Scherezade García

Scherezade García (sometimes Scherezade García Vasquez) (born 1966) is a painter, printmaker and installation artist from the Dominican Republic based in New York City.

Early life and education 
Born in Santo Domingo, García was active in visual arts from the time she was a girl. In 1986 she received a full merit scholarship to study at Parsons, the New School for Design in New York City and has been based there ever since. She had received her AAS from the Altos de Chavón School of Design, a Parsons affiliate, in La Romana, in her home country. After receiving her BFA from Parsons, she received an MFA from the City College of New York.

Career 
She has since served on the faculty of Parsons. In 2015 she received a career grant from the Joan Mitchell Foundation. A co-founder of the Dominican York ProyectoGráfica, García is a member of the advisory board of No Longer Empty.

Much of García's work deals with themes relating to immigration and the desire to belong in a new country; she has stated that her interest lies in the Caribbean, especially the Hispanic diaspora, and her art is informed by aspects of her black and European heritage. Four of her mixed-media works are in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Other works may be found in the collections of El Museo del Barrio, the Housatonic Museum of Art, and the  Museo de Arte Moderno Santo Domingo.

Selected Works 

 Paradise Redefined: at the Lehman College Art Gallery, December 2006, a sculptural installation of tent like structures covered with images of Dominican tenant buildings and bodegas, with light, street sounds and fragments of Spanish language emanating from within. Intermittently breaking wave sounds add to the mix coming from a mural size beach scene. "The installation is concerned with issues of identity and homeland, and the expectations of a better life, which often characterize stories of migration to the United States." said Benjamin Gennochio critic for the New York Times.

 Hurricane Sandy Altar: 2013, is a painting featured in an essay by Abigail Lapin Dardashti titled El Dorado: the Neobaroque in Dominican American Art, focusing the use of gold by Dominican artists who subvert myths and dreams constructed by imperialist and neocolonialist economic and political systems 

 Transit/Liquid Highway: September 2015, exhibited in the lobby of Columbia University's Wallach Art Gallery Miller Theatre, is a site-specific mural explores the relationship between the Dominican Republic and immigrants new homeland. Large images of waves and found objects both intermix losses and gains of migration

 Bordering the Imaginary: Art from the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and their Diasporas, 2018. Garcia's work was included in this group exhibition curated by Abigail Lapin Dardashti at BRIC Gallery. It explored the dynamic of the Haitian/Dominican diaspora. Garcia's painting, Acariciando el chivo (Caressing the Goat), hearkens to the 19th century after the island's separation and re-colonization by Spain. Depicted as an androgynous, Black child holding a goat, Ulises Heureaux - known as Lili and born illegitimately to a Haitian father and a mother from St.Thomas - is shown in Garcia's beautifully abstracted painting as a ghostly image existing between two swirling universes. As the man who led the country of Santo Domingo during the years 1882 until Lili's assassination in 1899 he was considered heroic, and very much a contradiction of the 20th century myth of racial whiteness that the dictator Trujillo later projected. 

 Memories of a Utopian Island: Also at the BRIC exhibition Garcia presented a video animation Conversation Thread in collaboration with Vladimir Cybil Charlier. Two projected silhouettes of the artists tackle contemporary issues related to their island of origin that includes both Haiti and Dominican Republic. Speaking in a mixture of French, English and Spanish and Haitian Creole the silhouettes talk back and forth about an environment of equality and collaboration rather than one of friction. On another wall Borlette (Lottery) combines the sculptural inner tubes made of rice paper beaded to resemble Voodou flags, signature elements respectively of Garcia and Chavelier's individual practices.

References

Category:1966 births
Category:Living people
Category:20th-century Dominican Republic painters
Category:Dominican Republic expatriates in the United States
Category:People from Santo Domingo
Category:Dominican Republic women painters
Category:Dominican Republic printmakers
Category:21st-century painters
Category:20th-century printmakers
Category:21st-century printmakers
Category:Women printmakers
Category:20th-century women artists
Category:21st-century women artists
Category:Parsons School of Design alumni
Category:City College of New York alumni
Category:Parsons School of Design faculty