Orlando Museum of Art Celebrates 10th Anniversary of Florida Prize in Contemporary Art
For the first time in Florida Prize history, two Orlando-based artists are part of the ten-artist lineup.
Top row, left to right: Bernadette Despujols, Boy Kong, Mona Bozorgi, Francesco Lo Castro, Onajide Shabaka
Bottom row, left to right: Jason Seife, Carol Prusa, Njeri Kinuthia, Sheila Goloborotko, Yanira Collado
ORLANDO, FL — Tuesday, April 2, 2024 — The Florida Prize in Contemporary Art, the Orlando Museum of Art’s signature exhibition, will celebrate its tenth anniversary, a milestone within the museum’s centennial anniversary celebration year. The selected artists for the 2024 exhibition are Mona Bozorgi, Tallahassee, FL; Yanira Collado, Miami, FL; Bernadette Despujols, Miami, FL; Sheila Goloborotko, Jacksonville, FL; Njeri Kinuthia, Orlando, FL; Boy Kong, Orlando, FL; Francesco Lo Castro, Oakland Park, FL; Carol Prusa, Miami, FL; Jason Seife, Miami, FL; Onajide Shabaka, Miami, FL.
The Florida Prize in Contemporary Art, organized by the Orlando Museum of Art (OMA), brings new recognition to the state's most progressive artists. Each year, OMA’s curatorial team surveys artists working throughout the State before inviting ten to participate. One artist will receive a $20,000 award made possible with the generous support of local philanthropists Gail and Michael Winn. The exhibition is also sponsored in part by Nelson Mullins and Jeffrey and Caroline Blydenburgh.
The exhibition results from intensive research and review of hundreds of artists annually. While always limiting the selection to just ten artists is difficult, it allows the museum to feature each artist in depth. Artists present multiple works from recent years or large-scale installations created on-site that give visitors a fuller understanding of their vision and accomplishment. As a survey exhibition, the Florida Prize always brings together artists of diverse backgrounds and varying practices. It is a snapshot of the state’s cultural vitality, as seen through some of the most captivating work done here and now.
“Some of the most compelling and recurrent themes in the exhibition this year focus on our relationship and interconnectedness with celestial and earthly elements” says OMA Chief Curator, Coralie Claeysen-Gleyzon. “The artists’ deeply rooted cultural heritage, and stories of migration; and the urgent need to advocate and raise awareness about the ongoing mistreatment of women and girls worldwide. The resulting exhibition is poised to offer profoundly awe-inspiring moments, prompting contemplation and reflection.”
Artists range from emerging to mid-career, often with distinguished records of exhibitions and awards that reflect recognition at national and international levels. In all cases, they are artists who explore significant ideas of art and culture in original and visually exciting ways. The Florida Prize in Contemporary Art underscores the OMA's commitment to the art of our time and to supporting artists who live and work in our State.
The exhibition opening Preview Party will be on Friday, May 31, 2024, from 6:00 to 9:00 PM. As in previous iterations, this highly popular ticketed event will feature a sampling of the culinary artistry of Central Florida’s most sensational caterers. Each offering will be inspired by one of the ten Florida Prize artists. This year’s participating caterers are Arthur’s Catering & Events, Cuisinier’s Catered Cuisine & Events, Foodie Catering, Oley’s Kitchen & Bar-B-Que, and Puff ‘n Stuff Catering.
The artist selected to receive the Prize will be announced at the opening party. Guests will have the opportunity to cast a "People's Choice" vote for their favorite artist, which includes a $2,500 award. Funds from the event will support the Florida Prize exhibition and OMA education programs. Tickets go on sale Thursday, April 4 at 2024FloridaPrize.eventbrite.com.
2024 Participating Artist Biographies
MONA BOZORGI
@monbozorgi
(Tallahassee, FL / Photography)
Mona Bozorgi is an artist-scholar whose interdisciplinary research and artistic practice explore the correlation between representation and performativity in photography. Bozorgi’s artistic practice is intertwined with posthuman critical theory and focuses on the process of the materialization of bodies and its impact on the construction and production of identities. As an Iranian-born artist, her work confronts historical exclusions based on gender, provides alternative ways of understanding the contemporary self, and explores the intersections of bodies and technology. Bozorgi received her MFA in Photography from the Savannah College of Art and Design, and is currently working on her doctoral dissertation in the interdisciplinary Fine Arts program at Texas Tech. Bozorgi has been an Assistant Professor of Photography at Florida State University since 2022.
YANIRA COLLADO
@yanira_collado
(Miami, FL / Textiles)
Yanira Collado is interested in the reconfiguration of objects that speak metaphorically of time. Her use of construction materials summons the perception of a displaced personal and public history. As a child, Collado traveled between social structures: from Brooklyn, where she was born; to the Dominican Republic; to Miami, where her mother worked to become a tailor.
In her practice, Collado displays an awareness of language conveyed through a keen analysis of identity, the latter referenced in her use of reclaimed literary texts and textiles, simultaneously opposed by various construction materials: wood, concrete, masonry brick, iron, and drywall. Materials with inherent geographic histories, processes, and economies imply varying degrees of personalized and public memory.
As Yanira describes, “My work attempts to assemble a visual language that reconciles the process in which the history of this information is recorded, stored, and retrieved. I am interested in the labor inherent in these materials and the shapes taken during their transitions, which conjure up invocations, ritual, a transcendence of presence, and in many ways, fragments becoming whole.”
BERNADETTE DESPUJOLS
@bernadettedespujols
(Miami, FL / Painting, Sculpture)
Born in 1986 in Barquisimeto, Venezuela, Despujols studied Architecture at the Universidad Central de Venezuela (UCV), where she graduated with honors in 2007. Soon after, she continued her education at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where she took classes in architecture, cultural exchange, morphology and anatomy before beginning her endeavors in art making. Despujols taught Architectonic Design at the School of Architecture at the Universidad Central de Venezuela before moving to the US to pursue her MFA in Visual Arts at the California Institute of the Arts (Cal Arts) in 2010. Recent solo exhibitions by the artist include Oh Man!, Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas, TX; Homesick, Nino Mier Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Spinello Projects, Miami, FL; and Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York, NY. Recent group exhibitions include High Voltage, Nassima Landau, Tel Aviv, Israel; We Are Family, curated by Peter Drake and Clifford Owens, New York Academy of Art, NY; Shattered Glass, Jeffrey Deitch Gallery, New York, NY; and WE DANCE YOU MEAN, Cerquone Projects, Madrid, Spain. Despujols currently lives and works between Miami, Florida and New York, NY.
SHEILA GOLOBOROTKO
@goloborotko
(Jacksonville, FL / Multidisciplinary)
Sheila Goloborotko engages in a restless, relentless material practice that allows singular ideas to emerge in the guise of numerous artistic actions, like characters that reappear in novellas over time or seeds that are blown ashore and thrive in diverse climates. This multidisciplinary artist and master printmaker has exhibited installations, works on paper, sculpture, videos, and interactive projects in more than 200 exhibitions in museums and galleries on four continents and yet has remained firmly committed to the community. Her printshops in Jacksonville, Florida, and rural Pennsylvania are sites of print and poetic activism, empowering first-time printmakers with hands-on workshops and developing the visions of mid-career artists with portfolio production and instruction. An experienced academic who thinks outside the box, Goloborotko is currently an Associate Professor of Printmaking at the University of North Florida. She is also the founder and director of Goloborotko’s Studio since 1989, a center for the production and diffusion of printmaking whose principal goal is to encourage the voice and vision of individual artists in a nurturing environment that supports the creation of works that push the boundaries of printmaking. Goloborotko’s efforts serve as a bridge between individual mastery and community activism, exploring the shifting boundaries of the information age as it relates to multiples and Collective Consciousness.
NJERI KINUTHIA
@njeri_artistar
(Orlando, FL / Multidisciplinary)
Njeri Kinuthia’s work confronts the institutionalized cultural norms that control women's identity and sexuality. Utilizing self-portraiture, her work serves as a mirror, reflecting on her own identity and experiences growing up in Kenya. Kinuthia employs culturally significant fabrics to venture beyond the aesthetic and into symbolic dialogue - initiating an interrogation of the role of culture in shaping us. This body of work addresses the suppression and restrictions faced by women in rural Kenya. In works like Hail Reverend Njeri, she subverts these restrictions, reclaiming her place both physically and metaphorically.
Njeri uses a broad range of materials including charcoal, fabric, oil paints, pastels, and bleach. At times, her use of nudity to convey vulnerability, further challenges the constraints that society imposes on women. Kinuthia is a multidisciplinary artist, proficient in drawing, painting, soft sculpture installation, and fiber arts. Through this diverse range of mediums, she addresses the intricate interplay between cultural traditions and personal identity. She is developing large-scale mixed media artworks and installations, drawing inspiration from African fabrics and architecture. With a background in Fashion Design, she enjoys working with textiles and incorporating textile patterns into her work through collage, drawing or painting.
With her practice, Njeri questions the balance between cultural tradition and personal identity, welcoming viewers into a broader conversation on the liberation and autonomous expression of female identity. Through her art, viewers are invited to question the boundaries imposed upon them by their cultural spheres.
BOY KONG
@boykong
(Orlando, FL / Painting, Muralist)
Boy Kong is a self-taught painter, illustrator, muralist, and collage artist. Inspired by a mixture of Ukiyo-e, Surrealism, Graffiti art, and animal folklore, Kong's visual style juxtaposes these elements with a mastery of color and rhythmic application. In a short time, his body of work has become immediately identifiable without succumbing to a signature aesthetic. Kong divides his time between Orlando and NYC.
FRANCESCO LO CASTRO
@locastro
(Oakland Park, FL / Painting, Sculpture)
Francesco Lo Castro’s work examines the underlying nodes that make up physical reality through the use of historically grounding visual elements, reminiscent of Italian Futurism, 1980’s analog computer graphics, Finish Fetish, and Art Deco color palettes.
At its center lies a drive to recollect and arrest memories, as well as depict a future-forward aesthetic, which dares to question boundaries between biology and technology, physical and virtual, while charting holistic, common spaces, informed by the fluid social constructs that are shaping contemporary culture.
A heightened sense of dimension and depth emerges from an ever-evolving dialog between digital, machine design and human-made execution, deploying unorthodox sculpting and painting techniques that involve intricate compositions of pigment and varied materials, such as wood, stone, glass and plastics.
Dense with movement, while deliberately balancing explosiveness and strict order, vibrancy and dreaminess, power and release, a delicate and soothing vision emerges, summoning an oeuvre of subtle focus on healthcare and restoration.
CAROL PRUSA
@prusacarol
(Miami, FL / Metalpoint)
Carol Prusa is a contemporary artist known for her meticulous silverpoint technique and use of unexpected materials from sculpted resin and fiberglass to metal leaf and LED lights. In the 2015 catalogue essay for the exhibition Drawing in Silver and Gold: Leonardo to Jasper Johns, Bruce Weber called Carol Prusa “one of the most innovative artists working in metalpoint today.”
Born in Chicago, Prusa lived and worked in South Florida until her recent move to North Carolina. She exhibits internationally, including Bernice Steinbaum Gallery (MIami) and Bluerider Art (Taipei). Her work is included in excellent public and private collections, including the Perez Art Museum (Miami), The Museum of Arts and Design (NYC), Telfair Art Museum (Savannah), and the Francie Bishop Good and David Horvitz Collection.
Recent curated group exhibitions include Tenacity at the Chautauqua Institution, New York (2021), IS Projects at the Coral Springs Art Museum, Bluerider in Shanghai (2021). In 2021 Prusa made an editioned artist book, unknowing, at IS Projects through a grant from the Knight Foundation. Current investigations include utlizing Deep Dream/Google to create work in conversation with AI/machine learning, supported by a creative activity grant. Prusa was awarded an artist residency at Djerassi in California and the Golden Foundation Residency in New York, May/June 2023. Upcoming she has a solo exhibition in Shanghai and is in a three-person exhibition at the Macon Museum of Art and Science in Georgia and a group exhibition at the Golden Foundation in New York. Prusa was just awarded a WNC artist grant.
JASON SEIFE
@jasonseife
(Miami, FL / Painting)
Jason Seife’s work references old Persian carpets, an art form that in modern times is often taken for granted. Carpets were a large part of his childhood growing up with immigrant parents of Middle Eastern descent. Jason recreates these old weavings by tediously painting them on canvas in colors and mediums that were not normally used in their origin. Jason presents the pieces in a new and exciting way. The creation of these works is both a therapeutic and a spiritual process; being able to channel his obsession with detail into the intricate geometry and compositions of the carpets allows Jason to find himself working hours on end without lifting his brush. What initially drew him to these works was not only the aesthetic but also the dense history and meaning behind the imagery. The way the weavers were able to link each rug’s particular pattern, palette, and style with a specific and identifiable geographic area or nomadic tribe really stood out to him. Jason aims to mirror this practice with his take on the carpets by having each color and pattern specifically correlate to what state of mind and emotion he was in while creating the specific work, allowing him to look back and see a chronological timeline of both his mental and emotional state embedded into the paintings. Essentially, creating a language through shape and color that is hidden in plain view...
ONAJIDE SHABAKA
@onajide
(Miami, FL / Photography, Mixed Media)
Onajide Shabaka’s interest in art began in high school with a photography course that eventually allowed him creative license to photograph what he wanted. That interest continued through various post-secondary institutions, including Art Center College of Design (Pasadena, CA) and California College of the Arts (Oakland, CA), culminating in an MFA awarded from Vermont College of the Fine Arts (Montpelier, VT), an institution focused on self-designed courses of study. While living in San Francisco, Shabaka started a fashion boutique where he designed for both men and women, importing cloth from various countries to find the right mix of natural and hand-woven fabrics. His longtime interest in ethnic textiles continues to inform his art practice. In the past ten years or more, his practice has included art writing and independent curatorial work, both of which are important aspects of his art practice. With a broad-based knowledge of contemporary art history, critical theory, as well as anthropology, and ethnobotany, his art practice is focused on its continuing development and challenges, both inside and outside the white cubic exhibition space. Conceptual, time-based photography Shabaka, as a photographic documenter and artist, often working in process with one or possibly more persons, takes photographs not always to show what is in front of the camera, but what is behind the camera in the form of a conceptual approach. Even though trained as a photographer, Shabaka’s images document not a travelogue but a quest. These quests often take the form of “walks” while gathering ephemeral bits of the landscape to photograph, whether botanical or geological. Hence, the still image documents a time-based process of movement and gathering. In the end, many of the gathered objects are intensely examined using macro photography, which also moves the objects and materials into a different context. A context that orients the materials as precious even as they decay.