ALL I SEE IS WATER
“All I See Is Water” is a devotional expression about water as an element, ancestor, teacher, and mother.
The predominant material in the show, paper cut outs, was inspired by an early childhood memory of cutting the outline of a star on yellow construction paper to test into the New York City public school system. That memory of being a toddler struggling to cut out a star with my small hands and dull safety scissors was the subconscious driver that provoked me to take paper cutting to a place of fluidity, temporality, and play.
The works are abstract explorations of water within — it as a vital emotional and internal function of being human and water without — it as an ecological phenomenon that holds a wide breadth of plant and animal life both familiar and mysterious to us. The movement elicited by the squiggles and scribbles is driven by a desire to transcend the limitations of the material realm. It is an invitation to access interdimensionality more readily through our senses and our imagination.
ROSEMARY REYES - Artist Statement
I am a spirit worker/shamanic practitioner that employs visual art (guided by ritual) as a sacred practice to communicate with my ancestors and create images that give life to worlds often unseen in our material reality. I aim to unlock healing and heart medicine in those who view and engage with my work.
My family is from Kiskeya (the Dominican Republic) and my ethnic blood lines connecting me to Spanish, West African, and indigenous Taino ancestors figure strongly into my work. By engaging sacred and ritualistic indigenous practices (altar making, ofrendas, prayer, and mediumship) to produce psychedelic imagery, the result is an attempt to unite my stratified ethnic origins and to transform the devastating legacy of colonization in the Caribbean into something beautiful and playful that looks to the future with a generous measure of optimism. My art making process is often spontaneous, where I invoke my etheric guides paired with an intention to support every stroke and aesthetic decision. My drawings and collages in particular explore a compulsion to mimic the repeating, irregular yet cohesive patterns that organically occur in the natural world. I also explore the migratory patterns of cells, their movement and relationship to each other through stop-motion animation, drawing, and painting. I often use materials in my practice that are found in elementary school classrooms (colored construction paper, markers, water colors, glue sticks, etc.) to both engage my own cellular memory of early art making experiences and challenge elitist notions of art making put forth by mainstream institutions.
I am inspired by the artistic practices of Clementine Hunter, Alma Thomas, Howardena Pindell, Wangechi Mutu, and Hilma af Klint, among many unnamed black, indigenous, and aboriginal diviners, seers, and makers through the past, present, and future.
As a self-taught artist engaging ancient indigenous practices to create art, one of my central missions is to subvert the European/White/Western canon and challenge what are often white supremacist-capitalist standards for what constitutes art worthy of being seen, supported, and shared.