After Image - Sensing Brownness

Amber Jamilla Musser writes about my Dark Matter photography series for her essay Sensing Brownness: On Racialization, Perception, and Method. She states that “visibility comes down to a question of valuation. In this way, Catbagan reminds us that our experience of art, museums, and even knowledge production more broadly is framed by work, people, and spaces that are often marginalized.” Her article is featured in the March 2022 issue of After Image.

Object II Body Studies on view at La Mama Galleria

Object II Body Studies is currently on view in La Mama Galleria’s Window Videos Program from 02.20-03.06.22 curated by C. Finley.

Object II Body Studies is a collaborative performance and video project with artist IV Castellanos that utilizes industrial objects found in various art institutions, restructuring their use to investigate the multiple dynamics between labor and tension. The movements focus on intimate object to body transfers.

The Family Show at La Mama Galleria

Catch my piece at the final days of The Family Show at La Mama Galleria at 47 Great Jones Street, NYC. The show, which runs from December 17, 2021 - January 7, 2022, is a long standing tradition to celebrate community.

Founded in 1984, La Galleria is a nonprofit gallery committed to nurturing experimentation in the visual arts. La Galleria encourages an active dialogue between new media, performance, the plastic and visual arts, curatorial projects, and educational initiatives. It serves the East Village community by offering diverse programming to an inter-generational audience, and expanding the parameters of a traditional gallery space. As a non-profit, La Galleria is able to provide artists and curators with unique exhibition opportunities that are largely out of reach in a commercial gallery setting.

Performance is Alive x Satellite Art Show - Art Basel and Miami Arts Week

Object II Body Studies, my performance and video collaborative project with artist IV Castellanos, screened at Performance is Alive x Satellite Art Show, Miami’s only Performance-Based Art Fair during Miami Art from 11/30-12/4.

Curatorial Statement: “In the wake of the pandemic, this program represents the re-emergence and reclamation of the body. The selected artists recognize the revolutionary power of the body through actions that often serve as a release from the trauma inflicted through centuries of heteronormative and colonial conditioning. In addition, this year’s program seeks work that actively rejects the systems perpetuating injustice and serves as a safe space for historically marginalized communities. This is the liberation of the body.” -Quinn Dukes

Every Woman Biennial x Superchief Gallery NFT

The 2021 Every Woman Biennial is presenting MY LOVE IS YOUR LOVE, its 1st NFT Biennial, taking on and diversifying the NFT world. Their aim is to give women and non-binary artists a platform to experiment with new technology and mint NFTs. The exhibition is presented at Superchief Gallery NFT’s online platform as well as its physical space from June 24-July 3 in New York. Click on the above image to view my first NFT work.

Brooklyn Rail - Art Books Review

Amber Jamilla Musser reviews all three shows at the Center for Book Arts Spring 2021 exhibition including my show Lights, Tunnels, Passages, and Shadows. She connects them as manifesting “theorist Donna Haraway’s concept of sympoiesis and use the forms of the book to enlarge what constitutes knowledge and being together.” The review is featured in the June issue of the Brooklyn Rail.

Lights, Tunnels, Passages & Shadows - Center for Book Arts

Lights, Tunnels, Passages, and Shadows exhibition examines the transcendent possibilities of peripheral spaces within museums. A utilitarian passage transforms into an ethereal opening. A mundane corner vibrates with a change of light. An invisible worker’s movement conveys visual poetry. Stairwells become illuminated, meaningful, and spiritual. Shifting the visual paradigm of these spaces, objects, and people changes their meaning and the viewers’ relation to them.

The photographic series is featured in a boxed folio containing three fold-outs that enable the images to be arranged into multiple compositions creating abstract narratives that connect the peripheral to the sublime while focusing on the museum worker as mediator. These re-configured fold-outs act as architectural interventions illustrating that while the marginal is designated towards boundaries, it can also be the edge towards boundlessness.

A Spirit of Disruption

My collab video Abang-guard Work Habits: ARoS with artist Jevijoe Vitug is part of media in the round section of A Spirit of Disruption exhibition commemorating SFAI’s 150th anniversary. Curated by Margaret Tedesco and Leila Weefur the show focuses on “celebrating the history of the institution and prioritizing untold stories from those who haven’t historically been included or made visible.” The exhibtion will be on view from March 19-July 3 and was currently featured in Hyperallergic.