Exhibition on View:
October 27 – December 1, 2022, at the Children’s Art Carnival, 62 Hamilton Terrace, New York, NY 10031, by appointment only. 

Opening Reception: October 27, 2022 |6-8pm
To RSVP, please visit: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/440461802107

Utopian Voyage explores the notion of what it would look like if people of color created their ideal future realities? Afrofuturism lends us the ability to look past our current state and shape a new reality. It is a way of exploring the future and alternate realities, undefined by lasting effects of settler colonialism, through a black cultural lens and an artistic aesthetic. Shaping the world around the idea of agency, is a method of self liberation and healing. The exhibition Utopian Voyage explores three different realities. Each photographer brings their own unique vision to what this could look like. 

Albany Andaluz uses photo composites and repurposed materials such as discarded textiles to archive her personal transformations which gives a sense of growth and transitioning. Each work builds upon the last, creating a cumulative narrative of Andaluz’s journey and perhaps future self. The present, future and past seem to be all represented in this work.

Cristina Bartley Dominguez mirrors and merges symbols from layered performances reclaiming female power and identity. By placing Pre-Columbian and contemporary “artifacts” along with a female icon or gestural movements, she builds upon different foundations of history and allows them to collide. Throughout Bartley’s work you see the woman as a symbol which is a reflection of her intuition as a form of healing. 

Asherdé Amoy Gill’s work invokes thoughts of home where Black queer lives are nurtured and allowed to grow. In the Cyborg Manifesto, Donna Harraway notes that “Liberation rests on the construction of the consciousness, the imaginative apprehension of oppression, and so of possibility.” Asherde is searching for a new consciousness that can live in and inform her identity. 

Utopian Voyage begins to examine the depths of what a utopia could be, by examining the past and reclaiming it to build a better future. 

Albany Andaluz (b. 1995, Bronx, New York) uses colloquialisms to draw intersections between Caribbean, Latin American, and American experiences. A life-taught artist, her practice reflects a repurposed, multidisciplinary approach with works that resurrect discarded textiles as mixed-media sculptures, paintings, and photographs to allude to the intersections of conflict, migration, and settlement. Andaluz’s practice examines the psychosocial and socioeconomic shifts that happen during the process of acculturation through the intertwining of techniques sourced from craft, fine, folk, low and high-brow cultures. Such work has awarded Andaluz residencies, grants and features with ProjectArt NYC, BronxArtSpace, Joan Mitchell Foundation, Bronx Documentary Center, BronxNet, ArtForum, and Aperture Foundation’s magazine.

Asherdé Amoy Gill is a Cinematographer, Photographer, and teaching artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Through community building and collaboration, they seek to tell the colorful and nuanced stories of the marginalized communities that they identify with. As a producing associate for Epic Theatre Ensemble, Amoy has worked on numerous narrative and documentary projects for the company. They have worked on two feature films and three short films as a cinematographer and editor for Epic.  They have also played a key role in building the film department at Epic as a grant writer, equipment consultant, and educator. Amoy is a Co-teacher for the Virtual Youth Documentary Lab in Allentown, Pennsylvania where they support young artists who are beginning their filmmaking journeys. Over the past two years, they have helped more than thirty students discover their own filmmaking language and create short films. 

Cristina Bartley Dominiguez is a Mexican-American multidisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn. Her practice centers on the reconstruction of myths into icons of progress through the unraveling of memory and movement to negotiate the relationship between the US and Mexico. She uses movement and world-building as a way to activate history and unpack tensions between opposing cultures; commenting on the intertwining of tradition, change, and search for origin.

Kay Hickman is a New York City based documentary photographer and visual artist. With an inquisitive eye, she offers a unique and empathetic perspective into the everyday lives of the people she photographs. Her work largely focuses on documenting the human experience as it relates to identity, human rights and health issues. Hickman’s work has been featured in The New York Times, TIME, Vogue, Financial Times, Ms. Magazine, and Photographic Journal: MFON Women Photographers of the African Diaspora. Hickman also Joined the Everyday Project’s Advisory Board where she works on various initiatives.

About The Children’s Art Carnival

The Children’s Art Carnival is a Harlem-based not-for-profit providing visual arts education to young people and their families residing in Hamilton Heights and throughout New York City. Understanding that the arts are a bridge to learning and to overall competency, CAC’s long-standing objective has been to support the development and growth of participants from early ages through adulthood and to provide creative experiences that will engage young people, their families, and community members. We are equally committed to providing opportunities and resources to early-career and emerging artists From Harlem, New York City and throughout the region. For more information, please visit: www.thechildrensartcarnival.org.

About Michael Unthank
Michael Unthank has built a career in support of community based artistic expression
and development. Through his work as an arts administrator and as an independent
consultant, he has provided leadership in the arts to spark special initiatives to build new partnerships for cultural development with public and private funders, artists and local and regional arts organizations.

From 2008-2012, Unthank directed the Harlem Arts Alliance, an arts service
organization serving artists, arts activists and arts and cultural institutions. Earlier, as director of State/Local Partnerships for the New York State Council on the Arts
(NYSCA), he was responsible for statewide funding programs targeting community-
based arts organizations and initiating professional development and leadership training programs for arts professionals. He currently serves as a trustee of The Children’s Art Carnival in Harlem where he is working to develop programming and services for community members, the area’s emerging artists and on building collaborations and partnerships with other local arts organizations.