I Am A Living Archive | TEDx Talk
Through her art, Yelaine Rodriguez illustrates ways to preserve enslaved and indigenous narratives. Her talk centers on ancestral and architectural memory, drawing inspiration from African Diasporic communities and the indigenous people of the Caribbean, both of which inform her artistic practice. She will explore themes concerning spirituality, nature, and how land harbors memory and cultural significance.
Yelaine Rodriguez, La Hija de Shango (Catch These Shango Hands), 2022 THE BRONX MUSEUM
We’re ensconced in the haunting allure of Afro-Caribbean conceptual artist Yelaine Rodriguez's immersive altars, which examine the history of enslaved Africans who risked their lives fighting for freedom. Executed in 2022, La Hija de Shango (An ode to Flo-Jo) and La Hija de Shango (Catch These Shango Hands) Afro-syncretic religions as a pillar of Afro-diasporic resistance and cultural inheritance.
The daughter (hija in Spanish) of Shango (an Orisha [or spirit] in Yorùbá religion) marries the cultural identities of the AfroDominicanYork artistic scholar, educator, independent curator, cultural organizer, and writer, who merges her creative language and academic research in her artistic practice. Her visual art conceptualizes wearable art, sculptures, and site-specific installations drawing connections between her research on Black cultures in the Caribbean and the United States.
The third Alaafin of the Oyo Kingdom prior to his posthumous deification, Shango is a royal ancestor of the Yorùbá people, who inhabit a large part of Western Africa, including Nigeria.Their centuries-old religion incorporates indigenous beliefs, myths and legends, proverbs, and songs. Shango has numerous manifestations, including Airá, Agodo, Afonja, Lubé, and Obomin, and is known for his powerful double axe (Oṣè).
Installation photograph, Beyond the Margins: An Exploration of Latina Art and Identity, Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Jan 20–Mar 4, 2023, photo by Zachary Norman, © UMOCA
Rodriguez’s striking multimedia fabric portraits “Saso” (2021) and “Yaissa” (2022) feature Afro-Dominican artists whose work highlights the debt owed to the African voices in Dominican culture, and who, despite the monumental cultural influence of African diaspora, have been long neglected from historical narratives.
Such narratives are noteworthy in their own respect, but especially given Utah’s overwhelmingly White population (92% according to the 2022 U.S. Census Bureau). Importantly, Utah’s Latino community is included in the state’s second largest ethnic demographic at 12.7% and this demographic is projected to constitute the greatest numerical increase by 2065, according to research from the University of Utah’s Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute.
“Arte, Energia, Relação” curadoria de Bernardo Mosqueira, publicado pela editora art consulting tool
“Arte, Energia, Relação” curadoria de Bernardo Mosqueira, publicado pela editora art consulting tool
“Arte, Energia, Relação” curadoria de Bernardo Mosqueira, publicado pela editora art consulting tool
HA!R POWER | Wereldmuseum
New York Yelaine Rodriguez is one of the artists who contributed to the HA!R POWER exhibition. With her work Afro-Sagrada Familia, the photographer with Dominican roots shows how Afro-Dominican creatives combine their (hair) traditions from different cultures. Yelaine started the Wereldmuseum in May and tells more about her work and the exhibition.
Afro-Sagrada Familia | Yaissa, (2021)
Cultural organiser, educator, and visual artist, Yelaine Rodriguez, reconceptualises artistic genres. By synthesising mediums, she reveals histories and relationships between Black cultures in the Caribbean and the United States. Her work is imbued with spirituality, celebrating it whilst using it to explore colonization in the Caribbean. We are so excited to announce that her trailblazing work is to be shown at the exhibition HA!R POWER in the Wereldmuseum Rotterdam. And we got the honour to catch up with Rodriguez to discuss her work, experiences with natural hair, and everything in between, in light of the exhibition.
Hey Yelaine! How are you doing today, what’ve you been up to?
I’m good thank you, I just came back from Morocco!
Oh nice, let’s begin with your craft and the many disciplines which your art spans.
I’m a multidisciplinary, conceptual artist. I work in multiple mediums. My background is in fashion design. I conceptualise wearable arts and sculptures such as crowns, masks, and different props for my projects, which I document through photography and film. I’m very inspired by Afro spirituality, traditions, and Caribbean indigenous cultures. I also do site-specific installations that I activate with performance, dance, and music.
Sounds beautiful! Your art bridges Black spirituality but also Black culture, particularly between the Caribbean, the U.S. and your own personal heritage. Why is art such an important tool for you in communicating these subjects?
After my undergrad at Parsons School of Design | The New School, having acquired a BFA in Fashion Design, I naturally went into the fashion industry – which is a whole different world on its own – however, I was also interested in fine arts. So, in 2013, right after graduation, I went to the Dominican Republic to study/work at Altos de Chavón school of design. At the time, there was a
Free As They Want To Be: Artists Committed To Memory | FotoFocus: National Underground Railroad Freedom Center Cincinnati, OH
Free As They Want To Be: Artists Committed To Memory | FotoFocus: National Underground Railroad Freedom Center Cincinnati, OH
Free As They Want To Be: Artists Committed To Memory | FotoFocus: National Underground Railroad Freedom Center Cincinnati, OH
Free As They Want To Be: Artists Committed To Memory | FotoFocus: National Underground Railroad Freedom Center Cincinnati, OH
Free As They Want To Be: Artists Committed To Memory | FotoFocus: National Underground Railroad Freedom Center Cincinnati, OH
Free As They Want To Be: Artists Committed To Memory | FotoFocus: National Underground Railroad Freedom Center Cincinnati, OH
Hanging on the wall where the New York– and Amsterdam-based artist Yelaine Rodriguez sits for her Zoom calls is a cream-colored crochet tapestry. “See that?
My great-great-grand-mother, who was born in 1901, made that,” she says. “I’d watch her crochet for hours. It was her way of doing art.” Rodriguez, 30, grew up between the Dominican Republic and the Bronx; an older sister would take her to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “I loved the larger-than-life statues in the Greek and Roman galleries, even though I didn’t see my people in them,” she says. Today, Rodriguez’s sought-after work—wearable art, video installations, performance, and photography—has been featured at the American Museum of Natural History and in the first national large-scale survey of Latinx contemporary art at New York’s El Museo del Barrio.
It centers on Afro-Caribbean and Black American experiences—as seen in her installations, which include performers wearing clothing hand-sewn by Rodriguez (who studied fashion design), inspired by the colors and symbolism of santería and [vodou]. “I gravitate to those religions because I feel they were acts of resistance by enslaved Africans,” Rodriguez says. Her experience of “unbelonging” in the U.S.—where she is seen as an immigrant despite being born here—and the discrimination she witnessed in the Dominican Republic against Haitians also informs her work.
EnFoco Inc | Nueva Luz | Volume 25 | Issue 2
EnFoco Inc | Nueva Luz | Volume 25 | Issue 2
EnFoco Inc | Nueva Luz | Volume 25 | Issue 2
EnFoco Inc | Nueva Luz | Volume 25 | Issue 2
EnFoco Inc | Nueva Luz | Volume 25 | Issue 2
EnFoco Inc | Nueva Luz | Volume 25 | Issue 2
Yelaine Rodriguez at the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute Archives and Library, November 23, 2021
Close up on the materials donated to the library
Artist Yelaine Rodriguez Donates personal archive to the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute Library
Yelaine Rodriguez, the Bronx-based Dominican interdisciplinary artist, curator, and educator best known for her bold wearable art and site-specific installations on Afro-syncretic traditions, has donated a part of her personal archive to the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute Library. The Yelaine Rodriguez archive, which currently consists of ephemera, will grow over time to include additional research papers, lectures, correspondence, sketches, photographs, and videos. In the email interview that follows, Yelaine Rodriguez discusses what informs and influences her work through the
course of her journey up until now.
We would like to express our gratitude once again for Yelaine donating these materials to the library, and we look forward to incorporating her work in the future alongside other artists through the digital project Dominican Artists in the United States to help further disseminate her work with researchers, students, teachers, and the general public. Jhensen Ortiz, Librarian
Yelaine Rodriguez is used to people making assumptions about her identity and what she does.
A first-generation Afro Dominican American born and raised in the Bronx, the now-30-year-old artist remembers the backhanded compliments she would receive as a teen and young adult -- comments like, "Oh, you don't seem like you're from the Bronx," weren't uncommon.
Even after Rodriguez started teaching at her alma mater, Parsons School of Design, some parents of her students seemed surprised by her background: "Your parents must be so proud of you," she can recall being told.
"That was really frustrating to me because it shows that they didn't really care enough to educate themselves about people that were living above 86th street," said Rodriguez, referring to the subway stop where she said most White people at the time got off the train as it approached the Bronx.
"I never hid that I was from the Bronx, that I was Afro Dominican," she continued. "I always loved putting people in their place by telling them, 'Yeah, I am from there, why are you surprised about that?'"
Estamos Bien – La Trienal 20/21, installation view [photo: Martin Seck; courtesy of El Museo del Barrio, New York]
Yelaine honors the orisha from Santería—a syncretic religion within African diasporic communities—by creating her own rendition of the spiritual deity through costuming. Her regal orisha stands at the center of the image, looking off into the distance, as if seeing into the future, with a sense of calm, poise, and beauty. Nearby, Sandy has recorded and diagrammed indigenous spiritual medicine women and the local Mexican plants for posterity, using amate paper, which is handmade using traditional Mexican techniques, and sourced from a family in Mexico that has produced the paper for several generations. Paying homage to the healers, Sandy acknowledges the roles that women play in their communities.
Women in the Face of History | 2021 | Federal Hall
Women in the Face of History, a banner installation on the façade of Federal Hall, is part of a larger year-long project 100 Years | 100 Women organized by the Park Avenue Armory and nine other cultural institutions throughout the city, that brought together 100 commissioned artists and cultural creators to respond to and interrogate the complex legacy of women’s suffrage. The 100 works, six of which are at Federal Hall, confront America’s national narrative, considers who was excluded from its telling and restores women, from all backgrounds and perspectives, to their rightful place in civic spaces and celebrations.
In 1920, the 19th Amendment was a huge step forward for American democracy, that seemed to grant to all women the right to vote. In fact, for many women, that right would come only years later. Each of the artist whose work is displayed at Federal Hall takes the landmark historical moment as a point of departure.
Federal Hall with Women in the Face of History banners | New York, Monday, May 31, 2021 | Photo Credit Stuart Ramson
MAY 28, 2021 | 7 to 9 pm ET | LIVE BROADCAST Online
El Museo del Barrio’s Estamos Bien exhibit, with Morgan Stanley’s support, displays the diverse visions and creative power of the Latinx artistic community.
At a moment when communities across the U.S. are grappling with important questions of diversity, belonging, and identity, Estamos Bien—La Trienal, a groundbreaking exhibition at El Museo del Barrio, addresses these and other issues head-on.
El Museo del Barrio’s ESTAMOS BIEN – LA TRIENAL 20/21 on display at 1585 Broadway at the Morgan Stanley Global Headquarters | Photo Credit: Michael Palma Mir
El Museo del Barrio presents ESTAMOS BIEN – LA TRIENAL 20/21, the museum’s first national large-scale survey of Latinx contemporary art featuring more than 40 artists from across the United States and Puerto Rico. Originally planned for Fall 2020, the show has been reconceived and expanded as a yearlong initiative, the exhibition debuts summer 2020 with online projects followed by an onsite exhibition in Las Galerías (Galleries) opening Spring 2021. Related public programs featuring curators, artists, invited scholars and other guests will take place throughout the year. ESTAMOS BIEN – LA TRIENAL 20/21 is made possible by The Jacques & Natasha Gelman Foundation. Leadership support is provided by The Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Commissioned works are made possible by Tony Bechara. Major funding is provided by Morgan Stanley and The Lenore G. Tawney Foundation. Generous funding is provided by The Cowles Charitable Trust and La Trienal Council: Craig Robins and Jackie Soffer, Estrellita and Daniel Brodsky, and The Jorge M. Pérez Family Foundation at The Miami Foundation. Additional support is provided by The El Museo Fund.
Utopia | Aperture 241 - Winter 2020
Utopia | Aperture 241 - Winter 2020
Utopia | Aperture 241 - Winter 2020
On the occasion of Jasmin Hernandez’s debut book release, We Are Here: Visionaries of Color Transforming the Art World, artist, and curator Yelaine Rodriguez, will lead a conversation with author Jasmin Hernandez. They will be joined by fellow New York-based Afro-Dominican thought disruptors Suhaly Bautista-Carolina, and Danny Báez to discuss Black Latinx cultural production, locally and beyond.
Confidently curated by Jasmin Hernandez, the dynamic founder of Gallery Gurls, We Are Here presents the bold and nuanced work of Black and Brown visionaries transforming the art world. Centering BIPOC, with a particular focus on queer, trans, nonbinary, and BIWOC, this collection features fifty of the most influential voices in New York, Los Angeles, and beyond.
STYLING: BLACK EXPRESSION, REBELLION, AND JOY THROUGH FASHION is a sartorial escapade through the multifaceted representations of contemporary Black style and their cultural significance. The exhibition celebrates the legacy of using personal style to channel self-expression, rebellion, and joy as inspired by movements such as the Harlem Renaissance. Thus giving substance and expansion to the meaning behind making a "fashion statement."
Work by artists from Styling: Black Expression, Rebellion, and Joy Through Fashion, may be purchased on Artsy. A portion of art sales proceeds will benefit the Howard University Art Gallery and student programs.
#STYLINGBLK
Art at a Time Like This Inc. is a platform for the free exchange of ideas at this time of crisis. Founded on March 17th by independent curators Barbara Pollack and Anne Verhallen, ATLT presents exhibitions, live events, and a newsletter. We invited artists and curators who are considered thought leaders, artists who struggle with futuristic pessimism, political outrage, and psychic melt-downs.
Building A Better Monument curated by Seph Rodney asks: How might one respond to several cataclysms happening at once? For many of us precariously making our way relying on strained emotional, fiscal, and institutional resources the current situation can feel overwhelming. Right now in the United States, we are confronted with the failure of the state to protect (and thereby equally and appropriately value) marginalized peoples from violence arbitrarily meted out by the state’s own law officers, the incompetent and capricious use of state power to protect and support a white supremacist oligarchy, a collective loss of faith in institutions, and, ultimately, the life-threatening catastrophe of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the face of all this, my answer is: “I don’t know.” But I trust artists.
On June 24th, Yelaine Rodriguez, Afro-Dominican American curator, will discuss her recent exhibition, “Afro Syncretic,” which centers on the African roots of the Latinx Diaspora.
Aldeide Delgado, Cuban art historian, and curator will expand on her recent photography exhibition “Building a Feminist Archive: Cuban Women Photographers in the US,” which examines the contributions of Cuban women artists living and working in the United States.
The conversation will be moderated by Grace Aneiza Ali, CCCADI Curator-at-Large and Assistant Professor, Art & Public Policy, NYU.
Yelaine Rodriguez
Ezili Dantor / Black Madonna | Solar plate etching print | 2020
Courtesy of the Artist.
PANEL: ANCESTRAL LEGACIES EXPLORING THE
AFRO-CARIBBEAN EXPERIENCE.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art cordially invites you to our Annual Black History Month Celebration.
The panel will be followed by a reception in the Arts of Africa, Oceana, and the Americas galleries and our curators will be offering private tours of the exhibitions Arte del Mar and Sahel: Art and Empires on the Shores of the Sahara.
Panel Moderator, Suhaly Bautista-Carolina, panelists, Fabiola Jean Louis, Nyguen Smith, Yelaine Rodriguez, Dr. Lawrence Waldron, and Elizabeth Colomba.
Thursday, February 20, 2020, 6:00 PM – 8:30 PM EST | The Metropolitan Museum of Art | 1000 Fifth Avenue New York, New York 10028
A frank and blunt conversation with Bronx-based artist and curator Yelaine Rodriguez. Rodriguez consistently and unapologetically reps for Afro-Latinx visibility in her art and curatorial practices. Rodriguez shares early roots of her art career, her recent brilliant show Afro-Syncretic, and remaining creatively fruitful during these unprecedented times.
Photography by: Elia Alba, La Joya (Yelaine Rodriguez), 2019
Photography by: Elia Alba, La Joya (Yelaine Rodriguez), 2019
If you take a stroll through the most popular art museums, such as the Louvre or the Metropolitan Museum of Art, one thing is blatantly clear: the immense erasure of Black art and artists — even more of the Afro-Latino experience, which is one that can not be detailed in a singular narrative. The same is overwhelmingly true in niche Latino art spaces as well. Although Black artists exist in Latin America and its diaspora, their presence is rarely reflected in mainstream galleries and exhibits. Not unlike other facets of life and culture, Black references in Latino art tend to be dismissed.
Even in the most tense political climates — and perhaps, especially, during these times — art can work as a salve, a war cry, a mirror and a lens. The first half of 2020 will reveal a lot about U.S. politics and race relations. If you want to find relief in a museum space filled with artworks that reflect current events or if you need to get lost in artworks outside of the chaos, we’ve got some ideas. Read More
AFH | Ezili Dantor Freedom & The African Diaspora Immersive Experience
Bronx-based artist Yelaine Rodriguez creates the immersive multimedia art experience of "Ezili Dantor: Freedom & The African Diaspora." This art display is based in the Fabiola Jean-Louis exhibition "Re-Writing History: A Black Ancestral Narrative" at the Andrew Freedman Home.
An Artist Illuminates Our Need to be Seen and Recognized The indispensability of recognition is simultaneously made both more urgent and more complicated when you realize, as Yelaine Rodriguez does, that we are mutable, never sufficing to be just one person. Read More
I’m in East Harlem, transfixed by the image of a brown-skinned woman in a red leotard. Over her left breast, red tulle blooms around what appears to be exposed entrails. Her eyeshadow and the horned mask atop her head are of the same brilliant red. She stands barefoot in the woods, an ax gripped daintily in her hands. She is Shango. Read More
Artists warm to winter workspace
Wave Hill’s Glyndor Gallery offers inspiration and a place to create
Posted March 2, 2018
This is the second six-week session of the season for the winter workspace, which currently features artists Ashton Agbomenou, Yelaine Rodriguez, Athena LaTocha, Maika’i Tubbs, Tamara Kostianovsky and Michele Brody.
Jennifer McGregor, Wave Hill’s senior arts and education director, developed the program nine years ago as a way to keep art flowing at the gallery in winter months, even if nothing is exactly on display.
Today, artists are doing just that, opening their spaces to visitors to learn all about their work during various workshops. They also open studio time allowing people to drop by and talk to the artists.
Yelaine Rodriguez. Photo: Joshua Bright
Yelaine Rodriguez works with a sewing machine in her studio space at Wave Hill. Photo: Julius Constantine Motal
Co-Curator: Carlos Jesus Martinez Dominguez + Yelaine Rodriguez
RESISTANCE, ROOTS, AND TRUTH - is an alumni exhibition that showcases the work of emerging visual artists, facilitators, and performers who have completed the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute (CCCADI), Innovative Cultural Advocacy Fellowship (ICA). Curated and organized by ICA alumni Yelaine Rodriguez, and Carlos Jesus Martinez Dominguez. Each participant is an ICA alum. The Innovative Cultural Advocacy Fellowship (ICA) provides a platform for emerging to mid-career arts professionals from under-represented communities. Thus far, over 100 artists, educators, art administrators, and arts activists have participated in the program.
We are honored to present the various talents of 11 ICA Alumni. Each piece celebrates and acknowledges the shared vision with the center since art is one of our most powerful tools of resistance. This exhibition features various art medium by visual and non-visual artists, in an effort to celebrate the common ground shared amongst the alumni and institution. Although some stories may overlap, or share a common theme, the difference in each artist’s story is captured and acknowledged to demonstrate each person’s truth as it applies to them.
Co-curated by ICA Alum Carlos Jesus Martinez Dominguez & Yelaine Rodriguez.
Featuring: Ariana Faye Allensworth, David Rios Ferreira, Gerald Leavell II, Haydil Henriquez, Joselina Fay, Mirland Terlonge, Nadia Williams, Stephanie Cunningham, Vanezza Cruz, Vanessa López, and Zeelie Brown.
Exhibition Highlights the Foundational Contributions of Parsons Alumni of Color to Art and Design
To shed light on the rich foundational contributions of Black, Latinx, Asian, and Indigenous communities — particularly those made by artists and designers of color who graduated from Parsons — the curators conceived of and launched (under)REPRESENT(ed). The exhibition features work by Parsons School of Design alumni of color whose creative practices explore the lived experience of race and aim to dismantle systems of racism. Read More
Press for La Lucha: Dominican Republic and Haiti, One Island
Founded by Yelaine Rodriguez in 2015
Mission: La Lucha: Dominican Republic and Haiti, One Island is an artist based organization that seeks to educate, explore, and create spaces in which the Dominican & Haitian community can study their shared histories. We are descendants of the Dominican and Haitian cultures, united to tell our stories. Those who choose to join; have been united by La Lucha (the struggle) and journey to take control of our collective histories. We are not defined by predisposed stereotypes of who we are as a people and more importantly to each other. Our collective sheds light on how strong the people can be when they come together. We are “Luchadores” and we strive for our voice in history.
As an artist-based organization La Lucha: Dominican Republic & Haiti, One Island celebrates the Dominican and Haitian cultures through multimedia. We concentrate on connecting visual artists of shared Dominican and Haitian descent. While the main focus is the group exhibitions, we aim to provide a space that lends itself to other activities such as, but not limited to, musical performance, theater groups, artist talks, and public discussions. Based on the island’s history, subjects of race, religion, feminism, and immigration may be present in the artists or performers work, and in-group discussions.
La Lucha: Dominican Republic and Haiti, One Island are aware of the political tension within the two countries. Although this is not a political organization, politically charged topics are explored. The space created by La Lucha assists established and emerging artists of our island to engage in conversations with the community, excluding any form of discrimination.
We aspire to widen the circle of the project by inviting guest curators from both sides of the island to organize upcoming shows. No matter where our Dominican and Haitian comrades are, in the states or overseas, we seek to come together in a series of exhibits that will be held in different parts of the world.
NY1 Hispanic Heritage Month - English Interview | 2016
NY1 Hispanic Heritage Month - Spanish Interview | 2016
Innuendos: The Voices of 10 Bronxite Women
This collection of works by ten women artists from The Bronx seeks to connect you to the female form. The art exhibition will take place just in time for Women’s History Month and is defined by a multimedia collection of works.
Co-curated by Yelaine Rodriguez and Yolanda L. Rodriguez. Produced in part by BxArts Factory.
Invited artists: Laura Alvarez, Laura N James, Ijeoma D. Iheanacho, Elena Bouza, Sharon Lee De La Cruz, Yelaine Rodriguez, Cinnamon Willis, Melissa Calderón, Abigail DeVille and Yarisa Colon
