About the Exhibition
Elevate at 21c presents temporary exhibitions of works by artists living and working in the communities surrounding each 21c Museum Hotel property. Elevate provides hotel guests with unique access to the work of notable regional artists while featuring their work in the context of 21c’s contemporary art space. To view these works, please stop by the front desk to arrange access to the vitrines on guest room floors.
FEATURED ARTISTS
Renata Cassiano Alvarez
Espejo IV (2020)
Hedstone (2021)
Foro (2021)
Espejo III (2020)
Rapsodia Romana (2020)
Figurilla (2021)
Espejo I (2020)
Complex Artifact IX (2020)
Autorreferencia (2020)
Complex Artifact XII (2020)
Icon (2021)
Icon II (2021)
Ceramic and mixed media
Artist Bio
Renata Cassiano Alvarez is a Mexican-Italian artist and interpreter born in Mexico City and currently working as faculty in ceramics at the University of Arkansas School of Art. Cassiano Alvarez works predominantly in the medium of clay, in a search for developing an intimate collaborative relationship with material and material language. Influenced by archeology and history, she is interested in the power of the object as survival – objects with a sense of permanence and timelessness, and language as transformation; especially how adopting a different language can affect the physicality of the human body, and how this translates into material. Educated in Mexico, Italy, Denmark and the US, she has had the opportunity to work in different artistic environments, a cross-cultural and multimedia experience which has led to the belief that craft is an evolving field and something that exists in motion. Her practice has extended to the interpreting field, where she functions as a bridge for non-English speakers. Her work has been exhibited internationally and can be found in public and private collections in Mexico, Estonia, Italy, Taiwan, Germany, Denmark, Latvia, China, USA, and Slovenia. She works between her studio in Veracruz, Mexico and Springdale, Arkansas.
Cory D Perry
This Body is Free (2020)
Inkjet printed image on fabric, vinyl tablecloth, paper, crocheted burlap strings, Kente cloth
Artist Bio
Cory D. Perry is a multimedia artist based in Northwest Arkansas, USA. They received their Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Arkansas School of Art and attended the Post-baccalaureate program in Sculpture and Museum research at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana, West Africa. Their current body of work is visually poetic tapestries that exist as individual portraits of fictional queer characters. These tapestries are a vehicle for exploring personality, vulnerability, and queer masculinity. Their accolades include the 2019 Windgate-Lamar Fellowship and the 2018 International Sculpture Center Outstanding Student Award. In 2019 they were an honorary international artist at the Chale Wote performance art festival in Accra, Ghana, West Africa. Their research has led them to explore many different places, both nationally and internationally, including Johannesburg, South Africa and Kumasi, Ghana.
Ziba Rajabi
Blood Stain on Asphalt
Dismay
My Space and My Space
Squares and Squares
(2021)
Acrylic on canvas, colored pencil, mirror, found fabric, and paper
Courtesy of Art Ventures
Artist Bio
Ziba Rajabi (b.1988, Tehran, Iran) received her MFA from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, and her BFA from the Sooreh University, Tehran. She is the recipient of an Artist 360 Grant, a program sponsored by Mid-America Arts Alliance. Her practice as a Female Iranian artist is focused on abstraction and its conceptual relation to Islamic art and architecture. She has developed this through drawing, painting, and fabric installation. Her work has been included in a number of solo and group exhibitions, nationally and internationally. In 2019, she was an artist in residence at Vermont Studio Center.
