Announcing Baxter St’s 2024-25 Guest Curatorial Open Call Recipients
We are thrilled to announce the recipients of this year’s Guest Curated Open Call! Congratulations to Zoraida Lopez who will present works by artists Samantha Box and Sheida Soleimani; and Junghyun Kim who will present works by artists Juyon Lee and Kai Oh. Support for Baxter St’s Guest Curatorial program is provided by the Phillip and Edith Leonian Foundation.
Zoraida Lopez
Zoraida Lopez-Diago is a curator, photographer, and environmental activist who is committed to centering the voices and histories of people from the global majority.
Her work delves into the themes of gender, migration, environmental justice, and climate change, shedding light on these crucial issues.
In 2022, Zoraida co-curated “Picturing Black Girlhood,” a groundbreaking exhibition that explored Black girlhood through the lens of over 80 Black women, girls, and genderqueer artists in photography and film. This was the largest exhibition on Black girls in the world. In 2023, she co-curated “Picturing Black Girlhood: Black Utopia” at Photoville, furthering the narrative of Black girlhood and Its connection to open space and the natural world. In 2016, Zoraida co-founded Women Picturing Revolution and co-edited the academic volume, “Black Matrilineage, Photography, and Representation: Another Way of Knowing,” published by Leuven University Press and distributed by Cornell University Press in North America.
Zoraida is an environmental activist and is the Vice President of Communications, Development, and Strategic Partnerships at Glynwood Center for Regional Food and Farming, one of the only food and agriculture nonprofits in the country working at a regional scale to transform our food system; she is the co-founder and co-leader of Conservationists of Color, a
a national affinity group for people from the global majority who steward and protect land, wildlife, and water.
Samantha Box
Samantha Box is a Jamaican-born, Bronx-based photographer. She holds an MFA in Advanced Photographic Studies from Bard College. Most recently, her work has been exhibited at Light Work, the Silver Eye Center of Photography, and at Le Rencontres d’Arles; it is currently in exhibition at the Bronx Museum of Art, with upcoming solo shows at the Des Moines Art Center, and the National Museum of Women in the Arts (DC). Box has been an artist-in-residence at the Center of Photography at Woodstock, the Visual Studies Workshop and at Light Work. She has been awarded a NYFA/NYSCA Fellowship in Photography twice: in 2010 and in 2022, an En Foco Fellowship, and a Silver Eye Fellowship. In 2023, she was shortlisted for the Aperture Portfolio Prize, the Louis Roederer Discovery Award, and the Prix De La Photo Madame Figaro. Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Fine Art, Houston and of the Harvard Art Museums.
Sheida Soleimani
Sheida Soleimani’s work explores intersections of art and activism, melding sculpture, performance, film and photography to highlight critical perspectives on events across the Middle East, unpicking the complex power dynamics between the region and western nations. Soleimani’s work interrogates the dissemination of information in digital contexts, adapting found images from press and social media leaks to exist within alternative scenarios. Her photographs document constructed sets within her studio, in which repeating images carve out trompe l’oeil perspectives in a visual metaphor for the competing political narratives relayed by her source materials.
Sheida Soleimani (b. 1990) received her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2015. Recent solo exhibitions include The Banner Project: Ghostwriter, MFA Boston, Boston, MA, USA (2023); Ghostwriter, Edel Assanti, London, UK (2023); Negotiators, Kunsthaus Photoforum Pasquart, Biel, CH (2022); Ghostwriter, Providence College Galleries, Providence, USA (2022); ILVA, Castello San Basilio, Basilicata, Italy (2022); Levers of Power, Silver Eye Centre for Photography, Pittsburgh, USA (2021); Hotbed, Denny Dimin Gallery, New York, USA (2020); Medium of Exchange, Southern Utah Museum of Art, Utah; CUE Art Foundation, New York; Cincinnati Contemporary Art, Cincinnati and Atlanta Contemporary, Atlanta, all USA (2018-2019). Selected group exhibitions include Activism and Feminism, South London Gallery, London, UK (2024); Rising Sun: Artists in an Uncertain America, PAFA, Philadelphia, USA (2023); A Trillion Sunsets, ICP, New York, USA (2022); Immune Project, Living Art Museum, Reykjavik, Iceland (2022); Denunciation!, ACC Gallery, Weimar, Germany (2021); deCordova Biennial, deCordova Museum of Art, Lincoln, USA (2019); Ecologies of Darkness, SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin, Germany (2019). Soleimani lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island.
Junghyun Kim
Junghyun Kim is a New York-based curator and researcher specializing in digital culture. Her curatorial interests focus on new media rituals, cybernetics, and cultural convergence within the rapidly changing technological landscape. She served as a curator at the Seoul Museum of Art, and currently her curatorial works have been exhibited in Seoul, New York, and Toronto. She participated in the International Studies and Curatorial Programs (ISCP) in New York with support from the Doosan Yonkang Foundation and was a member of the Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC). Kim has also been recognized by Arts Council Korea and the Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture.
Juyon Lee
Juyon Lee is a South Korea-born artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Growing up between Seoul and the greater Boston area, Lee developed her interest in dissonance in space and time and ephemeral nature of being. She explores the idea of transience and fluidity in perception and meaning-making process by weaving images into multidimensional works composed of architectural elements, functional and nonfunctional objects with ethereal materials like light and air. Lee has exhibited widely, including NARS Foundation Main Gallery, Jewett Arts Center, Tufts University Art Galleries, and Putty’s Coronation. She is the recipient of notable fellowships and awards, including the Bronx Museum AIM Fellowship, Pilchuck Fellowship, and St. Botolph’s Emerging Artist Award. She participated in artist residencies at NARS Foundation, The Studios at MASS MoCA, Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Vermont Studio Center, and more. Lee holds her MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University and her BA from Wellesley College (summa cum laude).
Kai Oh
Kai Oh (b. 1992, Seoul) focuses on expanding the boundaries of photography, capturing the non-human-centric life force in urban spaces through her lens. She places particular emphasis on the fluidity of digital images, exploring their inherent possibilities. By bringing digital images from the computer into physical space, Oh challenges conventional norms and historical values linked to flat images and surfaces on the wall, crafting otherworldly scenarios. Kai Oh earned her MFA at Columbia University’s School of the Arts and her Bachelor’s degrees from Seoul National University and the Academy of Fine Arts, Nuremberg. Alongside her solo exhibitions, including Half Sticky, Industrial Bank of Korea Korea (2023), and Softsharp, Cylinder, Seoul (2021), Kai Oh has participated in numerous group exhibitions: Derby Match: Watchman and Spy, Museumhead, Seoul(2023); The Postmodern Child Part 2, Busan Museum of Contemporary Art, Busan (2023); Rales, Wheezed and Crackles, Doosan Gallery, Seoul (2022); Super-fine, Ilmin Museum of Art, Seoul (2021); and Foam Talent, Foam Amsterdam (2017).