Making room for self-expression at the Bronx Museum of the Arts

A cropped image of Alice Grullon's self-portrait, "June 4, 2020: NYPD's Ambush Of Peaceful Bronx Protesters Was 'Executed Nearly Flawlessly," City Leaders Agree," (2020).
A cropped image of Alice Grullon’s self-portrait, “June 4, 2020: NYPD’s Ambush Of Peaceful Bronx Protesters Was ‘Executed Nearly Flawlessly,” City Leaders Agree,” (2020).
Photo ET Rodriguez

Museums are like special, multi-million-dollar homes made to house artworks as old as ancient Egypt and as new as yesterday. Visitors are simply passing by and ogling before they retire to their respective abodes while the paintings remain dormant in their austere space. But the newest exhibit at the Bronx Museum of the Arts reminds visitors that the people behind the art are just as important and that they, too, belong.

“Making Room: Museum As Space for Self-Expression” focuses on the individual and their co-existence amongst others and the world at large. From Shellyne Rodriguez’s, “Ex-Voto:The First Cosmos” (2019) depicting an image of her aunt’s late lover taking up space in an apartment building lobby, to LaToya Ruby Frazier’s “Grandma Ruby’s Porcelain Dolls” (2004) picturing an adorable young child mimicking the countenance of the dolls in the photo, humanity is the subject matter with several triune themes proliferating the exhibit.

The first is of the artists themselves, with the exhibit made up of professional artists from the permanent collection, the Teen Council and the Lifelong Studio.

Established in 2005, the Teen Council is a paid internship for high school students ages 14 to 19 years old. In addition to having an opportunity to work alongside professional artists, they are also responsible for the museums ‘zines which feature drawings, poems and short essays by the teens themselves.

A museum-goer marvels at the busts created by the Teen Council at the Bronx Museum of the Arts.Photo ET Rodriguez
Bust of Success Taylor, member of the Bronx Museum of the Arts’ Teen Council.Photo ET Rodriguez

In “Making Room,” the Teen Council worked on producing the wall labels and busts of themselves with the help of Rigoberto Torres, who throughout the 1980s, along with his contemporary John Ahearn, began the practice of immortalizing Bronxites in plaster. The two had their first major retrospective at the Bronx Museum in 2022.

In order to create the busts, the model is laid down on a table and has straws placed int their nostrils as an alginate is pooled over their face and shoulders and allowed to harden while pieces of plaster-drenched gauze are layered on top.

“I was trying my best not to panic because I couldn’t breathe. If you think about it, my life was in their hands,” Success Taylor told the Bronx Times.

The 17-year-old member of the Teen Council is currently in his third session with the museum and first joined when his mother brought home literature on the program.

“Not only did we learn from doing art of our own, we also learned other people’s stories from their art and how they expressed it, so that really drew inspiration for me,” Taylor added.

On the other end of the spectrum is the Lifelong Studio, founded just last year, offering free art-making classes to creators 55 and older, like Miriam Dawn Tabb, who was taught to photograph the everyday, like a hot food buffet or individuals posing for the camera after a parade.

Shellyne Rodriguez, “Ex-Voto: The First Cosmos” (2019).Photo ET Rodriguez

Tabb’s “What’s For Dinner?” is absent of people, but indicative of a mouth to feed and with a plethora of soul food featuring corn bread, macaroni and cheese and collard greens, there’s also the thought of, who are we feeding?

“I look at something as simple as doors because [they] are something you welcome yourself through and say goodbye through,” said Tabb, who is also keen on doorknobs and thresholds which can speak to another time where certain architecture was the style of the moment.

The Lifelong Studio, much like the Teen Council, offers individuals the insight to see the world through a different lens and then the opportunity to externalize that understanding through art.

Three themes break up the space in “Making Room” to “Me,” “Us” and “Here.”

“’Me’ is more thinking about the individual finding their identity as an artist or just a personal identity expressed through art,” said Patrick Rowe, ­­­director of education and public engagement who co-curated the exhibit with Nell Klugman, associate director of the same department. “’Us’ is about the forming of an artistic community and the ways in which that can be manifest in artworks and then ‘Here’ is thinking literally about the resources, spaces and programs that we have here.”

Lucia Hierro, “Circulares (Circulars)” (2017) speaks to economic disparity in NYC and bridges high and low art.Photo ET Rodriguez

“Us” is perhaps the most powerful of the themes, forcing an understanding that nothing is created in a vacuum and everything is contingent on something or someone.

Influenced by the works of Claes Oldenburg, Lucia Hierro’s, “Circulares (Circulars)” (2017) is such an example. What at first appears to be a whimsical, hyperbole of a mundane item, reveals a deeper context of who we are socially and economically and how we present ourselves.

“The bag itself is sort of owed to those folks who were very savvy and knew how to survive despite rising prices,” Hierro said of her work.

A sheer shopping back large enough for a giant is filled with supermarket flyers advertising sale prices of foods and the flyers are actually digital print on fabric stuffed with foam and stitched shut. When one thinks of where these penny-pinching circulars are distributed, who are the ones using them and who are the ones delivering them, the realities of economic disparity become obvious.

“Circulares (Circulars),” was the last project Hierro worked on with her mother, Lucia Guzman-Garcia, who shared the same first name. Arriving from the Dominican Republic and working in a sewing factory once she arrived to New York City, Hierro’s mother taught her how to sew and was a life-long collaborator with the Yale alumn until she died last November.

As a young artist, Hierro dismissed her mother’s teachings at first, considering sewing low-brow. But throughout the years, she began to learn the importance of not only the craft of sewing, but of the time spent with her mother and of the importance of appreciating every level of art.

A stack of ‘zines created by the Teen Council were up for grabs at Bronx Museum of the Arts.Photo ET Rodriguez

The title of Hierro’s work is reflective of her environment and of the ethos of the Bronx Museum – a bilingual museum smack-dab in the middle of a Spanish-speaking borough with an expansive Latinx diaspora.

Lastly, a more abstract trio is that of the artist, the viewer and the space, where one’s existence is dependent on the other. Together, we create art. Together, we build community. Together, we make room.

“Making Room: Museum As Space for Self-expression” will run at the Bronx Museum of the Arts through Aug. 18.

For more information, visit bronxmuseum.org/exhibition/making-room.

Making Room: Museum As Space For Self-Expression is the latest exhibit at the Bronx Museum of the Arts running through Aug. 18.Photo ET Rodriguez

Reach ET Rodriguez at etrodriguez317@gmail.com. For more coverage, follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram @bronxtimes