Biography
Priscilla Aleman graduated from Columbia University with her MFA in sculpture and then continued her art practice in Miami working with archaeologists to investigate South Florida’s relationship to the tropics and Latin American landscape. Aleman’s most recent solo exhibition was at the Baxter St Camera Club. She was commissioned by NYBG to create a public artwork, and Aleman has exhibited in group shows at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and Wave Hill, among other venues. She has participated as Artist-in-Residence at Fountainhead, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC), ICA Miami, and has received awards including The Elizabeth Greenshield Foundation Fellowship, NYFA City Artist Corp Grant, and is a U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts. Aleman was a 2020 AIM Fellow at The Bronx Museum.
Artist Statement
Priscilla Aleman’s work was exhibited at The Bronx Museum in Part Two of Bronx Calling: The Sixth AIM Biennial, on view from April 12 – June 16, 2024. She also produced a public program, Recreational Fields, as part of Experience Art! The Closing Event for The Sixth AIM Biennial (Part Two).
Beyond Portrait (self portrait 1), 2023
Plaster, soccer ball, glass bead, caution tape, sabal palm fibers, packaging tape, rosary beads, artist’s hair
24 x 12 x 8 inches
Beyond Portrait (self portrait 2), 2023
Plaster, pigment, catcher’s mask, macaw feathers, graduation tassel, sea urchin spines, iPod earbuds, hair
24 x 12 x 8 inches
Beyond Portrait (self portrait 3), 2023 Plaster, pigment, hair, CD, semi precious stone, macaw feather, shoe laces, cowrie shells
24 x 12 x 8 inches
Beyond Portrait (Self Portrait-We are All Stars), 2024
Bronx water, clay, packaging foam, milk crates, horse hair, palm fibers, artist’s hair, cowrie shell passed down from Great Grandfather, packaging tape, mineral pigments, Colombian carpenter ant, wooden stand, conch shell
72 x 24 x 24 inches
All works courtesy of the artist
Sculpture intuitively channels ideas into life, bringing primordial material into recognizable forms, the body a vessel for the worlds we bring. With my background in archaeology, I use sculpture to retrace ideas around the afterlife, pre-Columbian cosmology, and the interplay of cultures from the Global South. I am inspired by the ocean and sports fields as poetic analogies for transformation. Using plaster, rainwater, clay, shells, banana leaves, makeup concealer, soil, CDs, shipping materials, and sports equipment, I create figures made of accessible materials to understand the body’s presence and evolution; elevating it as an artifact to study various social, agricultural and cosmic fields. Body casting—an intimate experience between myself, my friends, and family members—becomes a central component to many of my works.
As a Mellon Research Fellow at New York Botanical Garden, I created a new body of sculptural works titled Beyond Portraits and a film titled Streams of Consciousness that captures my creation process and connects these sculptures deeply to performance, field studies, and my studio practice. Forging this material with NYBG’s library collections and Montgomery Botanical Center herbarium I (re)contextualized ecological and cultural histories in the Americas and Caribbean to create mythologies from a world beyond.
