Biennale in association with Garage Projects. Newsome has participated in group exhibitions at the Brooklyn Museum (New York), the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), The Moving Museum (Dubai, UAE), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA), the Garage Center for Contemporary Art (Moscow)
and MoMA P.S.1 (New York).
His work is held in the permanent collections of SFMoMA, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Brooklyn Museum. He was the recipient of the 2012 Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, the 2010 Urban Artist Initiative Individual Artist Grant (UAI, New York), the 2009 Rema Hort Mann Foundation Visual Arts Grant (New York), and the BAC Community Arts Regrant (New York) that same year.
Newsome lives and works in New York.
Kharis Kennedy
INTERDISCIPLINARY ARTIST
Kharis Kennedy (b. Harbor City, CA, 1976) received her BFA in Painting and Drawing as well as a BA in Art History from the University of Washington (Seattle).
Solo exhibitions of Kennedy’s work have appeared in New York and Seattle. In 2008, Kennedy was the recipient of the A.I.R. Gallery Fellowship, a non-profit space for women artists based in Brooklyn. Recent group exhibitions in New York have been staged at Trestle Gallery (Brooklyn,NY) and Life on Mars Gallery (Brooklyn, NY).
Kennedy lives and works in St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
La Vaughn Belle
INTERDISCIPLINARY ARTIST
La Vaughn Belle (b. Trinidad, 1974) and her family relocated to the U.S. Virgin Islands the year of her birth. She received her BA and MA from Columbia University and her MFA from the Instituto Superior de Arte, Havana.
Her work has evolved from figurative and symbolic explorations in painting to various mediums including video, performance, installation and public intervention projects. Her work responds to questions surrounding the complex colonial histories surrounding the Virgin Islands, both in its past relationship to Denmark and its current one with the U.S. Her work has been exhibited at venues in the Caribbean, Europe and the U.S., and has participated in the Havana Biennial and the exhibition Caribbean: Crossroads of the World
at the El Museo del Barrio, New York.
Belle lives and works in St. Croix, USVI..
Oceana James
INTERDISCIPLINARY ARTIST
Oceana James (b. St. Croix, USVI) is an interdisciplinary artist. Her work retells and re-imagines her Caribbean roots and American experiences. It comments on the socio-political, cultural & economic realities of people of African descent.
Her research is centered on epigenetics, the biology and mythology of trees, the intersection of science and religion; and the use of the body to embody and then exorcise traumas of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Oceana has a MFA in theatre from Sarah Lawrence College (Bronxville, NY) and a Bachelor of Arts (BA, magna cum laude) in English Literature from the University of the Virgin Islands (St. Croix, USVI).
She recently completed a writing intensive at the Obie Award winning JACK (Brooklyn, NY). Her recent solo piece For Gowie: The Deceitful Fellow was performed at Dixon Place (New York).
Additionally, James is performing and serving as a consultant for Sibyl Kempson’s project 12 Shouts to the Ten Forgotten Heavens at The Whitney Museum (New York). James has worked with The Caribbean Community Theatre; Moving Women Ensemble Theatre; Per Ankh Inc.; St. Croix Sankofa for the Cultural Arts to name a few.
She lives and works in Long Island, New York.
Jeannette Ehlers
VISUAL ARTIST
Jeannette Ehlers is a video artist that lives and works in Copenhagen, Denmark. Her work traces the colonial wounds of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and its commerce of black, enslaved bodies by critically and forcefully addressing its systematic repression from Danish memory and history.
Take Five will present screenings of three of Ehlers' films: How to Talk About Three Hundred Years in Four Minutes (2014), Whip it Good (2014), and Speed Up that Day (2009).