Please join us on Saturday, February 6, at 1pm for an artist talk with Nona Faustine and Jorge Alberto Perez in conjunction with Nona Faustine’s solo show at Smack Mellon. 

Smack Mellon’s current exhibition by artist Nona Faustine, White Shoes is a poignant series of self-portraits that are at once autobiographical and a historical tribute to black women who were slaves. The locations in the White Shoes series are the historical and geographical legacy of slavery in New York City. Faustine photographed herself standing naked in sites around New York City that were formerly associated with slavery. By exposing her own vulnerability, Faustine also calls attention to the past and present exploitation of black women’s bodies. 

Nona Faustine was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY and is a graduate of The School of Visual Arts and the ICP-Bard MFA program (2013). Faustine was selected by writer/curator Charlotte Cotton as a 2014 Honorable Mention in the Camera Club of New York Competition. Her work has received press in the Huffington Post, Hyperallergic, Greybook Magazine, the Village Voice, The Guardian, and Dodge and Burn Blog. Faustine’s work has been exhibited at the Schomburg Center for Black Research in Harlem, NY; The Studio Museum of Harlem, New York, NY; Internation Center of Photography, New York, NY; and Mana Contemporary, Jersey City, NJ. 

Jorge Alberto Perez is a Cuban-born artist, curator and writer and graduate of the Bard College/International Center of Photography MFA program in New York City where he was honored as a Director’s Scholarship Fellow in 2011. Perez works in a variety of media including, but not limited to, photography, collage, installation, and writing. In 2013 Perez curated three contemporary art exhibits for Brutedge Gallery at Mana Contemporary in Jersey City, NJ. He is a contributing writer for ARC Magazine, an internation publication that focuses on Caribbean artists. In 2015, Perez was curator-in-residence at Baxter St./CCNY with the exhibit The Three Traumas and adjunct curator for the International Center of Photography’s new gallery space at Mana Contemporary with the exhibit The Future is Forever.