PAST CONVERSATION
‘A Small Patch of Sand, Yet it Holds so Much’ Closing Conversation
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PAST CONVERSATION
‘A Small Patch of Sand, Yet it Holds so Much’ Closing Conversation
Please join us on July 25th at 6 PM for a closing conversation between 2023 Baxter St Guest Curatorial Open Call Recipients Ezra Benus and Kevin Quiles Bonilla on the occasion of Quiles Bonilla’s solo-exhibition, A Small Patch of Sand, Yet it Holds so Much. A Small Patch of Sand, Yet it Holds so Much is on view at 126 Baxter St through July 31, 2024.
Baxter St’s Guest-Curated Program is made possible by the Phillip and Edith Leonian Foundation. This project is made possible in part with funds from Creative Engagement, a regrant program by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA) in partnership with the City Council, and administered by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC).
Kevin Quiles Bonilla (b. 1992) is an interdisciplinary artist born in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Through photography, performance and installation, his works explore ideas around power, colonialism, and history with his identity as context. He received a BA in Fine Arts from the University of Puerto Rico (2015) and an MFA in Fine Arts from Parsons The New School for Design (2018). He has presented his work at Brooklyn Museum, Queens Museum, Lincoln Center and Ford Foundation. Recent solo shows include Real Art Ways, Hartford, CT (2021), and Wave Hill Public Garden and Cultural Center, Bronx, NY (2022). His first public artwork, For centuries, and still…(anticipated completion), made in collaboration with artist Zaq Landsberg, was presented through NYC Parks in 2022. He has been an Artist-in-Residence at the Arts + Disability Residency (2018-2019), LMCC Workspace Residency (2019-2020), En Foco Inc. Photography Fellowship (2021), EmergeNYC (2021), Smack Mellon Artist Studio Program (2022-2023), Monira Foundation Residency (2024), and LMCC Arts Center Residency in Governors Island (2024 Forthcoming). His work has been featured in Hyperallergic, The Washington Post, BOMB Magazine and The Guardian. He lives and works between New York and Puerto Rico.
Ezra Benus’ practice is cradled by embedded Jewishness, queerness, and sickness as purviews and navigational tools in this world. They are an artist, educator, and curator raised and still based in Brooklyn, whose multi-media practice concerns constructions of values of normativity, relationships and intimacies of power, care, pain and pleasure. Ezra has had residencies with Art Beyond Sight’s Art + Disability Residency (2018-19), Wave Hill Winter Workspace (2020), SHIFT Residency at EFA (2020-21), BRIClab Contemporary Art at BRIC (2022-23). Most recently Ezra had a two person exhibition with Finnegan Shannon at Perlman Teaching Museum in Minnesota. He has exhibited work in NYC with NYU Gallatin Gallery, Pratt Manhattan Gallery, Dedalus Foundation, EFA Project Space, The Shed, and internationally with Shape Arts (UK), Museion (IT), MMK Frankfurt (DE), Doris McCarthy Gallery (CA), Art Gallery Windsor (CA). Curatorial projects and programs include Locus: Art as a Disabled Space (The 8th Floor), My Body Is The House That We Live (Gibney Dance), Disability Futures Virtual Festival (United States Artists, Ford Foundation, Mellon Foundation), Crip Ecologies of Emergent Pain (Flux Factory), Crip’d Art Ecologies: Fermenting Crip’d Desire, Grief, Celebration, and Rage (CUE Art Foundation). Ezra is also one half of Brothers Sick, a sibling artistic collaboration on disability justice, illness, spirituality, and care. Commissioned published works include Blackwood Gallery’s SDUK: Lingering, and Kingdom of The Ill reader published by Hatje Cantz Verlag. Their work has been featured and reviewed in publications such as Artforum (Susanne Pfeffer’s #1 artwork of 2021), Pin Up, Mousse Magazine, Ocula, Art Agenda, Publico ípsilon, and Welt Kunst.