73.7 x 48.3 cms
Roberto Visani is a multi-media artist residing in Brooklyn, New York. He has exhibited at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, The Studio Museum in Harlem, The Bronx Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and Barbican Galleries. Visani has been awarded residencies from Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Chelsea College of Art and Abrons Art Center. He is a NYFA Fellow in Sculpture and was a Fulbright Fellow to Ghana. His work has been reviewed by the New York Times, Art Forum, Art News, and Frieze among others. Since 2004 he has taught at John Jay College of Criminal Justice where he is an associate professor of art.
Most recently Visani’s work has focused on the representation of the enslaved throughout art history drawing inspiration from the work of Josiah Wedgewood who created the jasperware cameo and Hiram Powers’ 1843 sculpture The Greek Slave. Visani’s research in this area has given birth to his series cardboard slave kit: abolitionist blend, 2020 and cardboard slave kit: h powers blend (2021), created in a beleved cardboard technique that utilizes 3-D modeling software that gives life to the figure and raises all sorts of questions about the use of technology and how we view the enslaved Black body today on these terms. In A New Tomorrow, 2021, Visani continues to utilize technology, in his laser cut drawings mounted in antique oval frames, to reimagine problematic slave portraiture by giving agency to his subjects.