Awilda Sterling-Duprey: Aesthetics of dis-order

September 28 – November 24, 2024

Co-curated by Marissa Del Toro and Jasmin Agosto

NXTHVN is thrilled to announce Awilda Sterling-Duprey: Aesthetics of dis-order, a solo presentation of works by NXTHVN’s visiting artist, Awilda Sterling-Duprey. In conjunction with the exhibition, a public performance featuring her “…blindfolded” work is set to premiere on Saturday, October 26. For this performance, Sterling-Duprey will be in dialogue with local New Haven musicians providing improvisational jazz and bomba acoustics while she allows her body to feel and translate the music into rhythmic bodily movements articulated into bright pastel markings, lines, and textures onto black construction paper.

Aesthetics of dis-order is the first exhibition to focus on Sterling-Duprey’s exploration of abstraction from the 1970s to present. Included works range from paintings and drawings, to newly recovered archival and ephemeral materials. Highlights in the exhibition include Sterling-Duprey’s 35mm (Kodak Ektachrome E100 Film) slides that present her study of abstraction in the natural and ubiquitous environments of San Juan, along with visual records of her earliest abstract studies created on cardboard. Sterling-Duprey’s exploration of abstraction has resulted in an intuitive and electric corporeal response; most notable in her “…blindfolded” performances.

In December of 2023, Awilda Sterling-Duprey was awarded the Visiting Artist Prize. This partnership between NXTHVN and Untitled Art debuted this prize for the 2023 edition of the Miami Beach art fair, awarding Sterling-Duprey with a $15K stipend and two-month residency as NXTHVN’s next Visiting Artist, as well as her solo exhibition with NXTHVN.

ABOUT THE ARTIST:

Awilda Sterling-Duprey (b. 1947- San Juan, PR). is an experimental, independent, and multidisciplinary artist that works and lives in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Sterling-Duprey’s work explores identity, gender, diaspora, language, and migration, challenging conventional notions of cultural, national, and gendered boundaries. Her work intertwines marginalities of self-representation and resistance, confronting the silencing and invisibilizing of Afro-Caribbean women. Working with multidisciplinarity and feeding from Yoruba Caribbean traditions, Sterling-Duprey transgresses the boundaries between drawing, painting, and performance through a decolonizing practice that challenges conventions in Puerto Rican fine arts traditions.

She is a founding member of Pisotón, the first experimental dance collective in Puerto Rico. Recent group exhibitions include Puerto Rico Negrx, curated by Marina Reyes Franco & María Elena Ortíz, Museo de Arte Contemporaneo (MAC), San Juan, PR; no existe un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria, curated by Marcela Guerrero, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, US; Whitney Biennial: Quiet as It’s Kept, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, US; Cimarronas: artistas negras y afrodescendientes, Museo Casa Escuté, Carolina, PR; Untitled II, Kilometro 0.2, San Juan, PR.