Translucent Tethers
Tyrone Santana Copeland, Curator

At first glance, it may be difficult to see how each body of work connects with one another. The photographers have distinct visual styles which span the genres of portraiture, editorial, abstract, documentary, experimental, and conceptual photography. They create a visual dialect unique to their approach and process. It is a style imbued with cultural, political, historical, artistic, and personal references. From these cues, we start to notice the connections between them. 

Translucent Tethers speaks to the intersectionality of each photographic project, as well as those between photographer and subject matter. These points of interest bind people together. They can take the form of places, relationships, culture, or identity. The photographers are both telling stories tied to their personal lives and also continuing a larger conversation about society.

Cali M. Banks documents her hometown of Syracuse, New York, in an effort to preserve the moments and places of her youth. These lost spaces spent with friends and family are kept alive in her memories and find a second life in the abstract images she creates. Jennifer Teresa Villanueva tells a story about community, family, and identity through a US/Mexico lens by using traditional portrait and documentary photography. There are various ways in which a community is created. Jordana Bermúdez documents the world of women skateboarders, specifically queer skateboarders. She highlights a community within a community through documentary and editorial photography. Andrew Kung focuses on the representation of Asian American men in America. He creates scenes of leisure and play to reimagine masculinity away from the US context. 

Lieh Sugai uses photography to contemplate what home means to her and how to address the loss of home when one relocates. Using nature, she approaches her subjects with surrealism and abstraction in an attempt to combine two places (US & Japan) into one. In the same vein, Avijit Halder explores the cultural sense of what home is. They play with the space between culture, mythology, and identity. Oji Haynes (re)creates a world based on everyday life in the Black community. His images straddle the lines of documentary, studio, street, and conceptual photography. Chen Xiangyun’s project seeks to find solace in the LGBTQIA+ community during a time of isolation. They tell the stories of queer POC couples in romantic relationships and provide a glimpse into the dynamics of home life and partnership. Shina Peng focuses on Japan’s familial identity politics and what it means to be hāfu (half or mixed). She addresses the displacement they feel in their own country. Sharon Miller focuses on youth who have been marginalized by American society and the inner child of the viewer. Her images are a celebration of young people, their creativity, and potential. 

The 2024 En Foco Photography Fellows address the spoken and unspoken conversations in our communities and within ourselves. They curate a space where people can be vulnerable, where one finds safety, belonging, acceptance, and strength to become the person they want to be.

Cali M. Banks (Munsee Lenape/Scottish) is a lens-based artist who lives and works in Syracuse, New York. She holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Media Arts Practices from the University of Colorado Boulder (Boulder, Colorado), and a BA in Art and Technology and Global Health Studies from Allegheny College (Meadville, Pennsylvania). Cali is the Communications Coordinator for Light Work (Syracuse, New York), and also an adjunct professor of photography, video art and filmmaking for Syracuse University (Syracuse, New York) and various Indiana University campuses. She has most recently exhibited work during Art Basel Miami and at Every Woman Biennial  (London, England), RedLine Contemporary Art Center (Denver, Colorado), Tiger Strikes Asteroid (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), Atlanta Film Festival, and Anthology Film Archives (New York, New York). Banks also has an upcoming solo exhibition at the Everson Museum of Art (Syracuse, New York), opening in August 2024.

Jordana Bermúdez is a documentary photographer, photo editor, and aspiring filmmaker from Mexico City, based in New York City, since 2019. Her work focuses on identity, specifically as it relates to gender, youth, and immigration. She is particularly proud of her long-term project Girls Can’t Skate, which focuses on an all-female and queer skateboarding community in New York City. Having spent most of her life in México where gender-based violence and machismo culture are long-standing issues, she wants to amplify women’s and queer voices. Bermúdez has a bachelor’s degree in communication and a minor in film. She graduated from International Center of Photography’s (New York, New York) Documentary Practice and Visual Journalism One-Year Certificate Program and is a recipient of the Director’s Fellowship.

Avijit Halder is an Indian-born American visual artist in New York City. Beginning with photography and continuing with painting, performance, and installation, they explore their past and present identity as an artist, articulating experiences of loss, belonging, displacement, and transformation. Driven by curiosity in self-portraiture and mythology, Halder distorts and reconstructs traditional narratives of body, gender, and sexuality in an attempt to understand themself as a visual subject. Featured in Born into Brothels as a child, Halder holds an MFA in advanced photographic studies from ICP-Bard College (New York, New York) and a BFA in film and television from New York University (New York, New York). Their work has been exhibited at Higher Pictures (Brooklyn, New York), MoMA PS1 (Brooklyn, New York), and Baxter St at CCNY (New York, New York). Halder is a recipient of the Aperture Creator Labs Photo Fund 2023.

 
Oji Haynes is a very serious, silly, and sensitive artist, who confidently works on whatever makes him happy. He has been awarded The City College of New York Dean’s Prize in Art as well as being a recipient of the 2022 The Miracle Seltzer Grant from NADA. Additionally, his work has been featured in Office Magazine, FEMINIST, Booooooom, and NOWNESS. He is currently a resident at Abrons Art Center (New York, New York) as part of the 2023–24 Visual Artist AIRspace Residency Cohort and a Fellow at Houston Center for Photography (Houston, Texas).

Andrew Kung is a photographer living and working in New York. His work often centers on contested ideas of place, identity, and belonging. From subverting the male gaze to exploring the absences and omissions in Asian American history, he draws upon personal experiences to present a reimagined cultural citizenship. Andrew is currently an artist-in-residence at Light Work (Syracuse, New York). His work was chosen as a finalist for the Arnold Newman Prize for New Directions in Photographic Portraiture and has appeared in PhotoVogue and LensCulture.

Sharon Miller is an award-winning hip hop artist turned award-winning self-taught photographer, multi-hyphenate visual artist, and creative educator from Queens, New York. Along with photography, Sharon holds a plethora of creative skills, including music production, fine arts, interior design, and carpentry. Sharon is also passionate about using art for social change and founded The Creative Youth Society, an organization that teaches youth within marginalized communities creative career skills. As a photographer, Sharon’s work has been featured in Photoville NYC, Click, The Queens Chronicle, and on Spectrum News NY1. One of her recent ongoing photo projects, The Creative Ambassadors Project, features overlooked youth in editorial style portraits based on their creative career aspirations. Sharon was awarded the SONY Alpha Female grant in 2021. She seeks to continue using her artistic practice as a vessel for positive social and community change.

Shina Tser-shiuan Peng (彭澤萱) is an environmental portrait photographer based in New York City and Tokyo, Japan. Currently she resides in Brooklyn, New York. Her international upbringing as a Taiwanese American born and raised in Japan heavily impacts the themes she explores in her artwork. Through her work she questions society’s definition of identity and attempts to understand her own background. She focuses on moments of the “in-between,” the intersectionality, and the dichotomies that people exist in. Shina’s work focuses on the beauty in the mundane. Her nostalgic narratives are unexperienced memories that romanticize the repetitions of daily life.

Japanese-born Lieh Sugai is a New York visual artist who works with photography and video. Her subject matter is comprised of memories that occur between people and places, and how these are shaped by time, events, and culture. To explore them, she uses her dual perspective as a Japanese immigrant whose home is also in America. Having initially pursued graphic design at Pratt Institute (Brooklyn, New York), Lieh discovered a profound passion for photography that has since become her primary medium for navigating, expressing, and documenting diverse cultural landscapes, blending conceptual and documentary practices. Her work has been exhibited at such spaces as Foley Gallery (New York, New York), Les Rencontres d’Arles (Arles, France), and 10 14 Gallery (London, England), among others.

Jennifer Teresa Villanueva, a Mexican-American artist from Chicago, Illinois, currently resides in Brooklyn, New York. She earned a BFA with a focus on photography from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, Illinois) in 2020. and completed her MFA at the University of Texas at Austin (Austin, Texas) in 2023. Villanueva’s work characterized by vibrant color, intimate portraits, and still lifes, intricately explores her immigrant family’s experiences, addressing exploitative labor, generational trauma, and the pursuit of the American Dream. Notable awards include Aperture 2023 Creator Labs Photo Fund, Elaine G. Weitzen ISP Fellowship, and the Rauschenberg Artist Fund. Villanueva is a current Independent Study Program Fellow at the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York, New York). Her profound examination of sociological, historical, and political dimensions is conveyed through photography, prints, research, and writing, shaping a narrative rooted in the complexities of labor and immigrant life.

Chen Xiangyun is a Chinese photographer based in New York City. Their work has been shown internationally and nationally, including in the Pingyao International Photography Festival, the PhotoVogue Festival in Italy, Baxter St at the Camera Club of New York, and Center for Fine Art Photography (Fort Collins, Colorado). Chen has received the Robert Giard Grant, NYFA Immigrant Artist Program, and was a finalist for PhMuseum Women Photographers Grant and Photolucida’s Critical Mass program, both in 2022. Chen’s most recent photography project features psychologically probing portraits of their diverse queer community in the United States.

Tyrone Santana Copeland (aka SantanaCopeland) is a conceptual photographer and arts educator/administrator. He studied film and electronic arts at Bard College (Annandale-on-Hudson, New York). He later transitioned his artistic interests to photography and earned a MFA from LIU Post (Brookville, New York). He has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including being a 2017 En Foco Photography Fellow. Tyrone is the School, Youth and Group Programs Manager at The New York Transit Museum (Brooklyn, New York), overseeing K-12 and adult educational programs. Previously, he was the Manager of Youth Media Education at BRIC supervising where he supervised teaching artists. He holds an MA in education from Teachers College, Columbia University (New York, New York). His career spans the nonprofit and for-profit sectors including Peace4Kids, Lollipop Theater Network, Creative Artists Agency (CAA), and Harlem Children’s Zone. Tyrone believes in the power of art and art education and applies it to his professional and personal life.

WALLWORKS NEW YORK is a contemporary art gallery in the South Bronx, dedicated to bringing art back uptown. In the vein of Fashion MODA, WALLWORKS is dedicated to showcasing new and exciting art from both emerging and established artists, mixing “downtown” sensibility with “uptown” style; a place for exploration. The passion project of legendary Graffiti pioneer CRASH and entrepreneur Robert Kantor, WALLWORKS seeks to remind people of the rich culture of the Bronx, and encourage everyone to take a trip Uptown!

Bronx Kreate Hub is a workspace and community incubator in Mott Haven that supports the growth and continued success of local artists, creatives, and entrepreneurs. Community members represent a diverse array of specialties, including animators, graffiti artists, photographers, designers, and community organizations like En Foco and the Mott Haven Film Festival among others. Studio spaces are available at an array of affordable price points, reaffirming Kreate Hub’s commitment to building community through access.