2022 Fellows – AnkhLave Arts

ANKHLAVE GARDEN FELLOWS 2022

“Amplify”, Curated by Curator in Residence, Cecilia Andre is currently on display in the Queens Botanical Garden until October 1st, 2022!

The 2022 AnkhLave Garden Project Fellows consist of 5 BIPOC artists who will create site-specific art installations throughout the grounds of Queens Botanical Garden (QBG). By presenting artists and art-making in a nontraditional setting like the Garden, AnkhLave aims to promote BIPOC artists who represent and reflect the Garden’s diverse audience. This project is made possible by the Queens Council on the Arts with public funds from Queens Art Fund. Meet the Fellows below:

Sherwin Banfield

“Botanical Boombox”

Botanical Boombox is a mini greenhouse boombox sculpture that houses a miniature public housing ecosystem amplifying dreams and stories of personal growth and struggle. Inside this Boombox greenhouse is an arrangement of diverse plants that symbolize the voice of voiceless, individual lived experience by local hip hop artists, sprouting through the redlined concrete of Queensbridge Houses as a metaphoric photosynthesis. The Boombox is the amplification of these voices that uses music and hip hop culture to express personal and community issues regarding growing up in their ecosystem. This project is part exposition and part celebration, exploring the overlapping layers of hip hop stories, environmental racism, surveillance, industrialization, and poverty.

Bio:
Sherwin Banfield is a Queens, NY-based mixed-media artist with recent work attempting to explore journeys of identity and ancestry. Sherwin’s creative practice tends to deconstruct the imaginative and physical journey of identity within his preferred subject matter, the human experience. While exploring the journey of his subject, he would seek to draw a connection between their personal stories and established culture, frequently imposing mythological and imaginative ideas as accessories within his

Ruth Jeyaveeran

“Wooly Cairns”

Cairns are man-made stacks or piles of rocks dating back to ancient times and have been used by various cultures throughout history as navigational tools and burial monuments, and to mark ceremonial sites. These playful cairns made of felted wool are fuzzy and tactile. The bright colors and unexpected material stand out against the landscape and highlight the contrast between hard and soft things.

Bio:
Ruth Jeyaveeran is a South Asian American artist, designer, and educator based in Brooklyn, New York. She works with fibers and textiles to examine their relationship to human history, culture, and technology. Her goal is to place these materials traditionally associated with the domestic and functional in a new context. Recurring themes in her work focus on the effects of time on the body and the environment. Using the language of ritual and symbols, she questions the notion that humanity can control or truly separate itself from nature.

Yiyi Wei

“Earth Skin”

大地肌理/Earth Skin molds the surface of the earth with molten glass. The viscous glass flows over the compost made at the Queens Botanical Garden, creating a set of topographical castings, which participants are encouraged to see, smell, and touch. The title is inspired by one of the Chinese names for “texture”: “肌理”(jī lǐ). The character ‘肌’meaning “skin’”or “muscle,” draws a poetic connection between our body and the earth. Through participation, the project aims to (re)connect our body with the earth that nourishes us, interconnects us and the earth that we will return to—the earth our ancestors walked, who may be walking with us still.

Bio:
Yiyi Wei is an inter-disciplinary artist born and raised in China. She received a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design Glass department, where she began to consider her artworks as processes that perceive the entangled connections between human and non-human existences. Weaving between the tangible and the transient, Wei explores performances, interactive installations and poetic writings to contemplate on our posture within a system of symbiotic relationships across time and culture.

M.E. Guadalupe Rubi

“Kaleidoscope”

Hedera Sprouts is a celebration of life pushing forth from the roots of the earth to the surface, and the eternal cycle of plants creating shelter and shade.

Bio:
Mary Evangeline Guadalupe Rubi is a textile artist, costume designer, wig enthusiast, rogue taxidermist, and crafter of silly things. M.E. Guadalupe Rubi’s artistic practice is a meditation on memory: the stories we have inherited and the stories we create to remember. Drawing inspiration from the First Nations tradition of the sacredness of the color red, Latin folklore, and the desire to reclaim an Indigenous narrative, her pieces embrace botany and the natural world as a source of healing and reconciliation. Using the mediums of fiber, clay, and wood the viewer is invited to connect to nature. Mammal skulls, feminine craft studies, and textiles are at the center of her work and a manifestation of a journey to find home and create a narrative focused on reclaiming blood memory.

Carlos Wilfredo

“Resonitas”

The conch shell, used as a wind instrument in many of our cultures, is also associated with the ear, given its ear-like shape. Many of us have experienced its resonance by holding it up to our ears and “listening to the ocean.” Resonantiasis the artist’s invitation to reflect not only on how to amplify our voices, but also on how to become amplifiers of our ancestry and of our communities, by echoing things that connect us all as people.

Bio:
Carlos Wilfredo Encarnación is a visual artist and art educator born and raised in Puerto Rico. Encarnación received a BA in Social Sciences/Forensic Psychology from the Universidad de Puerto Rico, a BA in Painting from CUNY-Herbert H. Lehman College, and an MFA from CUNY-The City College of New York. He is the recipient of the Bronx Museum’s AIM Fellowship 2019, BronxArtSpace/Governors Island Initiative Residency 2020 and Bronx Recognizes Its Own (BRIO) Award in 2019 and 2021. Encarnación currently works and lives in The Bronx.

ANKHLAVE GARDEN FELLOWS 2022

Sherwin Banfield

Ruth Jeyaveeran

Yiyi Wei

M.E. Guadalupe Rubi

Carlos Wilfredo

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