SaveArtSpace is proud to present This Place Meant, a public art exhibition in New York City starting August 21, 2023, curated by Sadaf Padder.

The This Place Meant selected artists are Bianca Nemelc, Camilo Villalvilla Soto, Nyugen E. Smith, and Yen Ha.

This Place Meant represents third-culture kids, the descendants of mass displacement forced to leave lush landscapes, fecund soils, rolling hills and expansive forests. This Place Meant beckons all who are tapping into the spiritual realm by connecting with natural elements, found objects and plant-human hybridity to establish a sense of belonging and home.

During the week of August 21, 2023, SaveArtSpace will launch public art installations for each selected work on billboard ad spaces in New York City. The public art will be on view for at least one month.

Selected Artists

Location: Broadway & W 216th St, Manhattan

Bianca Nemelc is a New York City based figurative painter. Working in the acrylic medium, Nemelc explores the possibilities for brown bodies and the land to coexist and find comfort in one another. Drawing from her relationship to nature growing up in an urban city landscape, much of her work is centered around narratives that she imagines while pulling inspiration from both New York City and her familial homelands.

b. 1991. Lives and works in New York City.

Connect with Bianca on Instagram at @biancanemelc.

Location: Pulaski Bridge & 53rd Ave, Queens

Camilo Villalvilla Soto (Camilo Salvador Diaz de Villalvilla Soto) (b. 1976, Cienfuegos, Cuba) The Artist explores socio-political concepts such as the contradictions of contemporary society, focusing in the political polarization, science and religions and power relations. He considers that have never stopped being an architect, instead of buildings, today design those ideas and dreams dwelling his mind.

Camilo Villalvilla Soto graduated from Architecture at the UCLV (Las Villas Central University), Santa Clara, Cuba in 1998. Solo exhibitions of his work have been organized at Galerie vitrine, Luzern, Swizwerland (2021); Galería Mateo Torriente Uneac, Cuba (2018, 2008, 2006) ; The Cuban art Space, NY, USA (2010); Foster Gallery, Boston (MA) USA (2010). His work has been included in numerous group exhibitions like; 12, 13 y 14 Havana Biennial, Habana, Cuba (2015, 2019, 2021); 1ra BIENAL DE DIBUJO DE LAS AMÉRICAS RAFAEL CAUDURO, Tijuana, México (2006); Cuban art Space, NY, USA (2021-2009); Kunsthaus Fischer-Galerie Harlekin, Luzern, Swizerland (2019); Galería Arche, Uneac Santa Clara, Cuba (20019); BILHAUS ARTS, San Antonio, Tx, USA (2017) Galerie Vitrine, Luzern, Swizwerland (2017); SQUIRREL HOUSE, Minneapolis, MN, USA (2017); (FAC) Fábrica de Arte Cubano, La Habana, (2016, 2019) CENTRO DE ARTE CONTEMPORANEO WIFREDO LAM, La Habana, Cuba (2016); Stealing base “Cuba at bat”, THE 8TH FLOOR Gallery, N.Y, U.S.A (2013); “Revolution not televised”. BRONX MUSEUM of the ARTS. New York, USA (2012). The artist has received honors and distinctions including the Full fellowship residency of Vermont Studio residency (2017) Prize, XIII Salón “Mateo Torriente” de la UNEAC, Cuba (2018); Recognition “VISUARTE 2009”, Cuba (2009); Emeritus Artist 1ra BIENAL DE DIBUJO DE LAS AMÉRICAS, Tijuana, México (2006).

The clear influence of design in my recent work is not only a consequence of my training as an architect. It is also the result of the graphic design, Job that I exercised for more than a decade in a Publisher, these two situations intervene significantly in my artistic projections. In the last years after noticing the evident designing perspective of my work I decided to focus on the realization of sculptures and pieces in 3D and concentrate the production of 2D works as a support to these intentions, with the drawing in a fundamental role, as a sketch and as a piece in itself. I was born on a geographic and political island, in a controlled society, apparently stagnant in the 60s, where the "cold war" remains "hot" and the implausible is an everyday thing. Those stigmas are reflected in my art I am interested in moving ideas, disturbing the viewer and making them participate in possible interpretations. I am interested in the autonomy of images, in the importance of education, the relationship of opposites, the complexity of communication and lately I'm obsessed with the geometry of nature.

Connect with Camilo on Instagram at @villalvillasoto & on Twitter at @villalvillasoto7601.

Nyugen E. Smith Future Past, Future Present, Future (im)Perfect

Location: Morgan Ave & Harrison Pl, Brooklyn

Nyugen E. Smith is a Caribbean-American interdisciplinary artist based in Jersey City, NJ, USA, primarily working in the areas of mixed media drawing, found object sculpture, and performance. In his practice, he is interested in the ways ritual, memory, language, and history intersect with art-making processes that prioritizes the use of previously used materials, the body, and play; through the lens of Blackness.The use of discarded materials and objects is prevalent in Smith's work. The process of walking and observing in order to find, teaches him about spaces, landscapes, and  people who traverse them.

Nyugen holds a BA, Fine Art from Seton Hall University and an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work has been presented at the Museum of Latin American Art, Peréz Art Museum, Museum of Cultural History, Norway, Nordic Black Theater, Norway, Newark Museum, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, among others. Nyugen is the recipient of the Creative Capital Award, Leonore Annenberg Performing and Visual Arts Fund, Franklin Furnace Fund, Dr. Doris Derby Award, New Jersey State Council on the Arts grant, and Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant.

Connect with Nyugen on Instagram at @bundlehouse.

Location: Surf Ave & W 12th St, Brooklyn

Yen Ha is an architect, artist and writer. Born in Saigon, she lives in New York City, where she co-founded the architecture firm, Front Studio. Her short stories appear in the Bellevue Literary Journal, Waxwing, Minola Review and Hypertext. Ha has been awarded residencies by the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, MASS MoCA, and The Arctic Circle, among others. Her drawings were recently selected for the juried show, “9 for 19” at First Street Gallery in Chelsea, NY.

Ha’s work uses repetitive, small-scale gestures to build landscapes based on the memory of time and place. The drawings are assembled from individual sheets, amalgamated into abstracted scenes of mountains, seascapes and natural forms in an impossible bid to capture the vastness of the disappearing natural world. Ha’s abstract and delicate lines imbue her work with a longing for places once traveled while conveying dreams of vistas yet undiscovered.

Having long inhabited the world as a minority, both as an immigrant navigating the unspoken hierarchies of a majority culture, and as a female architect in a male dominated profession, Ha’s interest in building spaces for physical and metaphorical communities stems from a desire to be a little less alone. As a frequent outsider to the places she inhabits, she constantly seeks, through built forms, the written word and drawn lines, to create and support spaces open to the many.

Connect with Yen on Instagram at @yhaduong.

Curator

Sadaf Padder is a Brooklyn-based independent curator, writer and art dealer. A former educator for nearly a decade, she left her job as a Dean of Students to develop intersections of art and community. She is the founder of Alpha Arts Alliance (A3), New York's only South Asian female led art dealership. Sadaf pledges a percentage of all proceeds from sales and events to youth arts programming in Brooklyn & Haiti. Her focus is to amplify artists of the global majority, especially women, through connective themes such as mythology, ecology and social justice. She has curated exhibitions across the country including in New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Martha's Vineyard and Philadelphia. Her writing and curation has been featured in LA Weekly, ARTSY and Hyperallergic.

Sadaf serves as board-member for the Chickweed Alliance and ArtBridge, lead fundraiser for Grown in Haiti and community liaison for Phoenix Community Garden. She is a Create Change alumna with the Laundromat Project as well as a 2022-2023 Emily Hall Tremaine Fellow with Hyperallergic.

Connect with Sadaf on Instagram at @pitterpadder.

SaveArtSpace

Founded in 2015, SaveArtSpace is a non-profit organization that works to create an urban gallery experience, launching exhibitions that address intersectional themes and foster a progressive message of social change. By placing culture over commercialism, SaveArtSpace aims to empower artists from all walks of life and inspire a new generation of young creatives and activists.