Dominican-York: a Dominican Graphic Collective in New York

Many Latin American artists survive, live, and thrive in New York City. Considering the array of nationalities they represent, it is rare to see exhibitions that include Dominican artists, as their presence can only be sporadically observed. Twelve authors¿eleven of them born in Dominican Republic and only one born in the US to Dominican parents¿formed a group they named Dominican-York. They get together to reflect and to seriously discuss the need to establish a resolute work ethic that can successfully project their presence onto the city's art scene. Some of them are mainly dedicated to painting, others are engravers, and others yet work with multimedia. They intensely collaborated in the first production by the collective, presented at the recently remodeled Dominican Studies Institute Archives and Library. The space includes a gallery and is part of the prestigious City University of New York (CUNY). The exhibition presents one proposal per artist, and all the works thematically revolve around certain aspects of the Dominican culture¿such as popular mythology¿that are revealed by the collective through the individual proposals and are integrated into the experience of living in the Big Apple. It is through this effort that Dominican-York emerges. The exhibition showcases a small and uniform series of images-also called stains-that measure 7" x 9", are printed on 11" x 15" paper, and that are part of a 12" x 16" portfolio. It is a rather small edition that contains just 25 mini-portfolios. The members of the collective are: Carlos Almonte, Pepe Coronado, Rene De Los Santos, Iliana Emilia García, Reynaldo García-Pantaleón, Scherezade García, Alex Guerrero, Luanda Lozano, Miguel Luciano, Chiqui Mendoza, Moses Ros-Suarez, and Rider Ureña. Collective and personal memories are merged in the graphic project entitled Manifestaciones (Manifestations) by the Dominican-York Collective. The measurements in centimeters are: 18 x 23 cm / 28 x 38 cm / 30.5 x 40.5 cm