“Humor is a way to counteract feeling helpless, no?” – Carlos Franco Maldonado

Carlos Franco Maldonado: ay. ai. aí. is a playful look into the complexities, recurring motifs, and paradoxes of Puerto Rico–an island in constant struggle for agency in a post-colonial world. In a carefully choreographed multimedia installation Maldonado explores the convergence of nature and culture into a media landscape by mapping the improbable connections between the internet memes of the North American alt-right, the rise of cryptocurrencies in the Caribbean, and the climate change induced disappearance and migration of the Puerto Rican-native coquí frog. 

An artist who works across disciplines, Maldonado considers the components of this installation as an “archipelago” that creates a complex system of interrelations, resembling a deconstructed landscape of the caribbean region, that takes into consideration the infrastructure, economies,  climate, and media that shape it. The installation includes a banana tree, a functional waterworks sculpture, and choreographed video projections sourced from mass and social media. 

Together the works act as a model that reflects the delicate balance of stability and fluidity that define the Caribbean region, the spooky interconnected logic of contemporary life, and the artist’s own connection to and migration from Puerto Rico.

As the exhibition unfolds, Maldonado will be planning and seeking collaborators for a performance to be staged during Puerto Rico day in Buffalo. 

About the Artist

Carlos Franco Maldonado is an artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Maldonado holds a bachelor's degree in Philosophy and Visual Art from the University of Puerto Rico and a masters in New Genres from the San Francisco Art Institute. His works and projects have been presented at the Lab, SOMArt’s Cultural Center, and The Thing Quarterly in San Francisco; at Lvl3 Gallery in Chicago; Nikolaj Kunshal, Copenhagen, DK; Quinta del Sordo, Madrid, SP; and Universidad de Medellín, Medellín, CO among others. He’s currently resident at ISCP in Brooklyn, NY. cfrancomaldonado.com

About the Series

The 2020 exhibition season at BICA is an exploration of humor and its use in contemporary culture. How do artists use humor to reframe local and global narratives, probe questions about personal identity, and radically reconsider popular culture? Can a joke be weaponized? Can humor be used to rewrite history? Can a laugh bring down the government? We’ve invited Carlos Franco-Maldonado, Lex Brown, and Kate Rhoades to exhibit work and realize projects based around how humor is used to make a difference in the world, and we invite others to propose projects, open mics, meme workshops, and other activities that can simultaneously bring levity and action to Buffalo in this polarizing election year.

November 23 is artist Rachel Fein-Smolinski's birthday, so we're throwing her a party with all of her favorite things. Come to BICA for a lecture on pain in Victorian literature by Rachel Ablow at 5:30, a pole dance performance by Evan Vafai around 6:30 accompanied by a new projection work by Fein-Smolinski.

Rachel Ablow is a Professor of English and Humanities Director at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. She is the author of Victorian Pain (Princeton University Press, 2017) and editor of a special issue of the journal, Representations, on "The Social Life of Pain" (2019). Her work addresses the experiences and perspectives of sufferers, caregivers, and medical professionals.

Evan Vafai is an experienced pole performer and instructor, stage actor, visual artist, musician, and student of classical ballet.

Rachel Fein-Smolinski is an artist and educator. Her work is on view at the Buffalo Institute for Contemporary Art.

Rachel Fein-Smolinski will give a talk about her exhibition, This Woman Has ISSSUES!, and her artistic practice.

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Join us for the opening of Rachel Fein-Smolinski’s exhibition, This Woman Has Issues!

Rachel Fein-Smolinski: This Woman Has ISSUES! is the third and final part of a series of exhibitions at BICA dedicated to remaking institutions into utilities that serve the public. An autopic look at the intergenerational intersections of family, healthcare, and arts communities, This Woman Has ISSUES! will take the form of an exhibition, publicly accessible archive, and a series of intimate discussions.

Fein-Smolinski’s work injects science-fictional visual strategies into the authoritative aesthetics of biology and medicine to address issues of courage, pain, neuroses, and the power dynamics embedded in the Western healthcare system. Using photography, video, and installation This Woman Has ISSUES! incorporates imagery constructed from the familial, studio, and medical archive of the late Buffalo figurative painter–and the artist’s grandmother–Jackie Felix, alongside publicly accessible archival material from medical institutions across Western New York.

Of her grandmother Fein-Smolinski says, “Jackie (Gom, what I called her) avidly consumed, deconstructed and reconstructed narratives formulated across cinema, literature, television, news, etc. She was both physically and mentally ill for the duration of her prolific career as an artist. [...] The role of the art world for Jackie, while not curative, was healing. Anyone who knew her, knew that she had no reverence for a God, but she worshipped at the altars of aesthetics and meaning.”

The title of the exhibition is taken from a message on a postcard sent by a friend to Felix from one of multimedia artist Ida Applebroog’s shows and reflects the serpentine intertwinings of art, gender, and trauma. Fein-Smolinski’s work, juxtaposed with her grandmother’s studio notes, medical records, books, newspaper clippings, emails, tools, and toys turn biomedical, personal, and postmodern art history into a fantasy laboratory where these parallel histories co-mingle.

Alongside the exhibition Fein-Smolinski will present a publicly accessible archive of Felix’s studio materials

Rachel Fein-Smolinski is an artist and educator who was raised in Buffalo, NY and holds a B.F.A. in Studio Art from the San Francisco Art Institute and an M.F.A. in Art Photography from Syracuse University. Fein-Smolinski has exhibited internationally and is the recipient of numerous awards, residencies, and publications, including, most recently, the 2019 Visual Studies Workshop residency, Duke University's Archive of Documentary Arts and History of Medicine's Research grant, the 2018 Wynn Newhouse Award for Artists of Excellence with Disabilities, and the Silver Eye Center for Photography’s Fellowship 19 International Award Honorable Mention. Her most recent video, Referred Pain, was shown in the Video in America exhibition at The Everson Museum in Syracuse, NY and at SPACES in Cleveland, OH. Fein-Smolinski is currently a Photography Lecturer in The School of Art + Design at The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

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This party will celebrate the publication of a Cornelia, a new visual arts review for Western New York and Southern Ontario. Come grab the first issue!

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Lindsay Preston Zappas will give an artist talk about her practice and her magazine.

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