NYC-based Yeimi Salazar will present her installation Everybody, composed of life size plush figures that take the form of humans but do not display any of their common attributes such as faces, hair, or clothing. The figures display a range of skin tones but are otherwise uniform. This interactive work encourages visitors to share an embrace with the figures, while the artist photographs these seemingly intimate moments. Artist reception and performance Saturday, March 30, 5-8 p.m. The artist will be in attendance to present an interactive performance about finding comfort and healing.
This exhibition is curated by Tracey Jen and Eva Sailley of the MICA Curatorial Practice MFA Program. From the curators:
Tragedies happen every day from the big scale impacting different countries around the world down to a small scale in everybody’s homes. The feeling of suffering is one that can be empathized by everybody across cultures. Coping with this pain is a process. Finding hope is healing.
About the artist:
Yeimi Salazar is a Brooklyn based multidisciplinary artist whose creative practice incorporates elements of installation, sculpture, and stop motion animation. Born in Medellín, Colombia, she earned her bachelors degree in her native country in 2003, from Universidad Nacional de Colombia and later she moved to New York where she graduated from an M.F.A in Arts from Brooklyn College in 2014.
Her work is increasingly characterized by a disarmingly inviting and humorous aesthetic which masks the intensely emotional nature of her subject matter. This interest grows out of a larger commitment within her work to expose the vulnerability and ambiguity of human existence; themes that she has previously applied to home, family and political violence.
Her installations contains silent pages of the memoirs, specific days and times of a diary that doesn’t exists; They incorporate deposits waiting to be retrieved inside a space impossible to narrate, to date, to explain. She is particularly drawn to the tactile qualities of materials and explores the construction of spaces which encourage the spectator to endure some form of isolation within a comfortable, yet defamiliarized environment.
