SaveArtSpace x Rosa Projects are proud to present Tigueras, a public art exhibition on billboard ad space in New York, NY, opening May 17, 2024. Curated by Margarita Lila Rosa.

The SaveArtSpace x Rosa Projects: Tigueras selected artists are Maria A. Guzmán Capron, Ciarra K. Walters, Kaila Burke-Ozuna, Olivia "LIT LIV" Morgan, and Yolanda Hoskey.

The theme of this exhibition is “Tigueras,” meaning tigers, providing to the public powerful work centering on unapologetic femme and gender-expansive aesthetics. Showing New York the women who created us and the women who we are.

Opening May 17, 2024, SaveArtSpace will launch public art installations for each selected work on billboard ad spaces in New York, NY. The public art will be on view for at least one month.

Selected Artists

Joining together an extensive palette of vibrant and often playfully patterned fabrics to construct bodily forms, Maria A. Guzmán Capron’s practice explores cultural hybridity, a non-binary sense of self, and the competing desires to assimilate and to be seen. Born in Milan, Italy to Colombian and Peruvian parents and later relocating to Texas as a teenager, the artist recognizes the challenges of toggling between various cultures and geographies. The artist’s multilayered textile works offer a physical manifestation of the polyvalent influences that shape us, emphasizing that we consist of several identities—some that we repress and some that we exalt.

Composed with a variety of recycled, off-cut, and store-bought fabrics, Capron’s works merge privileged textiles with those that have been rejected and discarded as excess. By contrasting common fibers like cotton with more luxurious fabrics like silk, the artist addresses material hierarchies in art and fashion to parallel the power dynamics that exist within class and gender.

Building from this critical ground, Capron investigates how clothing is used as a tool for the performance of self—signaling the unrestricted spectrum of cultural identity. Drawing from immigrants’ experiences, she is invested in the friction of mistranslations—of failing to “dress the part,” or having one’s pride in self-expression overcast by exoticization or coercive assimilation. In addition to serving as a metaphor for society’s inequities, her use of mainstream and mass market materials functions as a subversive gesture to challenge the homogenizing capitalist landscape. Enlisting an intentional range of materials, including fabrics readily accessible to all, Capron demonstrates that the very fabrics used to reinforce hierarchies of class can instead be used to dismantle them while staging a space for difference to thrive.

Exaggerated body parts—signature moves in Capron’s work—render muscular arms that embrace, puffy fingers that clasp together, and slinky legs that intertwine to become one. Through eclectic fabric and subtly painted brushstrokes, these interlaced figures confront the viewer and become an invitation for vulnerability, openness, and individual expression.

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Maria A. Guzmán Capron (b. 1981, Lives and works in Oakland, CA) was born in Italy to Colombian and Peruvian parents. She received her MFA from California College of the Arts in 2015 and her BFA from the University of Houston in 2004. Select solo exhibitions include The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; the Blaffer Art Museum, Houston, TX; Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles, CA; Texas State Galleries, San Marcos, TX and Guerrero Gallery, San Francisco, CA. Select group exhibitions include Boston University, Boston, MA; Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco; Berkeley Art Center, Berkeley, CA; Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles, CA; The Mistake Room, Los Angeles, CA; Public Gallery, London, UK; NIAD Art Center, Richmond, CA; CULT Aimee Friberg Exhibitions, San Francisco, CA; Deli Gallery in Brooklyn, NY; and Buffalo Institute for Contemporary Art, Buffalo, NY. Her works have been written about in Hyperallergic, Variable West, Bomb Magazine, and Art in America.

Capron’s work is in the collection of the de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA, the Jorge M. Pérez, Miami, FL, and the Speed Museum, Louisville, KY. As a 2022 recipient of SFMOMA’s SECA Award, her exhibition Respira Hondo was presented at SFMOMA through May 2023.

Connect with Maria on Instagram at @mariaguzmancapron.

My name is Ciarra K. Walters (1992), daughter of Eileen. I am a multidisciplinary artist based in Baltimore, Maryland. My practice centers around forming and finding agency over the female body and my connection to nature through self-portraiture. Moving amongst trees, oceans, deserts, and mountains in bright Chakra-colored clothing, I have created a personal, and visual language between repetition, color, and the body. 

Since the loss of my mother in 2021, my work now investigates the complexities of mortality, identity, and legacy, through the use of ceremonial performance, sculpture, photography, and film. Using materials such as eggshells, pantyhose, paper, and ripped canvas, my work plays with the symbiotic relationship of fragility and spiritual existence. 

I am set to receive my MFA from MICA’s Photography + Media & Society Program this May!

"Eileen’s Daughters” is an MFA thesis exploration on female identity through the lens of daughterhood. Using brown eggshells and pantyhose, this work includes ceremonial performance, photography, film, and sculpture, honoring the identity and fragility of daughters. "Eileen's Daughters" is currently on view until April 28, 2024, at Meyerhoff Gallery, 1303 W Mount Royal Ave, Baltimore, MD, 21217.

Connect with Ciarra on Instagram at @ciarrakwalters.

Connect with Kaila on Instagram at @kaisdaze.

Olivia Morgan, or LIT LIV, is a Jamaican–American born Photographer based in New York. Her creative journey started in 2018 when she moved away from the family home. Photography helped her break away from self-isolation. Crafting a shooting style that reflects her artistic journey as a queer woman of color. She champions a mission to shine a spotlight on overlooked and underrepresented people. Using digital and film photography to capture the emotional and physical narratives of subjects – inviting viewers to partake in their stories.

Connect with LIT LIV on Instagram at @LIT_LIV_1.

Yolanda Hoskey What is Beauty?

Yolanda Hoskey is a visual storyteller whose work transcends time, capturing the essence of human experience through photography. With a background in Theatre Arts and Film, she brings a unique perspective to her craft, weaving narratives that challenge and inspire. Despite starting her photo journey in 2020, Yolanda has garnered recognition from esteemed publications like Essence Magazine and her work has appeared in The New York Times, Bloomberg, and Aperture Magazine. Selected as one of fifty global cohorts in Getty Images' Creator Accelerator Program in 2023 and later becoming a Magnum Foundation fellow in 2024, Yolanda's talent has been acknowledged on an international scale. Collaborating with companies such as Fujifilm, Meta, and Walmart, she combines artistic vision with a commitment to representation, aiming to amplify underrepresented voices and reshape narratives. Through her lens, Yolanda continues to push boundaries and spark meaningful dialogue in the world of visual storytelling.

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Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Yolanda Hoskey (b. 1992), is a multi-disciplinary artist based in New York.

Her work is driven by the notion that blackness is non-monolithic. Growing up, Yolanda would see the same archetypes of blackness portrayed in the media, contrary to the examples around her in her day-to-day life. She imagines a world where blackness is documented as multi-dimensional. In her images, she feels it necessary to visualize black people as dynamic, soft, free, and unapologetic, using a mixture of portraiture, documentary, and fashion photography as tools to reflect these ideas. As an image maker, Yolanda aims to create a truer, more nuanced catalog of the black identity. 

Connect with Yolanda on Instagram at @ghettoyolie.

Curator

Margarita Lila Rosa is a scholar of Afro-Latin American and African American history, a curator specializing in Black and Latinx art, and an art writer. Dr. Rosa is the founder of Rosa Projects, an organization dedicated to increasing arts patronage for artists of color. Her academic work has appeared in The Journal of African American History, The Black Scholar, and Slavery & Abolition, among others. Rosa’s art writing has appeared in i-D Vice, The Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic, and Frieze. 

Connect with Margarita on Instagram at @margaritalilarosa.

Participating Organizations

Rosa Projects is invested in offering pivotal opportunities for artists from marginalized backgrounds to participate in highly visible collaborations. Rosa Projects partners with entities to ​deliver groundbreaking ​commissions, collaborations, ​placements, and exhibitions, ​anchored in our conviction ​that art history relies on ​creating pivotal deals for ​artists of color to create ​monumental work.

Connect with Rosa Projects on Instagram at @rosa.projects.

Founded in 2015, SaveArtSpace is a non-profit organization that works to create an urban gallery experience, launching exhibitions that address intersectional themes and foster a progressive message of social change. By placing culture over commercialism, SaveArtSpace aims to empower artists from all walks of life and inspire a new generation of young creatives and activists.