Under Our Feet As Above Our Heads

Under Our Feet as Above our Heads, featuring Lissy Mineo-Gonzalez, Harley Ngai Grieco, and María del Mar Hernández Gil de Lamadrid, presents an exploration into alternative processes, stepping away from the now traditional forms of image-making, and revisiting the legacies of photography. While the early adopters of photography as an artform were men, this exhibit engages with the works of three exemplary female photographers making work that explores the themes of disaster and repair, the resilience and dependence of nature.

The artists presented in Under Our Feet As Above Our Heads, create images using processes that involve the manual manipulation of chemical processes, metalworking, and archival processes to engage with the ever-changing landscape of photography, and image-making. Their works force the viewers to contend with the ideas of object vs photograph and how that influences the consumption of the materials presented. Their works reflect a common desire to connect with nature, culture, legacy, longing, and ultimately decay.

Lissy Mineo-Gonzalez’s series “Take Only What You Need” confronts the abuse, commodification, and waste of natural resources, specifically herbs, by the Agriculture Industry. Mineo-Gonzalez mimics the process of growing herbs through the use of the Van Dyck printing process, which involves the use of ferric ammonium citrate, silver nitrate, tartaric acid to create a light-sensitive emulsion, which can then applied to a surface and exposed to light to create direct contact prints. Mineo-Gonzalez’s process relies on sunlight, much like the herbs in the photographs. The Van Dyck process results in rich, warm, brown tones and an image removed from time, highlighting the impact of food waste, over-consumption, and supermarket culture. 

“Fragments, Portal, and Double Negative” by Harley Ngai Grieco, employ the use of sculptural photo-collage, copper-plate photogravure, and experimental large format photography. “Fragments” and “Portal” explore the intersection between decorative art history, archaeological decay, and traditions of landscape photography, by transferring photographs and drawings on ceramic and glass. Grieco focuses on the use of Eastern art objects and the visual language of Chinese export porcelain patterns to create images and photo sculptures that force the viewer to reconsider the relationship between image surface and object surface. “Double Negative” is a diptych experiment with multiple pieces of film contained within a single exposure; linear information on the left and tonal information on the right. Grieco also contends with the notions and the implications of the “American Landscape,” as a Chinese-American artist.

In the series “Nos veremos pronto,” María del Mar Hernández Gil de Lamadrid uses letters from her mother, which narrate the experience of life in Puerto Rico, pre- and post- the devastation of Hurricane Maria in 2017. The letters were saved as keepsakes until the most recent natural events faced by the island in 2020, the earthquakes and the coronavirus pandemic. Del Mar Hernández Gil de Lamadrid explores the ideas of memory, and photography through the use of manual manipulations, and the use of the text from her mother’s letters to connect back to her mother, to illustrate the delicate dance of disaster and repair that has become embedded into the cultural fabric of Puerto Rico.  

Lissy Mineo-Gonzalez is a Dominican-born interdisciplinary artist inspired by the juxtaposition between urbanization and the natural world. Her relationship to this friction stems from the disparate environments occupied by herself, her family, and her ancestors. Her themes explore the spectrum of eco-feminism, relationships between humans and non-human animals and plants, extinction, impermanence, and the intangibility of human consciousness. In 2020, Lissy was chosen to be an artist in residence at AlterWork Studios–in partnership with Back to the Lab NYC. In 2021, Lissy will be exhibiting her work at AlterWork Studios (Queens, NY) and Gallery Petite (Brooklyn, NY).

Harley Ngai Grieco is a Chinese American lens-based artist, born in State College, PA. She earned a BFA in photography and sculpture from The Cooper Union School of Art in 2013, receiving the Vincent J. Mielcarek Jr. Memorial Fund Prize and the Sara Cooper Hewitt Fund Prize. Harley has participated in residencies at The Bard Graduate Center, Trestle Art Space, The Vermont Studio Center, and Tiny Birch A.I.R. She was funded by the Windgate Foundation to attend workshops at UrbanGlass, The Ox-Bow School of Art, and The Penland School of Crafts, in addition to completing the AIM fellowship at The Bronx Museum in 2019. Currently, she is a Photography Technician at The Cooper Union School of Art and is based in Brooklyn, New York.

María del Mar Hernández Gil de Lamadrid is a Puerto Rican interdisciplinary artist based between Puerto Rico and Brooklyn, New York. Through photography, video art, and performance, she addresses ideas of migration, identity, media representation, colonial history, and language, using her diaspora body as context transiting between two worlds. Following the events of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, she examines the emersion of trauma caused by natural disasters, such as hurricanes and earthquakes, and where Puerto Rico stands in relation to the United States. She embodies these themes through her performance art, exploring the effects and consequences of colonialism on the island. She completed a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus, and a Master of Fine Arts in Photography, from Parsons School of Design, The New School.

Oscar J Rivera was born in Brooklyn, New York, studied photography at Parsons The New School for Design and is a founding member of the Poor Brown Kids Art Collective. His work covers a range of themes including personal relationships, sexuality and gender identity, as well as his quest to define his Latinidad. Rivera often creates bodies of work that incorporate found artifacts, vintage photographs, and his own work to create diaristic approaches to storytelling. He was previously a Studio Art Mentor with Studio in A School and worked within several summer programs teaching art to children in NYC public schools. Rivera received a scholarship to attend the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in Higher Education to develop programming on campus at The New School. He currently is a Curator and the Exhibitions and Programs Manager with En Foco.