In the Studio: Aya Rodriguez-Izumi

Aya Rodriguez-Izumi in conversation with Diana Flatto, assistant curator of Visual Arts.

Join us live on Instagram from your cell phone, or watch here and on YouTube live or after, for a series of remote visits to artists' studios to bring Americas Society's Visual Arts public programs to your home. Every Wednesday this month, contemporary artists will dialogue with our Visual Arts department about their work and practice.

About the artist:

Aya Rodriguez-Izumi is an interdisciplinary artist whose work blends installation, performance, video, and beyond to explore aspects of ritual retention and cultural identity through histories that risk erasure. Her work is inspired by first-hand personal experiences, historical events, and underrepresented narratives from Ryukyuan, Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Afro-Atlantic culture. She was born in Okinawa, Japan, and grew up between that island and East Harlem, NY, where she currently lives and has a studio. Her work has been exhibited through group and solo presentations at venues such as El Museo del Barrio, MoCADA, the Knockdown Center, Rush Arts Gallery, Pulse Miami Beach, the Material Art Fair in Mexico City, and the International House of Japan in Tokyo, among others. She was the recipient of the Emma Bee Bernstein Fellowship at A.I.R. Gallery in New York in 2017-2018, a Jerome Foundation Fellowship at Franconia Sculpture Park in Minnesota in 2018, and the 2018-2019 JUSFC Creative Artist Fellowship supported by the National Endowment of the Arts. Rodriguez-Izumi earned a BFA in fine arts from Parsons the New School for Design in 2009, and an MFA in fine arts from The School of Visual Arts (SVA) in 2017. In 2019 she joined the MFA fine art faculty at her graduate alma mater SVA.

Visit the Americas Society Visual Arts YouTube Channel for recordings of In the Studio Series and other previous events.

Follow the conversation on Instagram: #IntheStudioAS | @americassociety.visualarts

More digital content from Visual Arts at Americas Society:

• Read the exhibition catalogue for Feliciano Centurión: Abrigo.
• Watch the documentary Feliciano Centurión: Abrazo Íntimo al Natural, directed by Mon Ross (2016).
• Watch videos of recent events:
  • Art at a Distance: Promoting Visual Arts during the Health Crisis
  • Curator's Perspective – Jacopo Crivelli Visconti
  • "I Am Reborn at Every Moment" – Contemporary Reflections on Feliciano Centurión and AIDS
  • Ulises Carrión – Art, Mail, Books, and So…
  • Book Launch: Alejandra Seeber – Picture This Featuring the Artist in Conversation with Guillermo Kuitca

Image caption: Aya Rodriguez-Izumi in her immersive sculpture "Tidal." Photo by Alexander Bustamante.