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Houston, Texas. The Project Row Houses fifty-fourth Artist Round: Southern Survey Biennial prize winner will be announced at guest curator Valerie Cassel Oliver’s curator talk, on Saturday, November 12, 2022. The event starts at 2pm, and one artist will be selected for The Dr. Dina Alsowayel and Tony Chase PRH Southern Survey Biennial Prize, in the amount of $25,000.
This inaugural round is the first time PRH has had a prize awarded to a round artist. Round 54 will remain on view Wednesdays through Sundays from noon to 5pm through Sunday, February 12, 2023.
Guest curator Valerie Cassel Oliver has been in the vanguard of bringing Black art into the museum and academy, giving it the same treatment long afforded to art rooted in the European tradition.
Oliver shares that she is “honored to serve as the inaugural juror for what I hope will become a vital platform for artists working within the southern region that is now being acknowledged for its historical and contemporary significance.
Oliver explained the intentionality of inviting artists in the region to submit for consideration, saying that the eight selected “mirror the diversity and robust energy of a new South. Their work has something to teach us about survival and the stubborn persistence of being, isolation and loss, and the intention of being deliberate,” Valerie states.
Inaugural prize sponsors Dr. Dina Alsowayel and Tony Chase were eager to be involved. “Project Row Houses is one of Houston’s treasures. It is also a cultural landmark in Third Ward,” they explained, saying they are “delighted to be a part of such an awesome endeavor.
Participating artists: Carlie Trosclair, Kandy G Lopez, Naomi Lemus, Rashayla Marie Brown (RMB), Rehab El Sadek, Sedrick E. Huckaby, Victoria Ravelo, and Julien Hyvrard.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Carlie Trosclair’s sculptural installations explore the liminal space between development and deconstruction; contemplating the living and transitional components of home. Growing up in New Orleans as the daughter of an electrician, Trosclair spent her formative years in historic residential properties at varying stages of construction and deconstruction. She found that even when abandoned, the presence of the body still lingered. Reflectively her work reimagines the genealogy of home by highlighting structural and decorative shifts evolving over a building’s lifespan. Using latex as an architectural skin, she creates ghostlike imprints that mark an in-between space that is transient and ever changing: both structurally and in our memory.
Kandy G Lopez was born in New Jersey and moved with her family to Miami. She received her BFA and BS from the University of South Florida concentrating in Painting and in Marketing and Management. She received her MFA with a concentration in Painting from Florida Atlantic University in 2014. She has taught at Florida Atlantic University, Daytona State College, and is now the Program Director for the Art + Design program as well as an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication, Media and the Arts in the Halmos College of Arts and Sciences at NOVA Southeastern University. As a multimedia artist, Lopez explores constructed identities, celebrating the strength, power, confidence and swag of individuals who live in urban and often economically disadvantaged environments. As a female Afro-Caribbean figurative artist she is eager to be challenged materialistically and metaphorically when representing marginalized individuals that inspire her. Her work was created out of the necessity to learn something new about her culture. Lopez is interested in developing a nostalgic dialogue between the artwork and the viewer.
Born in Houston, Texas to Mexican immigrants, Naomi Lemus focuses on the history of her family, the reality and struggles faced by immigrants. She utilizes materials like fibers, archival documents and found material to explore and emphasize the pain, suffering, as well as achievements she has witnessed as a first generation American. Naomi attended San Jacinto College North from 2013-2016 and received her BFA in Painting at University of Houston in 2018. She also received an MFA from the Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Philadelphia, PA in 2021 and currently teaches at San Jacinto College.
Rashayla Marie Brown (RMB) is an “undisciplinary” artist-scholar exploring how aesthetics can enact radical thought beyond mere representation. These works blend installation design, photography, performance, writing, video and filmmaking with the implementation and critique of power structures. International presentations include Embassy of Foreign Artists, Geneva; Recess, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco; Rhodes College, Memphis; Tate Modern, London; and Turbine Hall, Johannesburg.
Rehab El Sadek (1972) is a conceptual Egyptian artist whose been exhibiting internationally for thirty years. She utilizes architectural structures, light, shadow, and memory to investigate the layered reality of the immigrant experience. And creates alternative spaces that invite viewers to question existing power dynamics and contemplate the role of individuals—especially the marginalized.
Sedrick E. Huckaby offers this statement: “I was born in Fort Worth in 1975 and I continue to live and work in the same area today. It has been an inspiration to come home to serve my community after being given the opportunity to study art at Boston University, Yale University and at museums all over the world. After learning about the global art world, I also learned another simple lesson. The art that I am most often occupied with is about the themes, people and places of my hometown. I found that I could address the issues of global importance through dealing with the same issues within my local community. So, I decided to move back home. Since returning I have married Letitia, who is also an artist, specializing in photo-based art. Our creativity is not limited to art, and we also have three creative children: Rising Sun-16, Halle Lujah-14, and Rhema Rain-6.”
Born in Miami, Florida to Cuban exiles, Victoria Ravelo‘s practice begins at the intersection of personal, ancestral, and collective memory. Her drawings, photographs, sculptures and installations utilize abstraction and metaphor to tease apart the multi-layered histories that form a time and place. Contending with the tension between what is lost and what can only be remembered, Ravelo’s work simultaneously explores, connects, and cultivates cultural roots that modern society actively works to erase. Ravelo earned an MFA from Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University in 2021, and a BFA from the University of Miami in 2015.
Julien Hyvrard is a medium fluid documentarian and conceptual artist. Based in the Southern US since 2015, he is currently photographer and video maker for Oui Collective, the creative workshop he co-cofounded in Miami. Born and raised in France, he studied philosophy at Sorbonne University. He spent 9 transformative years in Buenos Aires, where he began experimenting with documentary form and conceptual series. At the confluence of three cultural and linguistic streams, from France to Argentina to the US, collaborative at heart, Julien’s practice is generally process-oriented, open ended, reiterative and often aporetic. It involves time-based documentation, site-specific installation and performance.
