Workshop summary: SCAFFOLD: Equity of Treatment | Instructor Exhibiting Visiting Artist: Elan Cadiz
Family Workshop (for all ages)
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The workshop will focus on self-representation and ways we would Scaffold ourselves. We begin with a simple visual inquiry of one or two portraits from artwork exhibited in the exhibition, Scaffolding. Cadiz will describe the concept of the project and its intention. Participants are asked to first think of a way to depict themselves visually, then they are to design their version of Scaffolding.
SCAFFOLDING: Group Exhibition | Elan Cadiz’s work will be featured in the Linda Roesch Visual Arts Gallery on the 1st floor at AVA.
Elan Cadiz | SCAFFOLD: Equity of Treatment, (Series of 20 works), Pen, pencil, acrylic, and flash paint on Shizen Pastel Paper. Shizen Pastel Paper, NFS
“In 2020 I began an art series entitled SCAFFOLD: Equity of Treatment also known as the Scaffold Project. It’s an ongoing series. Scaffold: Equity of Treatment is about the importance of self-reflection, and preservation and how these important practices must be manifested through equitable treatment in our homes, communities, and world. Scaffolding symbolizes the individual care and support we all need. The goal is to encourage discussions on self-reflection, self-love, and practice in deciphering what we require as individuals and ways our systems of support can better meet these needs. I see the Scaffold project as a kind of visual spiritual alchemy that challenges the viewer and subject to see themselves as a universal being made up of their experiences and understanding. The scaffold serves as a form of protection and support, symbolizing the relationship between consciousness and matter within the self. When we know ourselves and the kind of support we need, we can better ask what we require from the world to bring satisfaction and harmony to ourselves and others.” @elancadiz www.elancadiz.com
Élan Cadiz is an interdisciplinary, multiethnic, multiracial, North American, native New Yorker, and Visual Artist who deconstructs and balances her intersectionality through her projects. Élan Cadiz’s art and practice are grounded in documenting her personal narrative through portraiture, domestic, and historical imagery. Cadiz’s artworks explore ways societal and personal histories overlap and affect individual relationships, power dynamics, and identity. The materials she works with are influenced by the subjects she discusses, and her reason for moving between mediums and collaging the best materials to convey her visual language. Élan Cadiz intends to speak to the boundless potential in humanity despite impediments and ways our pasts can inform our future for the better. Her goal is to have viewers question their condition(s) in ways that bring about helpful inner inquiry and thoughtful discussion.
Élan Cadiz explored ideas at the Fashion Institute of Technology for 2 years and shifted interest. She later graduated from City College of New York with a BA in Studio Art. She received an MFA Fine Arts degree from the School of Visual Arts where she was awarded the SVA Merit Scholarship, the Paul Rhodes Memorial Award, and the Martha Trevor Award. Cadiz has been commissioned by the Studio Museum in Harlem, El Museo de Barrio, Art in Flux Harlem, Mount Vernon Hotel Museum, Weeksville Heritage Center, and more. She was one of the first Sustainable Arts Foundation AIRspace Parent Artist Resident at Abrons Art Center and her An American Family Album series was featured in VOGUE. Her artworks can also be found in New American Paintings magazine, issue #146 and #153.
Art Education is an important part of Cadiz’s artistic practice. She has instructed young people in the arts for 24 years and taught for or was in collaboration with programs/institutions such as the Police Athletic League (P.A.L), Astoria Beacon Program, Young Adult Institute (Y.A.I), Casa Duarte, P.S. /I.S. 180, Say Yes To Education (affiliated with Columbia’s Teachers College), Harlem School of the Arts, Thurgood Marshall Upper and Lower Academies, Harlem Gems (Harlem Children Zone), No Longer Empty, Cool Culture, Bank Street College, Weeksville Heritage Center, the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York Historical Society, Center for Arts Education, Community Works NYC, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Children’s Museum, the Boys Club of New York City, Foster Pride, the Children’s Museum of Manhattan, Bridgehampton Museum, Harlem NeedleArts, and the Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art and Storytelling.
