Calendar: Art Talk: Yoan Capote and Antonia Wright

About the artists

Yoan Capote was born in Pinar del Río, Cuba in 1977 and he currently lives and works in Havana. The unique experience of being Cuban influences his work, which often deals with themes that reference Cuban reality and identity, yet are universally accessible. He studied at the Provincial School of Art in Pinar del Rio, Cuba (1988–1991), the National School of Art in Havana (1991–1995) and the Higher Institute of Art in Havana (1996–2001). Capote has exhibited extensively, including in Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, France, England, Panama, Cuba and the United States. Capote represented Cuba at the (2011) Venice Biennale along with three other artists in Cuba Mon Amour. He installed his thirty-foot tall monumental sculpture Stress in Portugal Arte 10 EDP in Lisbon in (2010). A group of outdoor sculptures were exhibited at LongHouse Reserve in East Hampton, New York (2013). Capote's work is featured in Adiós Utopia; Dreams and Deceptions in Cuban Art, a traveling exhibition at The Walker Arts Center in 2017; and his work was included in MFA Houston's exhibition Contingent Beauty: Contemporary Art in Latin America (2015-16). Capote's work is included in many public collections including 21c Museum Hotel, Louisville, Kentucky, the Kadist Art Foundation, Paris and San Francisco, the Pizzuti Collection, Columbus, Ohio; Daros Latin America, Zurich, Switzerland. Museum Beelden aan Zee, The Hague; Arizona State University Art Museum, Tempe, Arizona; Pérez Art Museum Miami, Florida; North Carolina Museum of Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Capote has received awards and grants from prestigious institutions such as the Guggenheim Foundation, UNESCO and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, New York.

Antonia Wright explores the various politics and comic facets of contemporary life through a multidisciplinary practice that blurs the boundaries between live performance, video, photography, sculpture, poetry, and perception. With extreme attention to aesthetic quality, her work brings everything to the body to create powerful visual metaphors that at times appear ambivalent but are never obscure. Wright acknowledges the layers of societal taboos and barriers between her artistic choices, and pointedly pushes them into the public realm for the viewer to examine and assimilate.

Antonia Wright studied at the International Center of Photography, and The New School in New York City where she graduated with an MFA in Poetry. She has exhibited, and been awarded artist residencies, nationally and internationally. Recent solo presentations include Locust Projects (Miami, FL), Spinello Projects (Miami, FL); Luis de Jesus Gallery (Los Angeles, CA); The Screening Room, NSU Art Museum, Ft. Lauderdale; Vizcaya Museum and Gardens (Miami, FL); and Art@Work at the Mosquera Collection, The Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami. International shows include Ping Pong (Basel, Switzerland); Faena Art Center (Buenos Aires, Argentina); The National Gallery of Art (Nassau, Bahamas), and Aeroplastics (Brussels, Belgium). Wright was the first artist-in-residence at the Lotus House Shelter for women and children in Overtown, Miami, in 2012, and was more recently awarded residencies at Pioneer Works (2015) and the Leipzig International Program (2016). Wright's work has been presented in publications including The New York Times, Artforum's Critics' Picks, Art In America, New York Magazine, The Miami Herald, and The Art Newspaper.