Event
No Bodies: Artists in Conversation
A discussion about Real Art Way’s new exhibit No Bodies: Clothing as Disruptor involving visual artists, poets, designers, and curator Alva Greenberg. Within this conversation, participants will discuss the use of written language within the exhibit, assumptions of materiality, cultural identity, and other elements that can make clothing a Disruptor.
No Bodies: Artists in Conversation will be held at Real Art Ways, Hartford, on March 29th, 2024 from 5:30pm to 7:00pm.
Discussion Panelists
Carlos Estévez was born and raised in Cuba and moved to Miami in 2004, where he lives and works. He graduated from the University of Arts (ISA) in Havana and solo exhibitions of his work have been presented at the National Museum of Fine Arts, Havana and in solo and group exhibitions around the US and abroad. His work is included in numerous prestigious collections, such as those of the National Museum of Fine Arts, Havana; Museum of Fine Art, Boston; The Ludwig Forum, Aachen, Germany; The Bronx Museum, New York; Perez Art Museum Miami, Florida. Estéves is a featured artist in No Bodies: Clothing as Disruptor.
Susan Clinard is a contemporary American sculptor. Her life-scale figurative sculptures combine found objects, carved wood elements and ceramic portraiture. Her compositions tell stories, helps us connect and speak to our shared humanity.
Susan’s sculptures were recently acquired by the Fenix Museum in Amsterdam, a major new museum inspired by stories of global migration. She is the winner of the National Hammerschalg carving
award and the Art by the Northeast award for sculpture. She has been the artist in residence at the Eli Whitney Museum for the past twelve years. Susan has taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Palette and Chisel Academy of Fine Arts. She has received substantial public commissions, and her sculptures can be found in many private and public collections worldwide. Clinard is a featured artist in No Bodies: Clothing as Disruptor.
Neville Wisdom is the Head Designer and Owner of the Neville Wisdom clothing label based in New Haven, Connecticut. Neville began designing and creating clothing at the age of fifteen, and learned many aspects of the trade from watching a local tailor in his small rural town in Jamaica. Neville has been designing clothing for both men and women for over twenty-five years. In 2008, Neville entered the USA fashion scene opening a tiny boutique in Westville and selling assorted small brand clothing.
Reginald Dwayne Betts Reginald Dwayne Betts is a poet, lawyer and the Founder & CEO of Freedom Reads, an initiative to radically transform the access to literature in prisons.
The author of a memoir and three collections of poetry, he has transformed his latest collection of poetry, the American Book Award Winning Felon, into a solo theater show that explores the post incarceration experience and lingering consequences of a criminal record through poetry, stories, and engaging with the timeless and transcendental art of papermaking. Betts’s moist recent work, released 2023, Redaction, a collaboration with artist Titus Kaphar, is based on their 2019 exhibition “The Redaction” at MoMA PS1 about the U.S. cash bail system–the state and federal court system’s conditions by which those arrested, but unable to afford bail, remain incarcerated even though they have been neither tried nor convicted.
In 2019, he won the National Magazine Award in the Essays and Criticism category for his New York Times Magazine essay that chronicles his journey from prison to becoming a licensed attorney. He is also a 2021 MacArthur Fellow, has been awarded a Radcliffe Fellowship from Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Emerson Fellow at New America, and most recently a Civil Society Fellow at Aspen. Mr. Betts holds a J.D. from Yale Law School.
In 2020, after staying in New Haven post-graduation, Betts founded Freedom Reads with a $5.25 million grant from the Mellon Foundation. Freedom Reads, headquartered in Hamden and employing several formerly incarcerated individuals, is the only organization in the country with a mission to provide libraries to prisons, and thereby support the efforts of incarcerated individuals to imagine new possibilities for their lives. To date, Freedom Reads has opened over 253 Freedom Libraries in 35 prisons and juvenile detention facilities across 10 states. These libraries provide a locus where conversation and community can begin inside and outside of prison walls. They are objects of beauty, handcrafted by teams that include people who themselves have served time in prison and populated with a 500-book, carefully curated collection that includes poetry, literature, non-fiction, and more. As Betts often declares, “Freedom begins with a book.” Betts is a featured artist in No Bodies: Clothing as Disruptor.
No Bodies: Clothing as Disruptor Curator, Moderator
Alva Greenberg is a curator based in Connecticut. She started her career as the co-owner and editor of The Gazette, a weekly newspaper in Old Lyme, CT. From 1997-2009, she ran ALVA Gallery, a contemporary art gallery in New London, CT dedicated to promoting mid-career artists working in all disciplines. In 2006, Alva Greenberg was a recipient of the Eugene O’Neill Center’s “25 of Connecticut’s most Uncommon Women” award and in 2018 she received the State of Connecticut Governor’s Patron of the Arts award. Ms. Greenberg currently serves on several boards including the French American Museum Exchange (FRAME), Romare Bearden Foundation and the Connecticut Arts Foundation. Past boards include the Florence Griswold Museum and Arttable. Alva Greenberg is the curator of No Bodies: Clothing as Disruptor.
