Project For Empty Space announced multidisciplinary artists Nadia Liz Estela and Adama Delphine Fawundu as 2021 Artists in Residence. These artists will work in the Newark-based studios for one year, and present solo exhibitions of work in 2021 – 2022. As part of their time at Project for Empty Space, they will not only create a body of work-oriented around social discourse(s), but also cultivate programs that invite the general public to engage with those same topics.
Adama Delphine Fawundu is a photo-based visual artist who was born in Brooklyn, NY to parents from Sierra Leone and Equatorial Guinea, West Africa. She received her MFA from Columbia University. Fawundu uses photography, video, sculpture, and printmaking to create new transnational identities as she explores Afrofuturist ideas. Within this framework, she explores decolonization, memory, and intersecting histories. Her most recent works investigate indigenous ontologies while imagining new ways of being in the world. Ms. Fawundu is a co-author/editor of the critically acclaimed book MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora which features over 100 women photographers of African descent from around the globe.
Nadia Liz Estela is an interdisciplinary artist born in the Dominican Republic and raised in Newark, NJ. She received her MFA from Montclair State University in 2018. Prior to that, she attended Rutgers University-Newark and Parsons at The New School for her undergraduate studies.
Estela’s work examines how identity is constructed through migration and memory. Her mixed-media pieces, which often incorporate textile and sculptural elements, references the different layers of migration, including uncovering that which is often invisible. She keenly explores the aspects of life and society- its norms, morals, and indoctrinated labels that we know exist but do not acknowledge. It asks about the journeys that we have made both collectively and individually; how we navigate our social and cultural capital; how have we arrived here; what are the implications of our biases; how do we profit from those imbalances; and how do all these strata make a whole or keep it separate. Her work is the tableau where these contradictions visually exist on the same plane.
The PES Artist in Residence Program is an annual initiative that invites four visual artists to Newark, NJ, to create work around social impact. The mission of the program is multifaceted and is intended to benefit both artists-in-residence and a larger audience. The program strives to create a symbiotic relationship between the artist and audience as a conduit for new artistic practice and intervention. At its core, the PES AIR program was created to support artists who are interested in social engagement. It achieves this by providing studio space for one year; cultivating professional development opportunities such as studio visits and critical feedback meetings; facilitating community programs with the artists’ work; and finally, presenting a solo exhibition of the artists’ work towards the end of their cycle.
The program strives to not only support individual artists; but also, to cultivate conversation around social equity and engagement that are often swept by the wayside. We see the AIR program as a bridge between artist and community, as well as community and community, to push important dialogues forward.
