Lectures are held on Tuesdays at 6PM
Free & Open to the Public
At the Brooklyn Navy Yard
1 Dock 72 Wy
Brooklyn, NY 11205
About VALS Fellows
Hosted by Pratt’s Fine Arts MFA program, VALS is our visiting artist lecture series. Graduate student coordinators invite contemporary artists to participate in a public lecture and studio visits at our new location at Dock 72 in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The aim is to provide our students with exposure to a wide array of artists working in a variety of fields at various stages in their careers. The VALS series provides an opportunity for a deeper engagement with our community and is free and open to the public. Follow us on Instagram @prattfineart to see what’s coming up!
Previous VALS artists include Diana Al-Hadid, Korakrit Arunanondchai, Judith Bernstein, Michael Berryhill, Wafaa Bilal, The Black School, Pradeep Dalal, Abigail D. Deville, Nicole Eisenman, Rochelle Feinstein, Keltie Ferris, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Schezerade Garcia, Rico Gatson, Jeffrey Gibson, Mark Thomas Gibson, Nancy Grossman, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Edgar Heap of Birds, James Hyde, Laura Kalman, Nina Katchadourian, Elektra KB, Baseera Khan, Savannah Knoop, Leigh Ledare, Jennie Jieun Lee, Ann Lewis, Tau Lewis, Kalup Linzey, Ibrahim Mahama, Park McArthur, Alicia Mersy, Wardell Milan, Ayanah Moor, Lavar Munroe, Narcissister, Rashaad Newsome, Catherine Opie, Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya, Alexis Rockman, Aura Satz, Shazia Sikander, Lorna Simpson, Wendy Red Star, Dan Walsh, Hu Xiangqian, and Frank Wang Yefen.
We are grateful to the Robert Lehman Foundation for supporting this series.
Nyugen E. Smith is an artist living and working in Jersey City, NJ. His practice revolves around the construction of narrative through the prism of Black cultural identity. The manifold ramifications of European colonialism across the African Diaspora serve as the foundation upon which his practice is constructed. Smith adopts a rhizomatic methodology, characterized by its non-linear and interconnected approach, as a means of conceptualizing and realizing creative expression. Guided by the metaphorical roots of this colonial legacy, Nyugen is interested in the dynamic interplay between various thematic nodes, including architecture, language, performance, ritual, trauma, DNA memory, climate change, and migration. These thematic nodes are woven into the fabric of his practice. The inherent poetry of their relational dynamics guides the creation of the work.
Central to his practice is an emphasis on the utilization of pre-existing materials, the body, and play, within the art-making process. Nyugen holds a BA, Fine Art from Seton Hall University and an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work has been presented at the Museum of Latin American Art, Peréz Art Museum, Museum of Cultural History, Norway, Frist Art Museum, Blanton Museum, Newark Museum, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, among others. Nyugen is the recipient of the Creative Capital Award, Leonore Annenberg Performing and Visual Arts Fund, Franklin Furnace Fund, Dr. Doris Derby Award, New Jersey State Council on the Arts grant, and Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant.
Flaviu Cacoveanu, whose artistic discourse simultaneously embraces – from a performative perspective – language, photography, installation, ready-made objects, or sculptures, and it mainly occurs at a point where these media intertwine. His profoundly intuitive process is sensitive to the interplay between the elements and materials he carefully selects.
The artworks are born within his cell phone – which has in the meantime become not only a living space or an extension of reality but outright the artist’s studio – in the shape of sketches or short story-type videos, advancing slices of reality which, taken out of the context, are endowed with new meanings. Therefore, his works are brought to the attention of the public as “notifications” inviting viewers to do a double take and look more closely at the details, which reveal the poetry inherent in the everyday. Through seemingly nonchalant, yet sharp and humorous observations he highlights traces left by unnoticed inhabitants of the city, often insects, discarded items of consumption and various random acts which all compile a portrait of the artist as a reflection of his environment.
Flaviu Cacoveanu, born 1989 in Cluj, Romania, lives and works in Berlin, Germany. His works have been exhibited amongst others at Parliament Gallery in Paris (FR), Lutnita Gallery in Chisinau (MD), Liste Art Fair 2024 in Basel (CH), Baronian Gallery in Brussels (BE), NADA Villa Warsaw in Warsaw (PL), Art Brussels 2023 in Brussels (BE), Art Au
Centre 2023 in Liege (BE), ART-O-RAMA 2022 in Marseille (FR), The National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest (RO) and at the Art Encounters Biennial 2021 in Timisoara (RO).
Florencia Escudero was born in Singapore in 1987 and grew up in Mendoza, Argentina. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Escudero received an MFA in Sculpture from the Yale University School of Art in 2012 and a BFA in Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts in 2010. Her works have been exhibited at Kristen Lorello, Aldrich Museum, Instituto Cervantes, Friedrich Petzel Gallery, Mrs. Gallery and Rachel Uffner Gallery among other venues. She was a 2016 year-long Artist in Residence at the Loisaida Center, New York, NY, and has also completed residencies at Collarworks, Troy, NY; Art Farm, Marquette, NE; and Pilchuck Glass School, Seattle, WA. Works by Escudero have been discussed in Editorial Magazine, Aether Magazine, The Art Newspaper, Hyperallergic, The American Reader, Cultured Magazine and the Brooklyn Rail. She is an editor and founder of Precog Magazine.