Curated by Akintola Hanif | Co-curated by Sanam Samanian
Titles
First Gallery: Family Ties
Artist: Fabian Palencia
Main Gallery: STEEL & VELVET
Artist: Dominique Beaumont
Third Gallery: Guyana Sweet
Artist: Kenyatta Meadows
Exhibition Statement
“THE TRIFECTA comprises three photo essays: “family ties” by Fabian Palencia, “STEEL & VELVET” by Dominique Beaumont, and “Guyana Sweet” by Kenyatta Meadows. The three photojournalists explore and document the planet of Brooklyn, the five boroughs of NYC and Georgetown, Linden and Parika Guyana. Their hope is to create empathy and understanding around the lives of their subjects, providing a glimpse into their hearts and intentions with an innate understanding as all three photojournalists are insiders/residents of the communities they document. Along with possessing great aesthetic compositions, their images tell nuanced stories of love, hardship, perseverance, determination, style and culture”. — Akintola Hanif
Biography of the Artists & Curator
Photojournalist, Filmmaker, Founder | Editor-in-Chief of HYCIDE magazine
Akintola’s work is heavily rooted in cross-cultural photojournalism; fine art photography; media coverage and documentation of quality of life, education and class issues. His photographs have been featured in solo and group exhibitions included such venues as The Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture, MoCADA Museum, City Without Walls, The New Jersey State Museum, The Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Guggenheim Museum, galerie baudoin lebon, Paris ans Tiwani Contemporary in London. His work has also received favorable critical review and coverage by The New York Times, The Star Ledger, The Washington Post, The Village Voice, MTV and many others. His corporate commissions include projects for Prudential, Red Bull and Starbucks.
In May of 2011 he launched HYCIDE, an online and print photojournalism and arts magazine dedicated to stories of survival and freedom. HYCIDE provides an intimate glimpse into the lives of marginalized people around the world and features the work of cutting edge emerging and established artists. The entire collection of HYCIDE was recently acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Newark Library, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the International Center of Photography, and the Library of Congress. In 2016, he contributed to the longest mural project on the East Coast located in Newark, NJ., spanning 1.39 miles with Akintola’s portion being 186 feet long and 15 feet high.
Dominique Beaumont is a self-taught photographer from Brooklyn, New York. He started making photographs at the age of 17. Beaumont uses his life experiences as his creative process to create a story through images. Since then, Beaumont has extensively documented the people of the five boroughs over the last ten years. Dominique has also traveled and documented people in Los Angeles, California, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Newark, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C.
Fabian Palencia is an American photographer from Queens, New York. growing up on the border of Jackson Heights and East Elmhurst, he draws inspiration from the collage of colors and languages unique to the area. His photographs have an intimacy reserved for insiders, revealing the inner truth of what’s in the frame lines. Over the years, Fabian has documented events such as Occupy Wall Street and Hurricane Sandy and its aftermath, as well as making portraits of public figures and artists. Fabian is currently based in NYC and has several ongoing photography projects. For a year now he has been photographing a group of friends in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. He’s come to realize how close they are to each other, and the familial role they play in each other’s lives. While some are bonded through blood relation, all are connected through a shared experience, coming of age in unusual circumstances to an uncertain future.
Kenyatta Meadows is a Guyanese American multi-disciplinary artist specializing in lens-based media and Multicultural Disc Jockey. Through the mediums of sounds and visuals, his work examines the complex narrative of building culture and community within the diaspora of New York and New Jersey. Kenyatta’s current project “Guyana Sweet” focuses on the documentation of identity, family, and intimacy while journeying through the towns of Guyana, South America.
