Angst is the cost of living. A feeling that is familiar to everyone, anxiety. It creeps into all our lives at some point and can shape our reality. Acknowledgment of mental health struggles are not afforded to women of color who live with anxiety due to societal pressures and standards. I want women to feel validated and seen when expressing themselves. This exhibition puts together four artists who have deep connections with their bodies, using them to depict scenarios of unease using surrealism. The depictions of their emotions portrayed as realistic or a cartoonish manner offering silliness while exploring heavy topics of the human condition. The women in this show bring their individual expressions of angst in the form of emotional realities, physical symptoms, and day-to-day life.
Lauren Caminero Susana utilizes painting, drawing, sculpture, and printmaking to explore relationships between the body and mind. Influenced by themes such as grief & loss through the passage of time she uses self portraiture and depictions of the body to capture the displacement of not feeling here nor there. Her current work focuses on her struggles with identity & self acceptance as she continues to deal with the sudden death of her mother as a teen.
Emelin Peralta explores navigating emotions during different stages of her life. “The human body reacts to your emotions, things that can not be seen, they can only be felt.” Using painting and drawing, she mainly works with self portraiture to convey invisible emotions. Her use of symbolism, romanticism, and abstract expressionism can be seen throughout.
Leonie Smith focuses on forging the gap between past and present using real and imagined scenarios. Utilizing printmaking, painting, and drawing, she uses aspects of childhood memories in humorous or creepy ways. “I move through the world as someone who deals with anxiety, my work is a reflection of scenarios both lived and imagined as a form of escapism.”
Jahzeel E. Peralta uses sculpture and drawing to create her sculptures that embody the emotional and mental battles that “go unheard of but speak loudly in silence.” The interweaving grotto and monumental scales are monoliths, juxtaposed with niche sceneries. They combine to create the narratives of life, death, fear, anxiety, and the transcendent merit of life.
Destiny Jones is a multidisciplinary Bronx based artist, curator, and teaching artist. My art forms range from printmaking, ceramics, photography, and digital art. My work centers black feminism, identity, and growing pains, with a focus of intersectionality exploring the issues of the past that continue to perpetuate the modern world.
