Cohen Gallery BIPOC exhibition kicks off fall semester

Alfred University’s Cohen Gallery will host a reception for the exhibition Open Space from 6 to 8 pm Friday, Sept. 2. The exhibition will run to Oct. 3.

Open Space features the work of four artists, Adrian Aguilera, Tatiana Florival, Claire Hu, and Jacoub Reyes , who came to Alfred University this summer to participate in the first BIPOC Summer Residency. The exhibition is a culmination of the work produced during their stay in Alfred.

The show includes paintings on paper, a large woven wall hanging, sculptural work embedded with found materials and a series of silkscreen prints.

Biographies of the artists:

Tatiana Florival, a New York City-based artist-filmmaker, graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a BFA in 2018. Her work has been shown in a variety of venues including the Kunstraum Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, and the Woods-Gerry Gallery, in Providence, RI. She has also screened her work in theaters such as the Bijou Theater in New Haven, CT.

Claire Hu completed her BFA with a focus in Fiber and Material Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and has received additional training in textiles from the Gerrit Rietveld Academies in the Netherlands. Clare has shown widely in Chicago in venues including No Nation Gallery and Gallery No One. She is a recent Hambridge Center fellow, and a past president of the Textile Arts Center in Brooklyn, NY.

Adrian Aguilera was born in Mexico and immigrated as a young adult to the U.S., settling in Austin, Texas in the late 2000’s. Aguilera received the BFA from the Autonomous University of Nuevo Leon, Mexico, and has exhibited both nationally and internationally at the Philbrook Museum, the Contemporary Austin, and the Instituto Cultural de Mexico, in Paris. Aguilera is an active member of the Austin-based contemporary arts collaborative Black Mountain Project.

Jacoub Reyes is a printmaker and installation artist based in Orlando, FL. Reye’s current practice involves making materials and tools as part of an experimental aspect in process. “I salvage and transform found wood as a reflection of how marginalized and oppressed communities have been cast aside throughout history … I carve large-scale allegorical woodcuts based on the acculturation of the Caribbean and the world at large.”

The Cohen Gallery is open on weekdays, 11 am to 4 pm, and 1-3 pm on weekends.