Contemporary Master

Joiri Minaya

Vanguard Tier · Multi-disciplinary

*Bio* *Joiri Minaya* (b. 1990, New York City) is a Dominican-American multidisciplinary artist based in New York. I work across photography, digital media, film, performance, sculpture, textiles, and painting. I was raised in the Dominican Republic. I earned an Associate’s from the Escuela Nacional de Artes Visuales in Santo Domingo, studied at Altos de Chavón School of Design, and received a BFA from Parsons School of Design in New York. My work has been shown at the Guggenheim Museum, MoMA, the Cooper Hewitt Triennial, Prospect 6 New Orleans Triennial, and Sharjah Biennial 15. I am a recipient of the Latinx Artist Fellowship, NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship, Jerome Hill Fellowship, and Artadia Award. I’ve completed residencies at Skowhegan, ISCP, Socrates Sculpture Park, and Light Work. My work is in the collections of El Museo del Barrio, Museo de Arte Moderno and Centro León in the Dominican Republic, and the Kemper Museum. *Artist Statement* My work is a reassertion of Self, an exercise of unlearning, decolonizing and exorcising imposed histories, cultures and ideas. I navigate binaries in search of in-betweenness. I investigate how the female body relates to the construction of identity, multicultural social spaces, and hierarchies. Moving between the global North and South informs my practice, shifting the location of the sexed body from domesticity to nature. I focus on destabilizing historical and contemporary representations of an imagined “tropical identity,” particularly how Black and Brown womanhood has been represented in relation to the Caribbean. Through photography, video, installation, and performance, I interrogate tropical motifs found in popular culture — floral patterns, botanical illustrations, and stereotypes — to reveal how they have been used to exoticize Caribbean women. I engage the “Gaze” placed on me and turn it upon itself: “I’ve learned there is a Gaze thrust upon me which others me. I turn it upon itself, mainly by seeming to fulfill its expectations, but instead sabotaging them, thus regaining power and agency.” In series like _Containers_ and _The Cloaking_, I use restrictive patterned bodysuits and textiles to cover bodies and monuments, layering Dominican landscapes with playful configurations that both critique and seduce. I’m also interested in “the idea of opacity, a right to remain opaque, even to yourself... and not having to explain yourself to others.” For me, gaps, disconnections and misinterpretations between cultures become fertile ground for creativity.