Smack Mellon will host a virtual discussion on Wed. November 3, 6:30-8 PM on the occasion of the release of Tamara Kostianovsky’s monograph, Tamara Kostianovsky: Rapacious Beauty (pub. 2021, Hirmer Publishers). This event, hosted via Zoom, will be introduced by Gonzalo Casals, Commissioner of the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, and feature a conversation between the artist, Art Historian Tatiana Flores and Smack Mellon’s Curator & Director of Exhibitions, Rachel Vera Steinberg.
Released in conjunction with the survey exhibition, Tamara Kostianovsky, Between Wounds and Folds, this book highlights the artist’s distinct bodies of work, some of which are on view at Smack Mellon through October 31. The 80-page, full color monograph highlights Kostianovsky’s sculptures that she creates from textiles, and which address the relationship between landscapes, the body, and violence that take form as butchered carcasses, slayed birds, and severed trees.
“Tamara Kostianovsky creates three-dimensional sculptural forms as paradoxical meditations on the flesh. Using needlework, and with repurposed clothing and fabrics, her works depict human, bovine, avian and arboreal carcasses and body parts. The composite, accrued layers constituting these sculptures appear as flesh, flesh as meat, and meat as a symbol for conscious embodiment and a vulnerable and violated mortality. Kostianovsky’s controlled and ferocious stitching makes visible the suturing of gendered identities, the cartography of violence, migration and trauma, and the conscious and unconscious scarring that writes bodies into the landscapes that produce them.”
– Dr. Irene Enslé Bronner, Senior Lecturer, South African Research Chair in South African Art and Visual Culture, Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture, University of Johannesburg.
Pre-order a copy of Tamara Kostianovsky: Rapacious Beauty here.
Tamara Kostianovsky was born in Jerusalem, Israel in 1974, and grew up in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the National School of Fine Arts “Prilidiano Pueyrredón” in Buenos Aires and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA. Kostianovsky is the recipient of distinguished awards including a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, and grants from New York Foundation for the Arts and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation.
Her work has been exhibited at venues such as El Museo del Barrio, NY; The Jewish Museum, NY; Fuller Craft Museum, MA; Urban Institute for Contemporary Art, MI; The University of the Arts, PA; Nevada Museum of Art, NV, and many others. She has presented solo and group exhibitions in Italy, France, and Argentina.
Among many others, Kostianovsky’s artwork has been featured and reviewed in prestigious publications such as The New York Times, The Boston Globe, WBUR, The Village Voice, Marie Claire, Repubblica, El Diario New York, Colossal, and Hyperallergic.
The artist lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
Tatiana Flores is Professor of Art History and Latino and Caribbean Studies at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and Director of the Rutgers Center for Women in the Arts and Humanities. She is the author of the award-winning volume Mexico’s Revolutionary Avant-Gardes: From Estridentismo to ¡30-30! (Yale University Press, 2013) and curator of the critically acclaimed exhibition Relational Undercurrents: Contemporary Art of the Caribbean Archipelago for the Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA) in Long Beach, California as part of the Getty Foundation’s PST: LA/LA initiative (2017). She is currently President of the Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present (ASAP) and serves on the editorial boards of ASAP/Journal, liquid blackness, and Rejoinder. Her latest article is “‘Latinidad Is Cancelled’: Confronting an Anti-Black Construct,” published in Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture. She is working on the co-edited volume The Routledge Companion to Decolonizing Art History with Charlene Villaseñor-Black and Florencia San Martín. Her curated exhibition María Magdalena Campos-Pons: Sea and Self is currently on view at the Haggerty Museum in Milwaukee.
Gonzalo Casals is Commissioner of the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs. As Commissioner, he directs cultural policy for the City of New York and oversees City funding and support for over 1,000 non-profit cultural organizations which represent the full breadth of New York City’s rich cultural life.
Prior to his appointment as Commissioner by Mayor Bill de Blasio, Casals was Director of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art (2017-2020), the US leading cultural organization focusing on Queer arts and culture. During his tenure at the Museum, he expanded the museum’s mission to be inclusive of all communities under the LGBTQ+ umbrella, professionalized the museum operations, and situated the organization as a dynamic cultural hub attracting younger generations and BIPOC individuals.
As Vice President of Programs and Community Engagement at Friends of the High Line (2013-2017), he led the team in a transformative process that shifted the focus of the organization to equitable cultural practices to positively impact its surrounding neighborhoods.
For over 7 years, Casals held various roles at El Museo del Barrio (2006-2013). As Director of Education and Public Programs, he focused on cultural production as a vehicle to foster empowerment, social capital, and civic participation.
Casals consulted for CreateNYC (2016), New York City’s first comprehensive cultural plan, and was a member of the NYC Mayoral Advisory Commission on City Art, Monuments, and Markers (2017). A commission that developed guidelines on how to address monuments seen as oppressive and inconsistent with the City’s values. He was a member of NOCD-NY, a citywide alliance to revitalize arts and culture from the neighborhood up (2010-2019).
His work and opinions have been featured in The New York Times, New York Magazine, Bomb Magazine, WNYC NY, and The Huffington Post. A regular guest speaker on arts, culture, equity, and inclusion, Casals teaches at the University of the City Of New York (CUNY), New York University, and Yale University.
He is an active participant in Jackson Heights, Queens’ civic life where he has lived since 2002. Casals has recently decided to share his home with Brulik, a middle-age Siamese cat from Brighton Beach.
Photo by J.C. Cancedda
This exhibition is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, New York City Council Member Stephen Levin, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, and with generous support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Lily Auchincloss Foundation, Robert Lehman Foundation, Select Equity Group Foundation, many individuals and Smack Mellon’s Members.
Smack Mellon’s programs are also made possible with public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts and with generous support from The Edward and Sally Van Lier Fund of The New York Community Trust, Jerome Foundation, The Roy and Niuta Titus Foundation, Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation Inc., and Exploring The Arts. In-kind donations are provided by Materials for the Arts, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs/NYC Department of Sanitation/NYC Department of Education.
Smack Mellon would like to extend a special thanks to all of the individuals, foundations, and businesses who have contributed to the NYC COVID-19 Response & Impact Fund.
This program is made possible with funds from the NYSCA Electronic Media/Film in Partnership with Wave Farm: Media Arts Assistance Fund, with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
Space for Smack Mellon’s programs is generously provided by the Walentas family and Two Trees Management.