ARCAthens Virtual Residency August 2020
We are delighted to introduce our second ARCAthens Virtual Residency Fellows.
Michael Paul Britto’s interdisciplinary practice spans a broad scope of mediums from videos to digital photography, sculpture, collage, and performance. He has a BA from the City College, NY. His past residencies include: The New Museum, Smack Mellon, The Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation and LMCC. He has exhibited at El Museo del Barrio, The Studio Museum of Harlem and The Kitchen in (NY) as well as internationally at The Zacheta National Gallery (Warsaw), and the Victoria and Albert Museum (London). Britto has been written about in The New York Times, Art In America and The Brooklyn Rail. He is also a teaching artist, and the co-founder of the “Young Men Of Color” film / video training program at Downtown Community Television in New York City.
My work is most concerned with the misconceptions and assumptions communicated by mass media in The United States. My practice creates a platform where I can address political and cultural awareness, using the customary, as metaphor. I encourage the viewer to think about socially nurtured assumptions of blackness, poverty, youth, and the characteristics of acceptable behavior, to create a perspective that is more responsive than reactionary. By appropriating the appropriated (i.e. pop culture) and mining historical references, I believe that my messages resonate from a globally shared influence of “American” culture.
Michael Paul Britt
Eirini Linardaki was born in Athens and studied at Limerick L.I.T., Ireland, Berlin and Marseille. She lived in France for more than twenty years before moving to the island Crete, where she is now based, developing projects mainly in the public sphere, on Crete, Athens, Paris and New York.She has exhibited at the Boijmans Museum, Rotterdam, Stegi, Onassis Cultural center Athens, House of Cyprus in Greece, Salon de Montrouge, Fri-Art Kunsthalle, Fribourg; Natural History Museum, Geneva, Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Hamburg Kunsthaus, Rutgers University, NJ, Institut Français d’Athènes, John Jay College, Anya and Andrew Shiva gallery, Lower East Side Girls Club, NYC, Radiator Gallery, NYC, Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural and Educational Center, NYC.In January 2020 she was one of the curators of the Night of Ideas and Philosophy, for the French Institute of Greece.In February 2020 she organized and curated a «residency in the workplace» and exhibition program “Occupy # 1, New York” in collaboration with the Consulate General of Greece in New York and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the USA, where artists were invited to work within the offices and in collaboration with administrative staff of the Consulate and create art through dialogue with them. linardakiparisot.wixsite.com
“At this time of historic global crisis, art is helping and serving people in their communities. I believe that right now in history art is keeping pace with social change.Sometimes persistent social issues knock on our door and enter our dreams, becoming a defining aspect of a useful artistic vision. I experience this through my research, my practice and my overall journey as an artist. The complexity and persistent presence of the issues I face in various cities and communities become part of my artwork, expressed through materials found and generated by the ambitions of the participants. “
AVR Synopsis – A Cross Cultural Dialogue Between the AVR Fellows
Instagram Visual Conversation
ARCAthens Virtual Residency #2 is our second residency of this season, featuring our AVR Fellows, Michael Paul Britto, from the Bronx, New York, and Eirini Linardaki, from Athens, Greece. Their Instagram conversation/takeover took place from July 20-August 14, 2020.
Week 1: Topology / Misconceptions
I grew up in Athens. I moved to an island that is made of floating mountains.
Post by Michael Paul Britto
“The Brown Man Experience” was initially developed during the 2014 Performing Artist Residency at Casita Maria Center for Arts & Education in the South Bronx. Read More
In 2008 I did a project in Liberia with Handicap International, working with these amazing students raising awareness on mobility and accessibility for people with disabilities. Read More
Michael Paul Britto
“Black Pride, White Privilege” 2010 Read More
Today we went to Agios Nikolaos of Crete, a city on the east side of the island, where we will make a new public project. Read More
Curatorial Reflections Week 1: Topology/Misconceptions
AVR2, the second ARCAthens Virtual Residency, welcomes #BronxArtist Michael Paul Britto and #GreekArtist Eirini Linardaki, based in #Heraklion #Crete, to an Instagram Takeover, where these two wonderful artists engage in a visual conversation. Read More
Week 2: Movement
Michael Paul Britto “Army Of Me” 2015,
12 inches x 16 inches, Cut Magazine, Arches Paper Read More
Here is a public art project I did in summer 2019 for Hommocks middle school in Larchmont, NY. Read More
Michael Paul Britto
“Stages Of Relations”, 2015
Glass Bottles, Cut Vinyl
Dimensions Variable Read More
The museum ninja
This is the moment where I included a moment of my life as a mother into my work as an artist: Read More
Curatorial Reflections Week 2: Movement
In the second week of the AVR2, Michael Paul Britto and Eirini Linardaki visually converse about “Movement”, the “notion of motion” (whether that manifests as a record of the activity of the individual or collective body), as well as the record of the activity of the mind, as seen in social movements. Read More
Week 3: Fear and Fatigue
Post by Michael Paul Britto
Michael Paul Britto
“Black Boy”, 2013
Digital Video Loop, 00:47 sec.
Dimensions Variable Read More
The thing that comes_Pearl Harbor, digital collage, archival photo, 2020. This is part of the collage series that are made over archival photos. Read More
Michael Paul Britto
“The Overseer” 2015
Gesso Board, Cut Magazine,Glass Bottle, Cut Vinyl
Dimensions Variable Read More
The monster, digital collage 2019. An explosion shook the city of Beirut yesterday. Read More
The wreck of hope_luxor air, watercolor, 2018, this is a military exercise, It is a fascinating image to me because it is a simulation of an extreme situation that is haunting me. Read More
Curatorial Reflections Week 3: Fear/Fatigue
In the AVR2’s third week, Michael Paul Britto and Eirini Linardaki’s visual conversation takes us on a journey of their apprehensions as well as deep seated fears. Read More
Week 4: Gender
Michael Paul Britto
Untitled (Grace), 2009/2011
Print made with archival pigments on fine art rag paper Read More
Husband and wife, 2008. A video work on the incomprehension between narratives within couples, testing “true stories” of 10 years in joint life cycle between partners Read More
Post by Michael Paul Britto
Michael Paul Britto
Machismo!, 2017
Digital Video Vignettes
Dimensions Variable Read More
Escape Routes, 2016
Installation in the former police station of Heraklio, Crete. It is fundamental in human experience to imagine an escape from lives which seemingly bind us to results of choices not of our own making. Read More
“Until the killing of black men, black mothers’ sons, becomes as important to the rest of the country as the killing of a white mother’s son, we who believe in freedom cannot rest until this happens.” ― Ella Baker
le interruzioni, video, 3.20′, 2006
This video shows a woman in her kitchen, where she is reading the first lines of the Divine Comedy and she is explaining how this is all like her life and the fact that she is arriving upon the midway of her own life. Read More
In the AVR2’s final week, #MichaelPaulBritto and #EiriniLinardaki’s visual conversation examines gender. Read More