Artes Visuales Graduate Curatorial Fellows Spotlight: Grace Sanabria and Reuben Gordon
With Artes Visuales closing in 1 week, we want to spotlight the exhibition’s Graduate Curatorial Fellows. These Hunter students worked with the Hunter College Art Galleries staff and exhibition curators Harper Montgomery, and fellow MA and MFA students. The Fellows were responsible for working on a variety of curatorial and program related tasks for this exhibition and the accompanying academic publication. In the past months, they researched image rights and reproduction, coordinated press outreach, and contributed to exhibition design considerations. Read more about Grace and Reuben below...
Grace Sanabria
3rd year in MA Art History
Photo by Paula Lycan
What was your most impactful take-a-way from working on Artes Visuales?
I've really enjoyed exploring how the magazine functioned as a space for community connection. In particular, the issue dedicated to calls for the liberation of imprisoned Uruguayan artists Clemente Padín and Jorge Caraballo is a beautiful example of Artes Visuales creating space for artists to gather and collectively address political injustice.
What is your favorite artwork, from the show, and why?
That's a hard question to answer! Probably the visual poetry by Jorge Caraballo, Guillermo Deisler and Clemente Padín, or Anna Bella Geiger's Amuleto. All works that utilize signs we are accustomed to viewing a certain way (maps, language, logos) and injecting them with a new perspective that makes us reconsider their meaning.
Are you an artist? What’s your practice?
I don't make much work these days but I did study art in undergraduate, with a focus in printmaking.
READING
I am slowly making my way through Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie but have taken a break because it kept making me cry on the subway during my morning commute--not the optimal way to start your day.
LISTENING
I am always listening to a mix. Lately, I like Spirit Blue's weekly show on NTS Radio.
Reuben Gordon
Third-year MFA concentrating in Painting
What was your most impactful take-a-way from working on Artes Visuales?
Of the many great experiences I had while working on Artes Visuales, perhaps the most impactful was reading Olivier Debroise’s “Diego Rivera and the Representation of Space (Notes for an Analysis)” in Artes Visuales no. 16, Winter 1977. The article was a bit atypical of the publication because of its focus on Rivera and his Cubist period in Paris, but was really engaging for me as a painter with an interest in Modernism. Debroise offered descriptions of Rivera’s work and milleu, and an in-depth explanation of how Rivera’s Cubist “laboratory” had a clear effect on his ability to paint large murals on spatially complex buildings when he returned to Mexico and the U.S. The article stuck with me and has inspired my thesis exhibition plans.
What is your favorite artwork, from the show, and why?
My favorite artwork from the show is probably either Manuel Felguérez’s “Elemento B” or Regina Vater’s “Tina America”.
Are you an artist? What’s your practice?
I am an artist indeed. I am a painter. Right now I am working toward my thesis exhibition here at Hunter (opening March 26, 2026). For this exhibition I will be working with both the figure and abstraction to make portraits within a muralistic format that may exist as both abstract painting and humanistic depiction of recognizable life and emotions. I was also in an exhibition recently up at 81 Leonard Gallery in Tribeca. I showed four works from my ongoing “Willy-B” series: paintings on the theme of the Williamsburg Bridge (2020-2025).
READING
Recently I have been reading, among different things, Italian director Federico Fellini’s writings in “Fellini on Fellini”, pub. 1974.
LISTENING
Cam’ron and Drake