Artist Statement
I create mixed media, figurative, often large scale sculptures as a way to explore the issues of race, class, gender and sexuality. My work highlights how our engagement with these concepts is highly ritualized, and often unexamined. By juxtaposing objects for the home with archival historical research, I ask viewers to think about how narratives of the domestic, family, and womanhood are complicated by a history of slavery, stolen labor, and racism, particularly in the U.S. and the Caribbean. I work with many materials, but consider fibers and ceramics to be foundational to my process and thinking because of their long history and aesthetic traditions in places like West Africa, Spain, and the Americas. The work, then, is an invitation to remember, examine, and engage in meaningful dialogue.
Bio
Joey Quiñones is a fiber and ceramic artist working with a wide range of materials. Their work focuses on African American and Caribbean history, as well as the intricacies of Afro-Latinx identity. They were selected an Emerging Artist of 2020 by Ceramics Monthly, a Manifest Gallery Annual Prize Finalist, and received an Honorable Mention for the James Renwick Alliance Chrysalis Award. Their work has been shown widely, including the Belger Arts Center, Manifest Gallery, and the Akron Arts Museum. They have an MFA in Studio Art from Indiana University, Bloomington, and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Iowa. They have had residencies at Vermont Studio Center, the Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library, and the Arts/Industry residency in Foundry at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center. They currently teach Fibers and Mixed media in the Sculpture Dimensional Studies Division at Alfred University.
All images subject to copyright 2021