Artist Mentorship Program
Roxana Barba and Daniel Almeida
Project Details
Miami-based Latinx visual artists Daniel Arturo Almeida and Roxana Barba engaged in a reciprocal exchange, sharing knowledge, research and sensibilities around: (1) Installation conceptualization and design (Almeida – Barba) and (2) Incorporation of movement and choreography (Barba – Almeida).
Almeida and Barba met both online and in person at a dance studio, museum exhibition, Barba’s studio and via Zoom for a total of six times.
Almeida was interested in exploring the use of body gestures and movement in his work, incorporating choreographic frameworks to his practice to further expand his ideas and concepts.
Barba graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in dance performance from New World School of the Arts and in addition to video, film and mixed media, she creates multimedia dance performances for the stage. Barba designed exploratory exercises for Almeida using the body, movement and choreography. She also pulled examples from her own work, as well as from pioneering and contemporary artists who intersect movement and image.
In turn, Almeida shared his experience and knowledge of the format of installation, listing again referential materials and developing exploratory exercises. Although Barba completed two years of undergraduate studies in visual arts in Pontificia Universidad Catolica (Lima, Peru) and her practice has evolved into including video, film, mixed media and performance, she was interested in exploring the format of installation deeply with the help of Almeida. Taking a look at the history and evolution of installation, as well as examples of his own work and other artists, Almeida provided Roxana with practical exercises to extend her stage performance work into multimedia installations, translating the content of scenes, narrative arcs and performative gestures into modular elements that carry the essence of her work.
Roxana and Daniel documented their exchange in two ways:
a) A curriculum guide covering elements of our practice and lessons providing exercises and prompts to extend key resolutions from their mentorship to a wider audience (embedded below)
b) An online repository archiving footage and resources exchanged during their time participating on the program that can be viewed here: https://www.are.na/roxana-barba/uslaf-mentorship-almeida-barba
Their mentorship exchange has been quite fruitful as they engaged in two exhibitions: ‘Re-collections’, a group exhibit presented by the Latinx Project at NYU that Almeida curated, in which Barba participated with a video installation, and Barba’s solo show with Almeida as curator. Lastly, Almeida is working towards an exhibition at Locust Projects in September, 2024 for which he is creating a piece that includes performance. Their mentorship continues flourishing.
Bios
Roxana Barba (Lima, Peru) is a Miami-based artist, whose research-driven practice
incorporates interdisciplinary uses of performance, video and installation. Her recent
body of work originates from artistic and bibliographical research into ancestral
indigenous cosmology from Peru and decolonial observation of the past and future.
Developed in close collaboration with multidisciplinary teams of artists, her dance
performances layer multi-sensory storytelling, using video, sound and installation. Her films, at times minimalistic and meditative, take the form of intimate offerings.
Her works have been presented by Miami Light Project, Perez Art Museum and Miami
Performance Festival, among others, and have received support from The Knight
Foundation, South Arts and South Florida PBS.
She is one of six 2022 Knight Award Winners currently working on ‘In my center, a
cyborg seed,’ an interactive audiovisual performance that explores technology, the
future and myth. Her most recent performance work ‘Apuntes Americanos’ premiered in
2022 in Lima, Peru with support from Alianza Francesa Cultural de Lima and
Correlacion Contemporanea. She will present ‘Apuntes Americanos-Kanay’ in Miami in
October, 2023, in co-production with The Koubek Center.
Roxana pursued undergraduate visual arts studies in her native Perú prior to receiving
her BFA in Dance from New World School of the Arts (Miami, Florida). She has been in
residency at Cucalorus Film Festival (North Carolina, US), Correlacion Contemporanea
(Peru) and is currently a resident artist at Laundromat Art Space in Little Haiti, Miami.
Daniel Arturo Almeida (b. 1992, Caracas, Venezuela) is a cultural producer and Interdisciplinary artist working through photography, installation, archiving, and public engagement. Daniel’s practice chronicles intimate and collective stories that shape belief systems and hierarchies of power in the Americas. The product of generational migrations, Almeida researches images, music, anecdotes, and documents portraying loss, fervor, nostalgia, and collective amnesia. He has exhibited in various institutions, galleries, and festivals, including A.I.R. Gallery, The Center for Art, Research, and Alliances (CARA), Tiger Strikes Asteroids, La Salita Project, Columbia Teachers College, Bridge Red Studios, Satellite Art Show, and the SVA Chelsea Galleries, among others.
Almeida was a NEW INC member from 2021 to 2023, along with the co-founded collective, rico robo. He is the 2023-2024 Guest Curatorial Fellow at the Latinx Project at New York University.
His work has been reviewed in Hyperallergic and The Daily Lazy. He holds an MFA in Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts (2020) and a BFA in Art and Art History from Florida International University (2017). He currently works between Miami, FL, and New York, NY.