CYPHER

March 30th - April 28th

Marco DaSilva • Nene Aïssatou Diallo • Victoria Dugger • Lloyd Foster • Kiara Gilbert • Nyla Paula Isaac • Nandi Loaf • Pastiche Lumumba • Codi Maddox • Yvonne McCoy  • Ezekiel Robinson • Matthew Schrader • Ellex Swavoni

Curated by Brittany Adeline King & Anna Akpele

FIERMAN is pleased to announce CYPHER, an exhibition curated by Anna Akpele and Brittany Adeline King. The exhibition, featuring fourteen cross-regional artists, delves into the realms of melody, symbiosis and various modes of communication indicative of our contemporary world.

At the heart of CYPHER, from its conception onward, lies an exploration of connection - connections between artists, ideas and audiences. Through a diverse array of works, the exhibition seeks to uncover the similarities and differences between artists hailing from the Northeast and Southeast United States, highlighting the unique perspectives that emerge from each region.

"Bringing together Northeast and Southeast-based artists allows us to investigate the distinctions and beliefs that shape each artist's work," explains co-curator Brittany Adeline King. "We're really interested in the specificities of individual beliefs coexisting within the broader framework of the exhibition."

CYPHER invites viewers to contemplate the dualities inherent in human experience - the tension between tradition and innovation, between structure and spontaneity. Central to the exhibition is the concept of freestyling - not just as a mode of artistic expression but as a metaphor for the free-flowing and continued exchange of ideas.

"We've thought a lot about how this exhibition developed - it was organic, but charged," reflects co-curator Anna Akpele. "We're interested in how the works in the exhibition can create a similar dialogue - a space where diverse perspectives converge, and new connections are forged."

CYPHER aims to be a thought-provoking exploration of the ways in which contrast can foster dialogue and connection in an increasingly fragmented world.

Anna Akpele is a curator and arts administrator based in Atlanta, GA. She has curated exhibitions for The Gallery By Wish, Living Walls, Swan Coach House Gallery and 'elsewhere' a temporary gallery that she conceptualized, centered around challenging the concept of a white cube while providing space for artists to explore without limitations. Anna received her BFA in Graphic Design from Savannah College of Art and Design.

Brittany Adeline King is an artist and curator based in New York City currently pursuing her MFA at Hunter College. She has exhibited and curated extensively, including exhibitions at NADA in Miami and Company Gallery and Shoot the Lobster in New York; and has curated exhibitions with White Columns, Below Grand and Gallery Albany.

NANDI LOAF is an artist living and working in the 21st century. 

NENE AÏSSATOU DIALLO is an artist working across mediums. In her work, she resists legacies of erasure and grounds her practice in memories of home and the displacement inherent with migration. Her starting point is often her family photo albums, objects, and materials sourced and collected between Newark, Harlem, Brooklyn, Conakry, and Dakar. Diallo has exhibited nationally and held residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, Index Art Center, Gallery Aferro, Project for Empty Space, The Residency Project, and STONELEAF RETREAT. Her work has been featured by Format, Monument Lab Bulletin, NPR, RVA Magazine, The Financial Times, and most recently, at the 13th edition of the Bamako Encounters – African Biennale of Photography.
 
LLOYD FOSTER is a Ghanaian-American interdisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn who works primarily with photography as well as sculpture, installation, video and mixed media. Foster uses these media to capture daily life and the interactions of the people and places he encounters. The artist also uses personal connections, memories, and his perception to reflect his dual identity as a Ghanaian-American and he continues to be inspired by his personal experiences, memories and ancestral curiosity.

MATTHEW SCHRADER  (b. 1984, Philadelphia) is an artist and educator. Schrader’s work moves between sculpture, photography, and spatial intervention. Recent projects have engaged aspects of public space, colonized landscapes, plant migration and material memory. He received an MFA in Sculpture from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College and a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. Schrader’s work has appeared in exhibitions at MoMA PS1, White Columns, Brief Histories, Someday Gallery, P!, The Abrons Art Center and MINI/Goethe-Institut Curatorial Residencies Ludlow 38.

MARCO DASILVA is a Brazilian-American artist whose symbol-based works explore hybridity through the intersections of painting and craft. His graphic style of making combines painting and collaging of objects, textures and mediums. His works combine bold colors that investigate ritual and storytelling through a queer lens. He creates his own mythology in the process, providing a richly saturated landscape of his own world to the viewer.

NYLA PAULA ISSAC (b. 1960, Trinidad) lives and works in Queens, NY. Recent exhibitions include a solo presentation in New York City curated by Brittany Adeline King presented by Gallery Albany (2023), and I am Come Unto you in Mine own Person, a group exhibition at FIERMAN (2023), as well as numerous exhibitions at the Living Museum and Fountain House Gallery.

ELLEX SWAVONI is a self-taught sculptor from Louisville, Ky. She Studied graphic design at Campbellsville and where she received a Bachelor of Science in 2014. Swavoni developed an art practice focused on exploring Afro-futurism, representing women as powerful entities and processing ancient ideas into a futurist aesthetic. She is currently living and working in Atlanta, Ga, where she has conducted multiple traveling and permanent public art installations. She is an exhibiting artist in galleries and museums, in addition to speaking engagements at universities as of late. Ellex Swavoni's art practice emanates from the realms of ancient African artifacts, Comics, and physics. Her work can be described as Afro-futurism as it speaks specifically to the diaspora and calls upon us to connect with the past and aspire to audacious futures. 
 
PASTICHE LUMUMBA (b. 1988, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work examines cultural conventions and normalized power dynamics within the contexts of masculinity and Blackness. He has exhibited internationally as well as on the internet and his work has been featured in publications such as Art Papers, Mask Magazine and Rhizome. Lumumba is a co-founder of The LOW Museum of Contemporary Culture in Atlanta where he served as director and chief curator from 2013 to 2016. In 2017 he completed the MFU residency at the Bruce High Quality Foundation University in Brooklyn, In 2021 he was represented by HOUSING in New York City. He currently lives and works in New York.

KIARA GILBERT was born in Jacksonville, Florida, and attended the historic Douglas Anderson School of the Arts, before earning a BFA Cum Laude from Florida State University. Currently based in Atlanta, Georgia, the artist explores how their emotional landscape is informed by growing up black and queer in the south. Through the use of print media and sculptural installations, they create scenes that speak on feelings of frustration, love, listlessness, and ancestral triumph and loss. They are currently a Mint Leap Year Fellow, have been a recipient of the Six Creative Grant, the Janice Hartwell Award in Printmaking, and participated in the Humanity in Action Berlin Fellowship.

CODI MADDOX is an Atlanta based self taught artist, creating art that invokes nostalgia from her childhood growing up in the American southern state of Georgia (Atlanta Ga) The premise of her art work is to encourage conversations about urban life. Her work include inspiration from African American Cultural and Social markers. Themes focus on the effects of gentrification, self identity and her own spiritual and physical struggles are portrayed through artistic expression. Over the past 4 years codi has featured work in a slew of group exhibitions in Georgia, Florida. Texas and North Carolina. Codi's mediums include a combination of Acrylic paint, clay, fibers, pastel water color and discarded found objects.

YVONNE MCCOY (b. 1994 in Los Angeles, CA) Born in the picturesque landscapes of Washington State, Yvonne McCoy is a collage artist and mother with a passion for storytelling and a love for repurposing forgotten materials. Her collage art began in 2015 reflecting on themes of history and childhood memories, often evoking a sense of wonder and exploration reminiscent of her own adolescent experiences. She mirrors the dualism of our past and future,  the colorful tragedies we face, and dreams of the possible joys we might touch. Yvonne’s pieces have been exhibited in solo and group shows, featured in publications, and commissioned for major projects. With curiosity, she continues to discover  new materials, techniques, and themes to produce self-referential works of art.

EZEKIEL ROBINSON Ezekiel Robinson is an Artist, confronted by The dark, finally, something he may consume. And he could hear his own water trickling in the distance. He slipped, And noticed the thin damp film on the rocks had become ice Where the moonlight touched it. Still elated by the harvest, Ezekiel continued to eat the darkness, perhaps with more caution now, Periodically lifting his eyes, but never his head, never his mouth.. Ezekiel Robinson finds more comfort crawling, Changing the orientation of his body around his neck. Gyroscopically stabilizing his own head. To reposition those eyes towards the sound of damp footsteps. From this distance, he could see your silhouette. Slowly, silently, and methodically slicing through his dark sinewy feast. Having the dark lightly fall off of your surface, wrapping your form first, like feathers. It reminded Ezekiel of the crows, and crows remind him of memory, of facial recognition, of the type of animosity that can’t develop from a photo but can be captured on film. A medium that REQUIRES and can only express the passage of time. He contorted his body so that he may watch your approach while he simultaneously attempted to eat eat eat as much of the darkness as he could. Breathing became less of a priority as Ezekiel shoveled and slurped more darkness into his mouth leaving less and less space for air. You arrived at the orafice from which he was feeding quickly but motioned towards him so slowly. You wanted to watch him choking we suppose. And So Ezekiel choked and shoveled more violently. In hindsight it was just your gentle nature. You embraced his twisted body, while his focus was solely dedicated to consumption. Slowly but surely his neck began to unravel itself. Ezekiel’s body untwisted and straightened, his arms stopped their frantic flailing and shoveling, his mouth and neck slowly allowed more air, all while still consuming, slowly waining in manic desire. Until his lips finally began to purse and spit.
 
VICTORIA DUGGER (b. 1991, Columbus, Georgia) is a visual artist who lives and works in Athens, Georgia. Recent exhibitions include New Worlds: Georgia Women to Watch, Atlanta Contemporary, National Museum of Women in the Arts (Atlanta, GA), F*CK ART: The Body and It’s Absence, Museum of Sex (New York, NY), and Soft Anatomy, JEFF (Marfa, TX). She had her first solo exhibition in New York at Sargent’s Daughters called Out of Body which was reviewed by ARTnews and Hyperallergic. 

SONIKA MISRA (b. 1994 in New York, US) is an artist and educator based in New York. Sonika received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from The Cooper Union in 2017. She continues to live and work between Long Island and Brooklyn, NY.