Past Residents
Past Resident2016: Wallace Arts Trust
Visesio Siasau
Visesio Siasau’s creative ambitions are directed towards sculpted wooden Tongan divinity forms, which he re-makes in a range of styles, stances, and materials including perspex, glass, stone, wood, and bronze. His twenty-first century approach to an old form presents a challenge for contemporary Tongan Christian politics because of his negative criticism of the church’s impact on Tongan stories, thinking, and traditional ways of life. Siasau’s sculptures carry a message beyond his politics—they hold and express his personal responsibility for teaching specialized knowledge.
Visesio Siasau, also known as Sio, has completed a Masters degree at Te Wānanga o Aotearoa in New Zealand. He is a cultural practitioner from He Waka Hiringa, the first Masters of Applied Indigenous Knowledge degree program in the Pacific. Sio self-identifies as a tufungaʻi – practitioner and draws on Tongan epistemologies as his pathway to understanding things passed down by traditional knowledge keepers. Sio has represented both Aotearoa, New Zealand and Tonga in an international context, and is the first Tongan recipient to be awarded the prestigious James Wallace Art Award.
Events & Exhibitions
Salon: Raque Ford and Visesio Siasau
October 11, 2016, 6:30–8pm
Visesio Siasau, Untitled, 2009, Perspex and corian (center figure) on wood, 8 1/2 x 3 7/8 in. each. Photo by Serene Tay.
Visesio Siasau, Ngatu, 2013, Paper mulberry bark (ngatu) and natural dyes, 1401/2 × 42 in. (356.87 × 106.68 cm). Photo by Serene Tay.
Residents from New Zealand
Past Resident2016: The New York Community Trust’s Edward and Sally Van Lier Fund
Raque Ford
Raque Ford works with painting, sculpture and the image. Her work deals with the politics of aestheticization, referencing feminism in pop culture and music, worship and idolization of the strong black female, and contemporary issues of consumerist society. Ford uses abstraction as a material in her process, by jamming materials and symbols to create new dialogues or approaches. She is interested in the culture of performing identity, including gender, race and individuals’ overall attitude.
Raque Ford (born 1986, Columbia, Maryland) received her BFA from Pratt Institute in 2010 and her MFA from Mason Gross School of Arts at Rutgers University in 2013. Recent solo shows include That Which We Call A Rose By Any Other Name Would Smell As Sweet, Soloway, Brooklyn, and Raque, Welcome Screen, London. She has exhibited in group shows at S1, Portland, Oregon; Evelyn Yard, London; and 321 Gallery, Brooklyn.
Raque Ford, That Which We Call A Rose By Any Other Name Would Smell As Sweet, 2015, Dimensions variable.
Raque Ford, Sweet Smells, 2015, Cast acrylic sheet, chain, zip-ties and acrylic paint on polypropylene sheet.
Raque Ford, E.mo.tion., 2015, Cast acrylic sheet, chain, zip-ties and acrylic paint on polypropylene sheet.
Residents from United States
Past Resident2016: Creative New Zealand
Alicia Frankovich
Alicia Frankovich is interested in the potential for new modes of imagining bodies and their behaviors for both humans and non-humans. She works with performance, sculpture, video, photography, and temporary exhibition experiences. Frankovich is interested in creating new languages that merge movements, experiences, sensibilities, materials from various fields, often by collaborating with non-professional participants. Her mode of production combines various past histories with the present to form relationships with possible futures. She builds equivalences through the combination of form or temporal experience, that create links between things and beings to allow for a more plural understanding of time.
Alicia Frankovich (born 1980, Tauranga, New Zealand) holds a BVA in sculpture from Auckland University of Technology, and lives and works in Berlin. Her solo and two-person exhibitions include The Female has Undergone Several Manifestations, Starkwhite, Auckland, 2016; Complex Bodies, Kurator, Alte Fabrik, Gebert Stiftung für Kultur, Rapperswil, Switzerland, 2015; Today this technique is the other way around, Kunstverein Hildesheim, 2013; and Gestures, Splits and Annulations, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, 2011. Group exhibitions and performances include: Les Limbes, La Galerie, Noisy-le-sec, France 2016; If I Can’t Dance I Don’t Want To Be A Part Of Your Revolution, Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam, 2016; Le Mouvement: Performing the City, Biel/Bienne, Switzerland, 2014; Nouvelles Vagues, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2013; and Material Traces, The Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Montréal, 2013.
Events & Exhibitions
Brooklyn Commons: Tehching Hsieh and Alicia Frankovich
July 26, 2016, 6:30-8pm
Alicia Frankovich, Defending Plural Experiences: MOCAP Creation, 2014, HD video, colour, and sound, 36:28 min.
Alicia Frankovich, Complex Bodies, 2015, Various media, Dimensions variable.
Alicia Frankovich, Soft Water (detail), 2015, Olympic pool stairs and polished shells, 353/8 × 473/16 × 517/8 in. (89.92 × 119.89 × 131.83 cm).