SYNERGIES Community: Equity: Elan Cadiz and Cartography: Scarification: Alexandre Kyungu Mwilambwe
January 8 until February 3 2022
SYNERGIES is a conversation between the work of two artists: North American and New York based Elan Cadiz and Congolese And Kinshasa based Alexandre Kyungu Mwilambwe about mapping their journey’s through art ideas and life. Each is a series of pivotal stories capturing community through geography, places, people and moments. Both are using ethnographic processes, material and mediums as well as techniques to talk about equity, migration and the cities they inhabit and work in.
Elan Cadiz
Elan Cadiz is an interdisciplinary North American Visual Artist that deconstructs and balances her intersectionality through her projects. Her art and practice are grounded in the documentation of her personal narrative through the use of historical imagery and the domestic. Cadiz sees herself as a cultural interpreter and visual documentarian. She immerses herself in environments, documenting the familiar and the unfamiliar all the while expressing these inquiries with artworks she create. The artworks created and the materials used are all determined by her experience and interactions with the places and people she comes in contact with, in the present and the past. Elan Cadiz graduated from City College of New York with a BA in Studio Art and received a MFA Fine Arts degree from the School of Visual Arts where she was awarded the SVA Merit Scholarship, Paul Rhodes Memorial Award and the Martha Trevor Award. Cadiz has been commissioned by the Studio Museum in Harlem, El Museo de Barrio, Art in Flux Harlem, Mount Vernon Hotel Museum and more. She was one of the first Sustainable Arts Foundation AIRspace Parent Artist Resident at Abrons Art Center and her An American Family Album series was featured in VOGUE. Her artworks can also be found in New American Paintings magazine, issue #146 and #153.
Alexandre Kyungu Mwilambwe
Alexandre Kyungu Mwilambwe (born in 1992, Kinshasa DR Congo) lives and works in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo. He studied art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kinshasa. He is co-founder of the group Vision Total (vi.to) and works in collaboration with Kin Art Studio (KAS). Alexandre Kyungu has participated in several group exhibitions and artist residencies in his country and abroad, to name a few: in 2020, he recently presented his work in a group exhibition “Art Off-Screen” organized by Eileen Jeng Lynch, curator of visual arts at Wavehill in New York. In 2020, he participated in a group exhibition “Africa Art Auction” organized by Atim Annette Oton (Calabar Gallery) in New York. In March 2020, his work was included in a group exhibition “Doors, Eyes and Marks tribal” at the AKKA Project Gallery in Dubai. In 2020, he participated in a group exhibition “trajectory” organized by Charlotte Kotik and William Corwin (Five Myles Gallery) in Brooklyn and the same year he presented his work at the Congo International Biennale “transition” in Kinshasa, organized by KinArtStudio. In 2019, his work was included in the AKAA Paris art fair at the Angalia Gallery. Alexandre Kyungu has participated in numerous residencies: in 2019 at Art OMI in New York and at the Bag Factory studio in Johannesburg organized by Pro Helvetia. In 2018 Artist in Residence in Basel Atelier Mondial (Switzerland) organized by Pro Helvetia and at the Bloc des Artistes in Cosenza, Italy. He has participated in the 2020 and 2021 Prizm Art Fair and 2021 CaFA Art Fair. He has also participated in the OMG Art Faire in Kingston and the 14C Art Fair in Jersey City in 2021. Alexandre is shortlisted for the 2022 3rd Annual Henrike Grohs Art Award at https://www.goethe.de/prj/hga/en/a21/sl2.html
