Ronny Quevedo
ABOG Fellow for Socially Engaged Art
As an ABOG Fellow Ronny Quevedo will create Higher Sails, a series that transforms small businesses into social agents by broadcasting community concerns through its ephemera and store signage. Located in the Mott Haven section of The Bronx, this project is aimed at creating a platform for residents to respond to the impact of gentrification through art and design. The project re-imagines existing sites of communal exchange into agents of art making and collective response. Higher Sails creates a “new” space for audiences, ranging in demographics, to converge and generate the nuanced vision of collective action. One locally owned business participates in this endeavor as client and host. As a client, their storefront awnings will be re-manufactured and a visual identity created to serve the dual function of in-house design and socially engaged exchanges. Concurrent to this program is a 12-week teen design workshop that creates the visual identity of Higher Sails.
Artist Bio
Ronny Quevedo’s artistic practice is an examination of the vernacular languages and aesthetic forms generated by displacement, migration, and resilience. Inspired by his own family history and migration, Quevedo skillfully transcribes graphics of locality, community, and remembered environments directly into his work. This process often results in imagery that serves simultaneously as an homage to the narratives of historically marginalized peoples, and a platform for dialogue and community engagement on continued practices of marginalization.
Quevedo’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at The Drawing Center; the Queens Museum; The Bronx Museum of the Arts; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and Emerson Gallery (Germany), amongst others. He is a recipient of the 2016 Queens Museum/Jerome Foundation Fellowship for Emerging Artists. He has participated in residencies at Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace program, Kala Art Institute, the Core Program at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Project Row Houses, Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, and Lower East Side Printshop.
Artist portrait by Argenis Apolinario.