Glendalys Medina

Bronx, NY

November 29- December 9, 2019

Born in Puerto Rico and raised in the Bronx, Glendalys Medina is an interdisciplinary artist who received her MFA from Hunter College. Medina’s work has been presented at such notable venues as PAMM, Artists Space, The Bronx Museum of Art, El Museo del Barrio, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Vigo, Spain, and The Studio Museum in Harlem. Medina is an inaugural recipient of the Surf Point Residency and Jerome Hill Foundation Fellowship (2019), an Ace Hotel New York City Artist Residency (2017), a SIP fellowship at EFA Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop (2016), a BACK IN FIVE MINUTES artist residency at El Museo Del Barrio (2015), a residency at Yaddo (2014, 2018), the Rome Prize in Visual Arts from the Ameican Academy(2013), a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Interdisciplinary Art (2012), and the Bronx Museum Artist in the Marketplace residency (2010). Medina is currently a professor in SVA's MFA Art Practice program and will have a solo at Participant Inc and present work at Performa 19 in the fall of 2019.

Artist’s Statement:

At age 7, I decided I wanted to be an artist–not really knowing that it was much more than making beautiful things. Today, I am an artist to give a voice to those who have been silenced and to create cultural equity.

I am interested in patterns, how they are formed and give meaning. Humans are amazing pattern-recognition machines with the ability to detect their disruptions or “recursive probabilistic fractals” according to inventor and futurist, Ray Kurzweil. I investigate existing patterns in order to understand how to form new patterns of behavior, thought, structure and meaning. Patterns dictate our understanding of life and who we are, and to change these meanings, we must disrupt them and make new concrete goal-oriented patterns in order to create social change.

The style of my work is heavily influenced by systematic structures, the cadence of Hip-Hop rappers, the affirmations and visualization exercises of New Thought ministers and authors, the signatures of graffiti writers, the moves of break-dancers, and traditional Taíno motifs.

The questions I grapple within my work are how can I create new resonant forms, architecture, actions, and movement to invoke in my viewer emotions of love and curiosity for a broader perspective of the world.