"To Reflect Us, To Relate To Us": Artists Roundtable on the Legacy of Black Dimensions in Art

Patricia Encarnación (she/they) is an Afro-Caribbean interdisciplinary artivist and scholar based in New York City. Their work challenges colonial tropes within African diasporic culture, with a particular focus on the Caribbean, approached through an anti-colonial lens. Encarnación has participated in numerous residencies, including The Shed, Smack Mellon (as a Van Lier Fellow), MuseumsQuartier Vienna, Kovent Catalonia, and the Silver Arts Project at the World Trade Center. Their work has been recognized by the CIFO Foundation, the NALAC Fund for the Arts, and the Centro León Jiménez Biennial, where they received the City of Cádiz (Spain) cultural immersion prize, as well as a second fellowship in Martinique through the Tropiques Atrium Caribbean art program. Their exhibitions include Documenta 15, the Tribeca Artist Award Program, the Hudson River Museum, the Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA), the NADA Art Fair, and La Bienal de La Habana. Alongside their artistic practice, Encarnación leads curatorial projects at New York University (NYU), the Centro de la Imagen (CDMX), the Bronx Museum, ChaShaMa, WOPHA Miami, and various alternative spaces in NYC, Miami, and the Dominican Republic. Encarnación holds a BFA in Communication Design from Parsons School of Design (The New School), where they received a full-tuition scholarship, and is a recipient of the MacCracken Fellowship for graduate studies in Caribbean and Latin American Museum Studies at NYU.

Although Clifford Oliver was born and raised in New York City, he has lived his entire adult life in rural upstate New York where he has raised a small family, a few dogs and chases horses. Always appreciative of and fascinated by the visual arts, Clifford Oliver didn’t start out to be a photographer. Writer, veterinarian, and anthropologist topped his lists of what he was going to be for a long time. Photography allows study in all those occupations and then some. Clifford began his career in photography while serving in the U. S. Navy. While maintaining staff photographer positions with Upstate Medical Centre and later NYS Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, Clifford freelanced for local artists, stables, farms, magazines and even weddings. He has been a volunteer at his local library for the last twenty years. A testimony to his constant search for knowledge. Photography is Clifford’s tool to explore, to expose, to celebrate the world we live in. He believes in the power of the still image; the ability of a photograph to freeze time. Unlike other visual arts a photograph is a testimony to truth.

ransome received his MFA from Lesley University. In his practice he combines acrylic paint with an array of found, created, and purchased papers. His work embraces the spontaneity in jazz and the resourcefulness of rural Gee’s Bend quilters, utilizing materials at hand to collage and paint to blend a unique yet personal creation.  He has exhibited in a solo exhibit at The Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, SC, CAM Raleigh NC at Alpha Galley, Opalka Gallery, and group shows at Katonah Museum of Art, The Sigal Museum, The SECCA Museum, MASS MoCA, the Visual Art Center of New Jersey, Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, and Weatherspoon Museum of Art.

Jean-Marc Superville Sovak is a multidisciplinary artist whose work critically fabulates around silent histories absent from dominant historical narratives. His current projects include There Are NO Black Shakers; A Contemporary Folk Opera, and a-Historical Landscapes, 19th-century landscape engravings altered to include images from contemporaneous Anti-Slavery publications. His participatory performance works include retracing the Underground Railroad at Hudson Valley historic sites, and organizing a “Burial for White Supremacy.” His public art includes a memorial to some of the first Africans to arrive in Rhode Island. A Bard College graduate (M.F.A. Film/Video) Jean-Marc has exhibited at Columbia University’s Wallach Art Gallery, Shirley Fiterman Art Center, RecessArt, Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Arts Westchester, Socrates Sculpture Park , and Manifesta 8 European Biennial. Jean-Marc has been a Visiting Artist/Lecturer at Bard College, SUNY New Paltz, Columbia University and Vassar College, and in 2020 was guest curator at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art.

Rachel Cantave is an Assistant Professor of International Affairs at Skidmore College. She holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from American University, M.A. in Public Anthropology, and B.A. in Individualized Study from NYU. She was a Swarthmore College Latin American and Latino Studies postdoctoral fellow. Professor Cantave teaches courses on cultural theory, research methods, race, religion, and identity politics in Latin America and the Caribbean. She is published in the Journal of Religious Studies, History and Society, and has several forthcoming articles and edited book chapters. She is also co-founder of TheEbonyTower.com and co-producer of the documentary film Chèche Lavi (Looking for Life).