Tomás Cunha Ferreira, Tzu Tung Lee, and Kairon Liu
Presented in collaboration with Residency Unlimited
Opening Reception: Thursday, September 20 from 6-8p
On View: September 15 through October 14, 2018
Gallery Hours: Tuesday through Sunday, 12-6pm
Location: 120 Essex Street NY, NY 10002 (inside Essex Street Market)
Cuchifritos Gallery and Residency Unlimited are pleased to present their eighth annual collaboration, The Impossibility of Form, featuring new work from artists Tomás Cunha Ferreira (Portugal), Tzu Tung Lee (Taiwan), and Kairon Liu (Taiwan).
Exploring a diversity of subjects—the status of the art object, political action, social inclusion—Ferreira, Lee and Liu reject the rarefied space of categorical definitions moving between materiality and disciplines. Through distinct practices, their work investigates the complex relationship between institutional structures and visual language, and in both composition and content asserts a state of in-betweenness.
Image: Courtesy of Tomás Cunha Ferreira
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Tomás Cunha Ferreira’s work combines various supports, in a cross-border and open circuit practice – they function as prototypes, which can take on various stages and states – as reading scores, notations, visual poems, emblems, patterns, paintings, murals, etc. To this extent, each work results in a condensed hybrid figure, whose reading is in constant transition between visual elements and rhythmic or sonic ones. Tomás Cunha is currently running a beach project at Cova do Vapor, Trafaria – a fisherman’s marginal community in the outskirts of Lisbon (Vapor nº1, may 2018, included works and performances at the beach by Ana Cardoso, Alexandre Estrela, Tomás Cunha Ferreira, Martin Laborde, Gary Hill, Miguel Soares, João Simões and Belén Uriel).
Lee Tzu-Tung(李紫彤) is a new media artist, a political activist, and a visual anthropologist whose art practice combines rigorous academic research with political activism. Through performances, web-art, installations, fictional and experimental films she examines how one can survive, manipulate, regain autonomy through their political identities, with a special focus on the hegemony of Chinese Sino-centrism, the trauma of modernity and the current epistemological injustice. Lee Tzu-Tung was awarded the Experimental Film funds from the National Cultural Art Foundation in Taiwan. Her political work includes organizing monthly conferences at Café Philo Chicago and Café Philo New York, working with the political youth NGOs Overseas Taiwanese for Democracy, and editing the bilingual political magazine NewBloom.
As a visual artist and photographer, Kairon Liu‘s practice reflects his observations about beliefs in human society through the creation of narratives exploring different issues related to religion, disease, and common values. Since 2017, Kairon is developing the project Humans As Hosts focused on understanding the living situation of people with HIV and heightening awareness about AIDS. In collaboration with social networks, NGOs, and Health Authorities, Kairon recruits HIV-positive individuals to volunteer as participants. The resulting images are to be viewed as the proof/disproof of the stereotypical prejudices and discrimination produced by society. Kairon Liu is the National Winner of the 201 Sony World Photography Awards (SWPA for his project “Married the Christmas”.
This program is made possible with the support from Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Taiwanese Ministry of Culture and Taipei Cultural Center of TECO in New York.
Cuchifritos is FREE to the public and handicap accessible. Located inside Essex Street Market at the south end nearest Delancey.
Cuchifritos Gallery + Project Space is a program of Artists Alliance Inc., a 501c3 not for profit organization located on the Lower East Side of New York City within the Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural and Educational Center. Cuchifritos is supported in part by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. This program is made possible by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. We thank the following for their generous support: Foundation for Contemporary Arts, New York City Economic Development Corporation and individual supporters of Artists Alliance Inc. Special thanks go to our team of dedicated volunteers, without whom this program would not be possible.