Your Art New York 10: Myles Loftin / Amanda Lopez / Seyed Alavi

SaveArtSpace presents Your Art New York 10 a group public art exhibition on billboard ad spaces throughout New York City. Curated by Chiru Mondo Murage, Jeremy Cohen, and Ché Morales. Selected artists are Myles Loftin, Amanda Lopez, and Seyed Alavi. On view starting March 16, 2020, for at least one month.

Public Art Location: 69 Morgan Ave, Brooklyn, NY

Myles Loftin recognizes the latent power that images hold, and seeks to utilize that power as a means for creating positive change. He is a photographer, director and a senior in the BFA Photo program at Parsons School of Design. 

With a practice that blends portraiture, fine art and fashion photography, his photos exude a feeling of vibrance, freedom and youth. Loftin’s work deals with themes of blackness, identity, and representation of marginalized individuals. His subjects are often times friends, family members and members of the LGBTQ+ community. 

In 2016, Loftin released the photo and video project ‘HOODED’ which humanizes and decriminalize  the societal perception of black men and boys. The project went viral on twitter and was featured by Buzzfeed and Vice among others.

This work, and the others that followed have led him to participate in various public speaking engagements worldwide including talks at Yale University, SXSW, Dutch Design Week and The Cannes Festival of Creativity. 

Notable press features on Loftin include being on the 2019 Paper People list, The Root’s Young Futurists 2018 list. Additionally he has shown work in publications such as Aperture, i-D and New York Magazine and was recently awarded a $7,000 grant from Getty Images to create work that celebrates the lives and narratives of LGBTQIA+ communities.

He has exhibited work in group shows with Aperture Foundation, Superposition Gallery and other galleries across the U.S.  

Making art is an important part of Loftin’s life and, as an artist of color, he works to inspire other artists of color to pursue successful careers in the creative industry. 

Connect with Myles on Instagram at @mylesloftin

Curator: Chiru Mondo Murage

Connect with Chiru on Instagram at @chirumurage

Public Art Location: 1127 Flushing Ave, Brooklyn, NY

A celebration of sisterhood, culture and community.

Amanda Lopez was born and raised in Sacramento, California under the watchful eye of her parents and paintings of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Her mom gave her a camera at the age of 15 and photography soon became her savior. Whether she's on assignment, photographing members of her family or friends, Lopez's camera eye always looks for a balance of beauty, strength and urban tenacity.

Her work has been published in The Washington Post, LA Weekly, Vice, XXL, Rolling Stone, The San Francisco Chronicle, Hamburger Eyes and in the books "Street World: Urban Art and Culture from Five Continents,” Upper Playground's "Backyard Shake Down” and "Girls Got Kicks," the first photo documentary about women sneaker collectors.

Most recently Lopez’s work was included in AI-AP Latin American Fotografía 6 catalog and in the MoMA's exhibition, "Items: Is Fashion Modern?" She was also selected as a winner in the PDN Faces Portrait Photography competition.

She believes Our Lady of Guadalupe has guided her well.

Connect with Amanda on Instagram at @snapshotlopes

Curator: Jeremy Cohen

Connect with Jeremy on Instagram at @jermcohen

Public Art Location: 980 Flushing Ave, Brooklyn, NY

Seyed Alavi is an interdisciplinary artist working in painting, photography, sculpture, installation and public art. His work is engaged with the poetics of language and space and their power to shape reality.

He has exhibited at The New Museum of Contemporary Art and Franklin Furnace in New York City; The deSaisset Museum; and San Francisco's Capp Street Project. His public art projects include; Fountain Head in Walnut Creek; Tree of Life in Seattle; Room for Hope and Flying Carpet in Sacramento; Tale of Time in Kochi, Japan; Signs of the Time in Emeryville; Words by Roads in Oakland; and Speaking Stones, in San Francisco.

Statement: This piece was inspired by the popular saying “There is no place like home” and seeks to examine and question the concepts of “home”, and “homeland” as they relate to the immigrant experience.  Through a poetic transposition of the word “Here” with the word “home, the distinction and the “border”, between these two concepts is removed, thereby making everywhere become “Here” and anywhere become “home”.  If anywhere is “Here”, does everywhere become “home”?  If there is no place like Here, then exactly where is home?  

In this way, this piece hopes to underscore the immigrant’s paradoxical relationship, to “home”, “home-less-ness” and “homeland”. Where is home when one lives in a foreign land, is home where you live, or is home the land where you came from?  For the immigrant this is a case of both and neither.  This work, by re/presenting this state of in-betweeness, asks the viewer to reflect  not only on the complexity, but also the relevancy of “border” issues in today’s rapidly shifting mental and physical landscapes.

Connect with Seyed on Instagram at @seyedalavistudio

Curator: Ché Morales

Connect with Ché on Instagram at @wanderlustflaneur