Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning (JCAL) presents the Where-in: 2019 ARTWorks, Inc Two Fellow Artist Show featuring the works ofIfeatuanya (Ify) Chiejina and Julian Louis Phillips. These two fellow artists were participants in FY19 ARTWorks, Inc., a professional development artist residency & seminar series. The exhibition runs from October 10 – November 9, with an Artist Reception on October 24thfrom 6-9 pm.  This show culminates the artists’ creative endeavors and celebrates the work that they have created during their artist-in-residence at JCAL.

Ifeatuanya (Ify) Chiejinais a process-based visual artist born and raised in Queens, NY. Chiejina is a black Igbo female with ideas, thoughts, and truths that are rooted and reflective of different customs and traditions. As a Nigerian-American, she considers the tensions and complexities that come with being brought up in an African household in a western society. Chiejina completed her B.A in philosophy from Queens College. She is also one of the founding members of the Southeast Queens Artist Alliance (SEQAA). 

Chiejina creates a series of figurative paintings to show painting as a laborious endeavor of building communal relationships with others in trust and love. She practices the art of painting as a way of self-education, improving her ability to love others despite unfairness, injustice, and agonies we often find in our daily life. Her painting aims to dismantle the negative belief that one should not trust anyone. While growing up in our affluent but competition-driven neoliberal society, she has become accustomed to the suspiciousness of others. The canvas is a battlefield of her inner struggles with herself and a process of unlearning what she has learned. The intention is to be reborn as a new person while cultivating a strong sense of autonomy and pride. Being close to the nature of humans as socially collective is approached through painting, an act of communicating and “establishing new connections with people in order to access meaningful relationships.”[1] 

Julian Louis Phillips is a New York-based performance artist and sculptor. He received his MFA from Social Practice Queens at Queens College and has exhibited his work throughout the North East. In his work, he critically explores the relationship between the social and structures of injustice. He has been a fellow artist at More Art and a resident artist at NARS Foundation. Currently, he is making new performance and video work that explores our relationship with popular mobile-based media.

Phillips creates performance and structure arts to expose the contradictory tension between our collective vision of building an equal society and our continuing normative attitudes that are systematically discriminatory. The purpose is to bring people together to engage in public discourses exploring these dilemmas found in personal or collective endeavors to promote justice and equity. Capturing the present as a tangled explosive unrest where the future and the past clash, instead of a smooth linear passage from the past to the future, Phillips argues that the dilemma lies in how we perceive and speak about the problems. In his art, he proposes new ways of rearticulating and restructuring the problems while trying to embody different perspectives.

JCAL’s ARTWorks, Inc.is a professional development program that provides emerging and under-recognized artists in the New York City Metropolitan area (favorable to Queens’ artists) with helpful information to advance their careers. The artists are also offered access to all studio facilities including the computer design lab during the one-year period of the program, commencing in September and concluding in August of the following year. The artists are selected through an open call process that takes place annually in late spring and early summer. The major funding of ARTWorks, Inc.is generously provided by the Jerome Foundation.

For more information on the WHERE-IN ARTWorks Two Fellow Artist Show visit, www.jcal.org.

[1]From an artist statement issued on September 13, 2019.

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About  Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning (JCAL)

Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning (JCAL), founded in 1972, is a multidisciplinary urban arts organization based in the diverse community of Southeast Queens. Since its founding, JCAL has supported the creation and presentation of local, emerging and established artists. JCAL devotes its mission to offering quality visual, performing and literary arts, arts education, and diverse artistic programs to encourage participation in the arts. JCAL operates two city-owned landmark buildings owned by the City of New York, the Jamaica Arts Center (161-04 Jamaica Avenue) and Jamaica Performing Arts Center (153-10 Jamaica Avenue), is partially supported by public funds.

JCAL receives ongoing general operating and program support from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs with support from Mayor Bill de Blasio, Queens Borough

President Melinda Katz, the Queens Delegation of the New York City Council, New York City Council member I. Daneek Miller, Councilmember Barry Grodenchik, Councilman Rory Lancman, Councilman Donovan Richards, and Councilwoman Adrienne Adams. JCAL also receives funding from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature,  and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA); foundations and corporates support from the New York Community Trust, Booth Ferris Foundation, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, Colgate Palmolive Foundation, Harkness Foundation for Dance, ConEdison, Resort World Casino New York City, and Greater Jamaica Development Corporation, and individual contributors.