Vendah: Cornelius Tulloch by CUE Art Foundation

All artwork © Cornelius Tulloch Photos by David Michael Cortes and Leo Ng CUE Art Foundation 137 West 25th Street New York, NY 10001 Graphic design by Jenni Oughton Surasky

September 7 - October 21, 2023 CUE Art Foundation Exhibition Mentor: Danny Baez Featuring a catalogue interview with the artist by Kalila Ain, mentored by Dr. Joan Morgan

Detail of Verandah Views: Vendah, 2023. Sublimation print on georgette fabric, faux silk, metal, thread; 8.5 x 12 feet. Photo by David Michael Cortes.

About the Exhibition Vendah is a solo exhibition by Miami-based artist and architect Cornelius Tulloch, with mentorship from Danny Baez. The exhibition presents new works by Tulloch that investigate the social and spatial formation of culture. Through layered explorations that draw upon narratives of Caribbean markets, Tulloch blurs the boundaries of photography, painting, printmaking, and installation. Visible within this new body of work are tactile stories of hybridity and fluidity—of people, objects, and structures that represent what renowned Martinican philosopher Édouard Glissant referred to as “new beings in a different space.” Vendah transforms CUE’s gallery space into a vibrant site of exchange. Reflecting upon his own Jamaican and AfricanAmerican heritage as well as Glissant’s writings about Antillanité (Caribbean-ness) and the subsequent theory of Créolité (Creoleness), Tulloch explores vernacular marketplaces from Kingston to Miami to New York. In his works, he incorporates found materials such as wood, tarp, and fabric. With additive textural interventions, he collages, builds, and reveals informal architectures, uprooted produce, and complex relationships between people. Playing with legibility and opacity, he portrays his subjects in glimpses and moments that make them at once recognizable and yet not fully perceptible, as if rendered from a hazy photograph or a distant memory. Amidst this obscurity, however, the image of the vendah emerges as an emblem of embodied exchange, an arbiter of cultural symbolism that deftly navigates dynamics of nationalism, ethnicity, class, social hierarchy, and interpersonal relations in interactions with market visitors, both local and from afar. Tulloch plays with this context, composing a space in which guests act as both observer and participant. A site-specific installation within the exhibition invites us in, serving as a welcoming interior to share stories of cultural memory in the form of recipes. Encouraging contributions that draw from the landscapes we each call home, Vendah empowers us to contemplate the histories and spaces we embody, and the forms of culture and identity we celebrate, uplift, subvert, and obscure. Vendah is the artist’s first solo show in New York City, and is accompanied by Tides: Spatial Memory of Being, a site-specific installation on Governors Island as part of NADA House. Through these projects, Tulloch creates an homage to diasporic movement as perceived through the senses—the spaces we inhabit, the food we cultivate, and the landscapes of our existence…and our imagination.

Installation view of Vendah, 2023. Photo by Leo Ng.

Artist Statement Cornelius Tulloch In my work, I render the phenomenological qualities of culture visible through visual art, photography, and architecture. I explore Black and Caribbean narratives by depicting everyday items as cultural icons and spaces that foster identity. As an interdisciplinary artist, my work transcends traditional mediums and disciplines, seeking to blur boundaries with the intent of dynamic storytelling. Growing up between Miami and Jamaica, I have always been interested in how landscapes mold identity; in how culture exists between geographic and linguistic borders and between natural and built spaces. My work positions identity as a landscape, addressing cultural shifts and creating new visual and architectural languages to represent a hybridity or creolization that is not readily definable. Movement has been constant in Black and Caribbean histories, creating a fluid diaspora that navigates both tradition and assimilation to new landscapes. In many of my works, I use processes of collaging and layering to draw from and build upon stories from various places and time periods. My photographic practice serves as the origin of most of my works, and incorporates narratives of community and place that are connected to but go beyond my own personal experience. I am interested in the performance of identity, and in speculative futures that shape spatial and social interactions. My work visualizes contemporary Caribbean-American life; the everyday is reimagined into cinematic scenes in which lighting and color become characters. Through these vignettes, I seek to highlight – but also complicate – the transatlantic evolution of culture and the portrayal of people, landscapes, and the built environment in the past, present, and future.

Artist Bio Cornelius Tulloch is a Miami-based interdisciplinary artist and architect. His work transcends the boundaries of photography, fine art, and architecture. Tulloch focuses on how creative mediums can be combined and subverted to tell powerful stories. Cinematic moments, spatial complexity, light, and color are important characters in his practice. His work explores the importance of cultural identity within built environments and how space shapes culture, which in turn cultivates landscapes. Tulloch’s work has been shown in institutions such as the Kennedy Center, Washington D.C.; NYU Center for Black Visual Culture, New York; Faena Art Project Room, Miami; and the MAXXI, Rome. He was a 2016 Presidential Scholar in the Arts, and his work is presented as part of the permanent collection of the Studio Museum in Harlem. Tulloch has won numerous prizes and residencies; he was named an Emerging Visionary Grantee by Instagram and the Brooklyn Museum’s Black Visionaries Program in 2022, is a two-time Oolite Ellies Award recipient, and received the 2023 YoungArts Jorge M. Perez Award. Many of Tulloch’s projects have been grounded in his upbringing and communities in Miami, as well as inspired by his Jamaican and AfricanAmerican heritage. His work expresses the ways in which bodies exist between cultures and borders. Tulloch’s multidisciplinary practice seeks to redefine and reshape the boundaries of art and space.

Maven, 2023. Oil paint and digital collage on wood panel; 36 x 48 inches. Photo by David Michael Cortes.

Reapings of the Labored, 2023. Photography, digital collage, wood; 60 x 32 x 1.5 inches. Photo by David Michael Cortes.

Mentor Statement Danny Baez In 2022, I first came across the work of Cornelius Tulloch to the ornamental metal pieces found on the fences of many on Collins Avenue in Miami at Faena Project Room. There, houses throughout the Caribbean. He revitalizes these objects I encountered a vibrant pink wall with almost-fluorescent by bravely jumbling, collaging, and mixing media, often photographs of subjects decked in transcendent fashion. combining photography, drawing, painting, and sculpture For the show, called An Exploration of Adornment, Cornelius in the same work. The result is a feeling of familiarity that collaborated with friend and fellow artist Diana Eusebio, also seems distant at times – a memory of sorts, perhaps not whose work I was familiar with solely through Instagram. lived in whole by him, but ingrained in his subconscious, a I saw it glowing through the windows, and never got the part of his genetic map. chance to walk through it. Cornelius stands out to me as a fresh voice, one that For that trip, I was invited to Miami to organize the end- evades classification. This stands in contrast to so much of of-year exhibition at Oolite. During the opening, I first met the art market these days, when it often feels like performative Cornelius in person, and got a glimpse of his 10,000 watt smile actions take precedence over intentionality, integrity, and and his popularity amongst his peers. I saw him again briefly self-reflection. His work defies the ubiquitous desirability this Spring at Frieze in New York, and as often happens, we of conforming to mediums of “mass consumption,” and his spoke about a solid meeting that never arose. practice surpasses simplistic engagement with his own idenA little while later, out of the blue, I got a message from tity as a BIPOC artist, eschewing easy sources of attention CUE’s Director, Jinny Khanduja, asking if I would be inter- or validation. He is one of those artists who I refer to as a ested in mentoring Cornelius for his upcoming exhibition at “five-tool creative.” He is many in the body of one, and it’s their space in Chelsea. My first response, besides gratitude nothing short of remarkable. To have the chance to mentor for being considered, was to ask if she was sure about me him, and to witness his professional composure and talent doing this, and if Cornelius would be into the idea. She said, at such a young age, has been a privilege. I have learned so to both, a definitive yes. much that the mentorship has felt mutual, and has left me With Vendah, Cornelius delves into his heritage, bringing mesmerized that this is very much just the beginning. One forward, among a plethora of subjects, the ecosystem of local can only wonder what else the future holds for him. economies, especially those derived from street markets in the Caribbean. We immediately connected around the cultural similarities of our islands (Jamaica and the Dominican Republic) and the impacts of colonization. Cornelius has often visited Jamaica, a country colonized by the British Danny Baez is a Dominican-born, NYC-based cultural producer from which one side of his family hails, but I learned that and curator. Baez is currently the Head of Arts at Kickstarter. he has also done research and residencies in both Colombia He is also director and founder of REGULARNORMAL gallery, and Suriname, one colonized by Spaniards and the other by one-half of the founding duo behind MECA (Puerto Rico the Dutch. We are so used to seeing our cultures through and the Dominican Republic's premier art fair), co-founder the colonial lens, and to understanding our relationships to and board member of ARTNOIR, member of the Young home as more closely connected with others who share our Collectors Council of El Museo del Barrio, Board Member specific colonial history. With this body of work, Cornelius of ISCP (International Studio & Curatorial Program), Board explodes this idea, embracing the interconnectedness of Member of New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA), and former the Caribbean while celebrating the nuances of local and External Affairs Representative for Gavin Brown Enterprise. diasporic identity. He firmly believes in the power of building and working in Utilizing his architectural skills, he builds surfaces with practice with community. Baez has organized various exhimaterials that are staples of the islands, from wood planks bitions in New York since 2010.

Mentor Bio

Mentor Danny Baez and artist Cornelius Tulloch at the opening reception of Vendah, 2023. Photo by David Michael Cortes.

Clockwise from top left: Riddims, Zinc and Pywood Mountains, and Riva Mout, 2023. Various media, including: photography, mixed media collage, wood, gel transfer, india ink, MDF. Photo by David Michael Cortes.

Detail of Dutch Pot Tales, 2023. Site-specific installation with paper, photography, marker; Dimensions vary with installation. Photo by David Michael Cortes.

"Those that do not smile will kill me", 2023. Oil paint and digital collage on wood panel; 24 x 18 inches. Photo by David Michael Cortes.

Artist Interview Kalila Ain Cornelius Tulloch’s Vendah (vendor) brilliantly asks us to reconsider how we identify Antillanité (Caribbean-ness), Créolité (Creole-ness), and Blackness throughout the Caribbean, Africa, and the Americas. Tulloch’s travels to specific sites led him to a definition of connected Caribbean identity. Through installation, architecture, printmaking, and painting, he transports us to moments and places that expand his perspective. The vendahs of the marketplace, though visible, are porous and evade our gaze. Works such as "Those that do not smile will kill me," with its warning of the concentrated poison in unripe ackee, and Plantain Prayer, which pays reverence to an iconic fruit of the islands, remind us that food is a bridge between lands, languages, and lived experiences. Whether we say plantain (Jamaica), platano (Cuba), or plantayne (Uganda), Vendah softens our oppositions, and recognizes magnificence in transformation. – Kalila Ain

palette apparent in the tarps at the marketplace in Jamaica. In 2022, when I showed work in an exhibition called Culture Caribana, an artist named Lauren Baccus shared a quote that introduced me to the concept of the Caribbean as one unified landscape rather than an archipelago. There came this layeredness when I started to think about the Caribbean as a continuous landscape connected under the water rather than separated. I have always seen very blue water as a signifier of what the Caribbean is, so I used that as a tool when establishing a visual language people could identify with, and it became a motif throughout the exhibition. Recognizing water as the connector of these spaces, and allowing us movement from location to location, has generated an expansion of what Caribbean identity looks like, sounds like, tastes like. When I was introduced to Glissant years ago, I began to consider Créolité more expansively, and investigate new ideas of Caribbean-ness, particKALILA AIN: Upon entering the gallery, your work ularly between Caribbean traditions and new brought me immediately to water. I thought about landscapes. Growing up in both Jamaica and Miami, weathered boats, eroded materials, cutting boards, I always noticed an exchange of pallets, materials, inventiveness, and resilience. Typically when water walls. I saw hand-painted signs in Jamaica that is incorporated as it relates to the diaspora, it’s a were also in certain Caribbean neighborhoods in metaphor for breaking. With mention of Édouard Miami, but not in other American cities. While Glissant in the press release, I wouldn’t say that's visiting Cartagena and Santa Marta, I thought: your intention here. How are you using water to this feels very much like Jamaica. We're all cousins, convey Caribbean identity in this body of work? we're all connected. We have our differences where cultures split, and there's beauty in the nuances CORNELIUS TULLOCH: As I was traveling the of each region as our cultures shift and adapt. I’ve Caribbean, I visited Jamaica, Miami, Colombia, and blurred the boundaries of these different locations, Suriname, and I collected all these images of water. collaging them. Allowing for a sense of material There was this theme of color, with aquas and weatherednes is one of my approaches to underblues building up in my process – this same color standing memory.

KA: The connectedness you describe under the water is truly apparent throughout the portals you’ve created in the exhibition. The oculi in Catch and Produce Patwah, the fragmented iron gate in Marina and Dougie’s Wholesale, and of course the curtains of Verandah Views. The open curtains invite our gaze to observe a marketplace that could be Jamaica, Haiti, or Ghana. What were you thinking about while constructing these entryways? CT: I have been exploring what I would describe as ephemeral architecture: windows, doors, portals to the outside world and, particularly, the verandah of houses, which is the space between public and private. I'm working through the idea of architectural memory through materiality, and how it connects us culturally. It can give sensations and feelings about what these spaces are to us and what makes them Caribbean or not Caribbean. Verandah Views is an image of Charles Gordon Market in Montego Bay, Jamaica. Rather than creating a perfected image, I’m sharing notes and hints. I want people to be intrigued by the feeling and aspects of the image rather than focusing on individuals. I always ask myself: how do we break the frame? Photographs capture moments, but what's coming next? Scale makes a big difference, and adding this portal into the gallery space allowed me to invite people into a scene while leaving room for them to wonder what's happening outside this exact moment. Where exactly is this? As I’m describing these complexities of what the Caribbean is, I’m also considering what these places look like outside of the Caribbean. Whether in West Africa or Miami, there are certain spaces that still feel like or remind you of home. KA: Glissant's concept of opacity feels prominent throughout the completed works as well as through your physical labor of printmaking, layering, obscurification, and manipulation of images. There are beautifully cropped compositions of your parents cooking and showcasing different ingredients. Tell me about the experience of photographing your parents and how you

came to conceive of Dougie's Wholesale as a site of cultural exchange. CT: I am always thinking of my family and how to make concepts discussed by artists and academics accessible. If my family doesn't enjoy an exhibition and isn’t grasping what's going on in a show, then it's not good. If people not connected to the art world cannot grasp the concept, to me, it defeats the purpose of why I’m making work. I try to clearly represent the idea of cultural exchange, and it always comes back to food. Food was a big thing in my household. Both of my parents cook. Frequently, we cook as a family with ingredients from our yard in Jamaica. There is always a conversation; I have learned about many different places through food. A lot of ideas in this show come from Fruits of Our Mother's Labor, a photographic series I developed of my mom and dad holding fruits and plants grown at our house. The imagery was iconic and venerating. Now, anytime they pick something from our yard or return from the market, they say ”oh, he has first dibs, let him choose what he wants to photograph.” Or my dad will come with specific fruits and say “you need to photograph this." Maven, which shows a figure with a mesh bag carrying plantains on her head, is a portrait of my mother. Multiple people have asked me if it's a self-portrait because we have similar eyes. The plantain is one of those fruits that explains the multi-layeredness of Caribbean identity, Black identity, and cultural connectedness. It's been great to include my family; they’ve become part of the process and development of my work, and food is a part of our storytelling. With Dougie's Wholesale, I was interested in creating an entry point where there could be more dialogue among visitors. My focus is for people who are of Caribbean or any Afro-diasporic background to get the nuances of the work, but I also wanted people of different backgrounds to feel invited into the conversation as guests. Decentering my own perspective has allowed visitors to reflect and actively participate by sharing their own recipes.

Detail of Dougie's Wholesale, 2023. Crocus bags, paper, fake fruit. Dimensions vary with installation. Photo by David Michael Cortes.

Left to right: Marina and Transatlantic Expressions, 2023. Various media, including: photography, digital collage, wood, ironwork, acrylic paint, house paint, wax, india ink, gel transfer. Photo by David Michael Cortes.

Market Mementos: Soursop Sweet, 2023. Photography, digital collage, wood, acrylic paint, india ink; 9 x 12 inches. Photo by David Michael Cortes.

Market Mementos: Sails of Blue, 2023. Photography, mixed media collage, wood, metal nails, house paint, india ink; 9 x 12 inches. Photo by David Michael Cortes.

KA: You touched on it briefly in terms of the series Fruits of Our Mother's Labor, but do you recall the first thoughts that led to the creation of the body of work presented in Vendah? CT: I initially wanted to have a conversation about Caribbean markets through Miami and Jamaica. The funny thing is that there's a specific Jamaican curry brand that is manufactured in Miami but exported to be sold in Jamaica. So I began to look at the exchange between these two spaces through markets and food production; although separated, they're connected. It wasn't until I came across these motifs of water from going to Cartagena that I actively put it all together. Visiting a Maroon village in the Amazon and seeing their culture intact because of geographic separation was the first time I experienced the Caribbean outside of my own version and lens of Jamaica. As my own understanding expanded, I was able to explore more of what I wanted the show to encapsulate. KA: Is there anything specific you want viewers to carry with them after participating in the exhibition? CT: I want people to ask questions about their own histories, and consider their cultures through the lens of exchange. What are the things that make us who we are? Trace where those things come from. What does it mean for our culture to exist in this new hybrid, hyphenated experience? I want people to look more intentionally at how we tell stories through everyday objects, and how these items inform our understanding of identity and cultural evolution KA: Lastly, why the title Vendah? CT: Market vendors literally and figuratively feed the entire country. Our cultural traditions and recipes exist due to the labor they put in. When it comes to Caribbean and Black culture, there is a historical tie to labor and landscape. The way culture cultivates itself in Jamaica, in particular, begins to mend that history. The work vendors do and their street culture colloquialisms are part of the psyche of the country and its people. This is a microcosm affecting the macrocosm, catalyzing massive cultural exchange and development.

Interviewer Bio Kalila Ain is a Brooklyn-based artist and writer. She studied at the Art Students League of New York and Istituto Lorenzo de' Medici in Florence, Italy, and earned her bachelor's degree in painting and art history from SUNY Purchase. Her painting and printmaking practice is grounded in healing from breaking and illuminating sources of reconnection succeeding fragmentation. Ain's work is presented in permanent installations at the Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital in New York City and The Colored Girls Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She is a Laundromat Project grant recipient and illustrator of the children's book Life is Fine. Her painting My Mother Named Me Beloved was selected by New York University’s Center for Black Visual Culture to represent The Black Rest Project initative.

Mentor Bio Dr. Joan Morgan is the Program Director of the Center for Black Visual Culture at New York University. She is an award-winning cultural critic, feminist author, Grammy nominated songwriter, and pioneering hip-hop journalist. Morgan coined the term “hip-hop feminism” in 1999, when she published the groundbreaking book, When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: A Hip-Hop Feminist Breaks it Down, which is taught at universities globally. Regarded internationally as an expert on the topics of hip-hop, race, and gender, Morgan has made numerous television, radio, and film appearances, including on HBOMax, Netflix, Lifetime, MTV, BET, VH-1, CNN, WBAI’s The Spin, and MSNBC. She has written for numerous publications including Vibe, Essence, Ms., The New York Times, and British Vogue. Dr. Morgan has been a Visiting Scholar at The New School, Vanderbilt, and Duke, and a Visiting Assistant Professor at the School of Cultural Analysis at NYU. She was a Visiting Lecturer at Stanford University’s Institute for the Diversity of the Arts, where she was awarded the Dr. St. Clair Drake Teaching Award. She is the first Visiting Scholar to ever receive it. Dr. Morgan is a mentor for Unlock Her Potential and serves on the Board of the National YoungArts Foundation. She is currently working on a screenplay adaptation of her first book, which has been optioned for screen rights. Jamaican born and South Bronx bred, Dr. Morgan is a proud native New Yorker.

Verandah Views: Vendah, 2023. Sublimation print on georgette fabric, faux silk, metal, thread; 8.5 x 12 feet. Photo by David Michael Cortes.

Detail of Tides: Spatial Memory of Being, 2023. Photo by Leo Ng.

Tides: Spatial Memory of Being NADA House In conjunction with Vendah, CUE presents Tides: Spatial Memory of Being, a site-specific installation by Cornelius Tulloch on Governors Island as part of NADA House. The installation reimagines the porch of Nolan Park House 18 by embedding within its railing fabric that depicts collaged scenes of Black and Caribbean domestic life. Screening in the porch space, Tulloch explores the notion of spatial memory within vernacular architecture. A montage of the artist’s archival family photos and imagery of ornamental ironwork are incorporated into the facade of the existing structure. The installation recontextualizes the lived experience of the porch space, and puts it into conversation with other cultural contexts. Tides builds upon Tulloch’s ongoing practice that explores vernacular architecture to investigate cultural hybridity in tactile and sensory ways. The simple architectural language of the porch allows for a continual transformation. As the entryway to the home and a middle ground between the private interior and the public realm, the porch functions as a threshold between domestic experience and forms of cultural exchange that build community. Referencing the water that surrounds Governors Island, Tulloch connects the site spatially to the archipelagos of his ancestry, reflecting upon the persistent fluidity of people and culture.

Installation view of Tides: Spatial Memory of Being, 2023. Photo by Leo Ng.

Left to right: Produce Patwah, Woven Archipelagos, and Catch, 2023. Various media, including: photography, gel transfer, wood, india ink, MDF, mixed media collage, house paint, adhesive. Photo by David Michael Cortes.

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CUE Art Foundation is a nonprofit organization that works with and for emerging and underrecognized artists and art workers to create new opportunities and present varied perspectives in the arts. Through our gallery space and public programs, we foster the development of thought-provoking exhibitions and events, create avenues for mentorship, cultivate relationships amongst peers and the public, and facilitate the exchange of ideas. Founded in 2003, CUE was established with the purpose of presenting a wide range of artist work from many different contexts. Since its inception, the organization has supported artists who experiment and take risks that challenge public perceptions, as well as those whose work has been less visible in commercial and institutional venues. Exhibiting artists are selected through two methods: nomination by an established artist or selection via our annual open call. In line with CUE’s commitment to providing substantive professional development opportunities, each artist is paired with a mentor, an established curator or artist who provides support throughout the process of developing each exhibition. To learn more about CUE, visit us online or sign up for our newsletter at www.cueartfoundation.org..

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Detail of Dougie’s Wholesale, 2023. Site-specific installation with sublimation print on georgette fabric, chiffon, wood; Dimensions vary with installation. Photo by Leo Ng

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