Workshop: Ulises x Lizania Cruz

Join Tufts University Art Galleries (TUAG) and Ulises for a workshop with artist and designer Lizania Cruz in conjunction with the exhibition Ulises: Assembly.

As part of Cruz’s long term project Investigation of the Dominican Racial Imaginary this workshop will guide participants on ways of questioning, recontextualizing, and creating new narratives based on a selection of the project’s archive. For the past five years Cruz has been gathering archival evidence from historical archives, governmental and academic institutions, as well as on the streets with the public on how the state of the Dominican Republic has repressed and erased African heritage in the formulation of the Dominican identity. Cruz will walk participants through her relational methodology of archiving. Participants will also work on constructing a narrative of their own based on the archives. Materials will be provided.

Lizania Cruz (she/her) is a Dominican participatory artist and designer interested in how migration affects ways of being & belonging. Through research, oral history, and audience engagement, she creates projects that expand and share pluralistic narratives on migration. Cruz received the 2023 New York City Artadia Award and her newest project was commissioned by The Shed for Open Call 2023. In 2021, Cruz was part of ESTAMOS BIEN: LA TRIENAL 20/21 at el Museo del Barrio, the first national survey of Latinx artists by the institution. Most recently, she was part of 52 Artists: A Feminist Milestone at the Aldrich Museum. She has presented solo shows at A.I.R. Gallery, CUE Art Foundation, International Studio & Curatorial Program, ISCP, Alma Lewis, and Proxyco Gallery. Her work has been exhibited at Sharjah’s First Design Biennale, Untitled, Art Miami Beach, The Highline, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, and more.

Cruz has participated in residencies such as International Studio & Curatorial Program, ISCP (2022), Planet Texas 2050 Artist Resident — University of Texas (2022), Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, Visual Arts (2021-2022), Artists Circle on Climate Displacement Fellowship, Institute of Othering and Belonging, Berkeley University (2021), Center for Book Arts (2020-2021), BRIClab: Contemporary Art (2020-2021), A.I.R. Gallery (2020-2021), Robert Blackburn Workshop Studio Immersion Project (SIP) (2019), Stoneleaf Retreat (2019), IdeasCity: New Museum (2019), Recess Session (2019), Laundromat Project Create Change (2017-2019), Design Trust for Public Space (2018) and Agora Collective Berlin (2018). Her work has been featured in Hyperallergic, Fuse News, KQED Arts, Dazed Magazine, Garage Magazine and The New York Times.

Ulises is a bookshop and project space dedicated to artists’ books and independent art publications that explores the relationship between publics and publications. They provide an inventory of titles not widely distributed in the United States on contemporary art, graphic design, art theory, architecture, criticism, curatorial practice, and adjacent fields. They support people who make books and expand the boundaries of what art publishing can be. Hosting projects, exhibitions, and residencies, Ulises’s open-ended programming explores publishing as an incubator for new forms of artistic, editorial, curatorial, and pedagogical practice. Ulises sees the democratic potential of publishing as a vehicle for activism, education, assembly, and exchange. The name Ulises is a tribute to the work and legacy of Ulises Carrión, a Mexican-born poet, conceptualist, and avant-garde artist who was an early pioneer and theorist of the artist’s book, and the founder of the Amsterdam-based bookshop Other Books and So (1975–78).

Ulises is the collective labor of Nerissa Cooney, Lauren Downing, Kayla Romberger, Gee Wesley, and Ricky Yanas. It was founded in 2016 by Cooney, Downing, Romberger, Wesley, Yanas, and Joel Evey, with additional contributions from Tim Belknap, Jody Harrington, and Nabil Kashyap.

Image: Photo by Manolo Salas.

Generous support for TUAG programming is provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.