Youth Speaks: Joan Mitchell Foundation Young Artist Council

In some ways, the current sequestration provides ideal conditions for art. We inhabit a slower, more private world, allowing deeper connection to the limited information surrounding us. It is a good time to revisit an exhibition I saw last fall at the JMF featuring their outreach program for young artists, no longer extant: Early Practitioners Artist Council Link
And for more information, introducing the artists themselves: JMF_2019-early-art-practitioners_Link
The above is from a series of riffs of vaginal imagery on mailing labels presented in a vitrine by Manhoor Sheikh. 

This fountain, and the painting beneath it, are by Lily Fei, who explores relationships from a feminist perspective.

Duneska Suannette's Te Pareses Negra Asi, 2019, video, gouache, bristol paper, 59 x 76 inches, speaks to the cultural desire to lighten, or whiten skin tone/cultural mores in the Dominican Republic. The title translates to, "You look black like that" a comment made about the artist's braided hair. Suannette considers the origins of this micro-agression in violent massacres such as the Parsley Massacre in Haiti, 1937 when migrants who could not pronounce the word for parsley were exterminated. 

Audreamia Ardlow's wonderful meditation on *Bodega People* in The Lite,  2019, plaster, 20 x 20 inches.  The artist defines bodega people as "a tribe derived from the Nueva York concrete jungle, born with resilience and creativity. "I bridge the gap between my physical and spiritual self by transforming consumable materials into objects of connection and contemplation." The Lite is a dance movement in the mid-2000s that settled disputes nonviolently.

In Nicole Adames' A Presumed Mind, 2019, mixed media, felted wool, embroidery, 46 x 46 inches, embroidery provides pathways through enclosed spaces.

Detail

Alannah Sears' tactile meditations on familial and environmental relationships.

Jah'China de Leon's Gutter Flume, 2019, digital illustration printed on fabric, 8 x 4 feet. A consideration of water's power through the term Gutter flume: to plunge into rain water surged with power.