Artist Statement

 I create mixed media, figurative, often large scale sculptures as a way to explore 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 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. Their work focuses on African American and Caribbean history,  as well as the intricacies of Afro-Latinx identity. They were selected as an Emerging Artist of 2020 by Ceramics Monthly, an Augusta Savage Grant recipient by the National Sculpture Society, and an Annual Prize Finalist by Manifest Gallery. Their work has been shown at venues such as the Belger Arts Center, Manifest Gallery, the Akron Art Museum, the Contemporary Arts Center, the Crocker Museum, the Elaine L. Jacob Gallery, and the Winterthur Museum. In the 2024-2025 academic year they will serve as the McAndless Distinguished Professor Chair at Eastern Michigan University. 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 are currently the Artist-in-Residence/Head of the Fiber Department at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, MI.

All images subject to copyright 2023