ICI: Benefit Auction 2020 Curatorial Committee Picks

"Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa is currently featured in an exhibition curated by Magali Arriola, titled The Missing Circle, on view at Museo Amparo, Puebla (Mexico). His work in ICI's Auction, Blue Note #1, was featured in Acts of Aggression (2017), an exhibition curated by Curatorial Intensive alumna Laura August, who is currently collaborating with Museo Tamayo and ICI on the online project The Backroom."

"A multi-disciplinary Hong Kong-based artist, Samson Young is one of the most talented artists investigating sound as art today. He engages a broad range of disciplines that includes music composition, performance, installation, sound, video, drawing, and graphic design. His artwork is elegant, razor-sharp, and sometimes political in nature, as it addresses such topics as the vicissitudes of language, cultural and military history."

"Joiri Minaya is a Dominican-American multidisciplinary artist who leverages performances, interventions, public art, videos and photography as artistic modes of expression that seeks to amplify the voice of Latinx communities. Her practice functions as an active vehicle that contends with the visual tropes (i.e. water, beach, tropical landscape) typically associated with the Carribean and Latinx communities.

Minaya calls into question the colonial histories designed to subjugate these communities that historically have existed on the periphery and endeavors to create works that offer a new narrative. These narratives are empowering, vibrant and replete with the possibilities of cultivating a new canonical discourse that is expansive, rich and inclusive of all bodies. I've had the pleasure of exhibiting Joiri's work several times and I'm excited to see her continued artistic growth. Moreover, her recent solo show at the Baxter Street Camera Club is a clear sign of what is to come next."

"Baldessari has been such a strong supporter of ICI and I'd like to think of this work as a tribute to this wonderful organization, but it also expresses a sentiment that we all crave in these very rocky times. The work also captures a broad range of detailed surfaces and textures in a very subtle way, making for a complete whole that is very compelling, humorous and touching."

"This is a very striking, offbeat composition, beautifully capturing the pure, unbridled joy that the man's facial expression exudes in this perfect moment. The attractive and festive clothes of the man and the couple next to him, form a very unexpected contrast with the context of the debris-covered empty lot. The entire set-up, particularly the mysterious identity of the couple in the work, provokes my curiosity. New York City was a notoriously tough place in the 70s, but it was also a famous hotbed for creativity and this photo makes me wish I had been here during that decade."

(above) "I like the approach in Nieves' exploration of domesticity in our society."

(left) "Maravilla bluntly questions social issues is his unique performance."

(right) "Naufus has been a long time fave of mine, I love his sense of humor and how he manages to deal with terribly difficult issues of loss and social unrest via meaningful abstractions."

(below) "[Figueroa's] whimsical sense of humor is always a joy to experience."

You can bid on these works and more by top emerging and established contemporary artists in the ICI: Benefit Auction 2020, open exclusively on Artsy and closing on Wednesday, October 28th, 2020 at 5pm ET.