In the Studio: La Vaughn Belle 

La Vaughn Belle in conversation with Natalia Viera Salgado, assistant curator of Visual Arts.

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

About the artist: 

La Vaughn Belle makes the unremembered visible. She is a visual artist working in a variety of disciplines that include: video, performance, painting, installation, writing, and public intervention projects. She explores the material culture of coloniality and her art presents countervisualites that challenge colonial hierarchies and invisibility. Borrowing elements from history and archeology she reconfigures fragmented histories into multilayered narratives. She has exhibited in the Caribbean, the USA, and Europe in institutions such as the Museo del Barrio (NY), Casa de las Americas (Cuba), the Museum of the African Diaspora (CA), and ARos Museum (DK) and recently finished a solo exhibition at the National Nordic Museum in Seattle. Her artwork has been featured in a wide range of media including The New York Times, Politiken, VICE, The Guardian, Time magazine, Caribbean Beat, the BBC, Essence, and Le Monde. Her work with colonial-era pottery led to a commission with the renowned brand of porcelain products, the Royal Copenhagen. She is the co-creator of “I Am Queen Mary”, the artist-led groundbreaking monument that confronted the Danish colonial amnesia while commemorating the legacies of resistance of the African people who were brought to the former Danish West Indies. She holds an MFA from the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana, Cuba, and an MA and a BA from Columbia University in NY. She was the 2018-2020 fellow at the Social Justice Institute at the Barnard Research Center for Women. Her studio is based in the Virgin Islands.

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 Joaquín Orellana: The Spine of Music.
• 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:
  • Reflections on Joaquín Orellana's Marimba Imaginaria
  • In Discussion: Presenting Biennial FEMSA XIV
  • 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