Online Panel Discussion: Womanhood and Women’s Rights
October 21 event led by sociology professor Ginetta Candelario with artists Lina Puerta and Elia Alba and art historian Tatiana Reinoza.
Join New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) for an online panel discussion led by sociology professor Ginetta Candelario, with artist Lina Puerta, artist and author Elia Alba, and art historian Tatiana Reinoza, presented in partnership with KODA. The Wednesday, October 21 event will commemorate the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage and will encourage especially Latinx communities to vote. Speakers will explore the theme of identity at the crossroads of the individual and the collective. They will examine topics including: What rights do we have as humans—how have such rights been suppressed on grounds of “categories” of identity such as ethnicity or gender. How is an individual’s identity (and its expression) in current society influenced by identifications of gender and ethnicity. Could we move, as a society, towards surpassing such divisive categories towards a more “collective” identity, seeing ourselves as citizens of the Earth. How might reconsiderations of gender identity influence our social, political, economic rights?
This event is open to everyone and is particularly geared towards women-identifying individuals. It is funded in part by Humanities New York with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this program do not necessarily represent those of the NEH.
Title: Womanhood and Women’s Rights
Program Date and Time: Wednesday, October 21, 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM
Location: Online through Zoom
Cost: Free
Register: Register via this link
Participant Bios
Elia Alba
Alba, born in Brooklyn in 1962, is a multidisciplinary artist who works in photography, video, and sculpture. She received her BA degree from Hunter College in 1994 and completed the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in 2001. She has exhibited throughout the United States and abroad at institutions including the Studio Museum in Harlem; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Science Museum, London; Smithsonian Museum of Art; El Museo del Barrio; ITAU Cultural Institute, São Paulo; National Museum of Art; Reina Sofía, Madrid; and the 10th Havana Biennial. She is a recipient of numerous awards and residencies including Studio Museum in Harlem Artist-in Residence Program, 1999; NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowships in Crafts and Photography, 2002 and 2008, respectively; Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, 2002; Joan Mitchell Foundation Grants, 2002 and 2008; Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) Workspace Program, 2009; and the Anonymous Was A Woman Award, 2019. Collections include the Smithsonian Museum of Art, El Museo del Barrio, Lowe Art Museum. Her work has been reviewed by The New York Times, Artforum, ARTnews, and Cultured Magazine to name a few.
Her book Elia Alba: The Supper Club (Hirmer Publishers, 2019), brings together artists, scholars, and performers of diasporic cultures, through photography, food, and dialogue to examine race and culture in the United States. It was critically acclaimed by The New York Times and produced by The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation. She is currently Artist-in-Residence at The Andrew Freeman Home in the Bronx.
Ginetta Candelario
In addition to being a professor of sociology, Candelario is a faculty affiliate of the Latin American and Latina/o Studies Program, the Study of Women and Gender Program, and the Community Engagement and Social Change Concentration at Smith College. She is also the current editor of Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism. She is the founding vice president of the National Latina/o Studies Association (LSA) and a founding executive committee member of the New England Consortium for Latina/o Studies (NECLS). She was appointed by the American Sociological Association to its Committee on Professional Ethics for 2017–19, and she has served as the Gender Section co-chair, the Latina/o Studies Program track chair, and the Latino Studies Section co-chair for the Latin American Studies Association (LASA).
Candelario’s research interests include Dominican history and society, with a focus on national identity formation and women’s history; Blackness in the Americas; Latin American, Caribbean and Latina feminisms; Latina/o communities (particularly Cuban, Dominican and Puerto Rican); U.S. beauty culture; and museum studies. Her first book, Black behind the ears: Dominican Racial Identity from Museums to Beauty Shops (Duke University Press Books, 2007) received the 2009 Best Book Award from the Latino Studies Section of the Latin American Studies Association and the 2008 Best Book Award from the New England Council of Latin American Studies. She has been teaching community-based learning and research courses on The Sociology of Hispanic Caribbean Communities in the U.S. for which she has received various awards.
Lina Puerta
Puerta was born in New Jersey, raised in Colombia, and lives and works in New York City. Puerta holds a MSEd degree in Art Education from Queens College/CUNY and has exhibited internationally. She is currently the 2019/2020 Artist-in-Residence at the Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art and Storytelling in Harlem. She has been honored with the 2017 NYSCA/NYFA Fellowship in Crafts/Sculpture, Artprize-8 Sustainability Award, a 2015 Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Grant, and the 2010 Emerging Artist Fellowship at Socrates Sculpture Park. Puerta has participated in residency programs at the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans (2017), Dieu Donné (2016), The John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Wisconsin (2015), Lower East Side Printshop (2014-15), Smack Mellon (2013-14), and others. Exhibition venues include the Ford Foundation Gallery, The Museum of Biblical Art, El Museo del Barrio, Socrates Sculpture Park, Wave Hill, and Geary Contemporary in New York City; 21C Museum Hotels in Louisville, KY and Bentonville, AR; and Pi Artworks in London. Puerta’s work has been written about in Hyperallergic, The New York Times, The Brooklyn Rail, and Artnet News among others.
Tatiana Reinoza
Reinoza is an assistant professor of Latinx art in the Department of Art, Art History & Design at the University of Notre Dame. She specializes in the history of printmaking in Latinx communities in the United States with an emphasis on the themes of immigration, race, and histories of colonialism. Her own journey as an immigrant from El Salvador and interdisciplinary training—in the fields of ethnic studies and art history—have shaped her intellectual formation. She earned her PhD at the University of Texas at Austin, and subsequently joined the Society of Fellows at Dartmouth College for a postdoctoral fellowship. Her teaching at Notre Dame includes seminars such as Latinx Art & Activism, Borderlands Art & Theory, as well as surveys in 20th Century Latin American Art.
Her current book project, Territorial Futures: Latinx Artists Remap the Americas, examines how contemporary Latinx artists contest xenophobic forms of territoriality and nativism. She is also at work on a co-edited anthology that commemorates the 50th anniversary of the East Los Angeles graphic workshop Self Help Graphics. Her academic writing has appeared in the Archives of American Art Journal, alter/nativas: latin american cultural studies journal, Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, and edited anthologies such as A Library for the Americas: The Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2018). She serves on the board of the digital image library Artura.org and Interfaith Action of Southwest Michigan.
About KODA
KODA Arts Inc. is a nonprofit arts organization based in New York dedicated to mid-career artists of diverse backgrounds. KODA grants residencies to allow for experimentation and facilitates creative projects through strategic partnerships with socially engaged businesses. KODA is the go-to thinking spot and serves the community through exhibitions of contemporary art, events, and outreach to strengthen art education. KODA’s projects and strategy are artist-centered and aligned with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. KODA is fiscally sponsored by NYFA.
This program is presented by NYFA Learning. Sign up here to receive NYFA News, a bi-weekly organizational email for upcoming awards, resources, and professional development. NYFA Learning also offers the monthly Immigrant Artist Program (IAP) Newsletter if you are interested in opportunities, professional development, events, and tips and advice specific to immigrant artists.
