Lisa & Janelle Iglesias

Present Co. continues its Spring 2017 season with Every Force Evolves A Form, an exhibition of new and recent collaborative artworks by Lisa & Janelle Iglesias. On view are a series of artistic call and responses that expand the possibilities of fair play when the rules of authorship are disentangled. Stemming from studio-based gestures in sculpture, painting, drawing, and photography, the sisters find (or return to) associative narratives by incorporating layers of familial objects from their late father and textiles by their mother. The artists have collaborated heavily over the past ten years concurrent with their individual practices in drawing and sculpture.

Born and raised in Queens, NY to Norwegian/Dominican parents, their artistic partnership began as Las Hermanas Iglesias––a moniker referencing their identity within the historical and philosophical contexts of feminism, teamwork, and multiculturalism. The duo has augmented this mode of production while living in different cities, usually through self-initiated residencies occurring alongside family events and visits. Currently, they work from opposite coasts in the U.S., Florida and California respectively, with frequent sojourns to New York. Over the past few years, they initiated a parallel inquiry as Lisa & Janelle Iglesias, which transitioned from project-based antics to inviting one another into their individual creative territories as prompts for interventions and intermixing processes.

The title Every Force Evolves A Form is attributed to Ann Lee (1736–1784), a leader of the Shaker Church at a time when few women held such positions. The exhibition speaks to the cumulative and deconstructive actions persistent in the sisters’ dialogic practice as well as their attention to the factors that shape their paths, disciplines, and futures. With mischief and buoyancy, the artists embrace a mode of production that is contingent on being present with each other and with the materials and ideas at hand at a particular moment in time.

Everyday materials are co-opted and repurposed to combine unlikely worlds that celebrate multiple viewpoints through transparency and obstruction - lenses, privacy screens, mirrors, and portals - pushing ideas of depth, dimensionality, and ways of seeing. Older pieces are taken apart, turned on their side, and reinvented in order to start a new conversation. Lisa & Janelle Iglesias tease out their sibling dynamic by testing their inherent accents, quips, and personalities much like musical improvisation––finishing each other’s aesthetic vernacular in the same way they finish each other’s sentences.

Lisa received her MFA from the University of Florida where she is now an Assistant Professor of Drawing & Painting. Janelle earned her MFA degree in Sculpture from Virginia Commonwealth University and recently relocated to Southern California. The sisters’ individual and collaborative work has been shown in museums, galleries and community artspaces around the country such as El Museo del Barrio, Queens Museum, Sculpture Center, Abrons Art Center, Socrates Sculpture Park and the Islip Art Museum. As a team they’ve been artists in residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts through LMCC’s Paris residency program and more recently at Fanoon: Center for Print Research at VCUQ in Doha. Their work has been supported by the Queens Council for the Arts, NYFA, The National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures, the Pollock-Krasner and Joan Mitchell Foundations, amongst others. They maintain an ad hoc studio in Queens, NY even while working on site-specific and collaborative projects throughout the world.