THE ALCHEMY OF SPACE, VALUE, AND SPIRITUALITY: María de los Angeles Rodríguez Jiménez, Yaw Owusu, and Tajh Rust in Conversation

THE ALCHEMY OF SPACE, VALUE, AND SPIRITUALITY: María de los Angeles Rodríguez Jiménez, Yaw Owusu, and Tajh Rust in Conversation

Thursday, April 24th, 2025 at 5:30pm

Moderated by Alyssa Velazquez

FREE! And Open to the Public

Join ALL STARS artists, María de los Angeles Rodríguez Jiménez, Yaw Owusu, and Tajh Rust, for a thought-provoking conversation on how their work addresses the intersections of value, materiality, and cultural memory. Their practices explore themes of transformation, identity, and the environment, engaging with both personal and collective histories. Moderated by Alyssa Velazquez, Assistant Curator at Carnegie Museum of Art, a cultural historian, playwright, actress, and writer of gender, performance, and material culture.

María de los Angeles Rodríguez Jiménez

María de los Angeles Rodríguez Jiménez received her BFA from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in 2015 and MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Yale University in 2020. Rodríguez Jiménez has participated in residencies such as the Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture (2016), SOMA Summer (2019) and Pivô Arte e Pesquisa (2023).

Her work has been exhibited in institutions such as the High Museum of Art (Atlanta, GA), the Frost Art Museum (Miami, FL), and The Alabama Contemporary Art Center (Mobile, AL), among others. She was a recipient of The Fulbright Research Fellowship (2021) and the NYPL Jerome Robbins Dance Fellowship (2022), where she collaborated with Candomblé dancers and practitioners in Brazil. She currently lives and works in Queens, New York.

Yaw Owusu

Yaw Owusu is a visual artist who creates sculptural installations that repurpose found objects, shifting otherwise – worthless materials into encounters of value, and things of other realities. Using steel, gold, silver, copper and found objects in foils; sheets and coins – through activities of change and transformation; removal and attachment; and de-materializing. An approach rooted in a sense of playful alchemy that embraces the dynamics of currency, symbolism and meaning. Owusu received his BFA in painting from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana and an MFA from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York. He is the recipient of the prestigious Kuenyehia Art Prize for Contemporary Ghanaian Art (2018) and the Pratt Circle Award and Outstanding Student Award (2020).  Owusu currently lives and works in New York and Accra.

Tajh Rust

Tajh Rust is a visual artist based in New York. He received his MFA from Yale in 2019 and BFA from Cooper Union in 2011. Rust was in the inaugural group of artists participating in the Black Rock Senegal artist residency in 2019.

Solo exhibitions include Reflections, Palm Springs Art Museum (2023); Somewhere in Between, Matthew Brown, Los Angeles (2022); and Where We Meet, Matthew Brown, Los Angeles (2020). Recent group exhibitions include Open Call, The Shed, New York (2021); and I will wear you in my heart of heart, The FLAG Art Foundation, New York (2021); A Face Like Mine, Mattatuck Museum, Waterbury, CT (2021); For Which It Stands, Ford Foundation Gallery & Assembly Room, New York (2020); Permutations, Sibler Gallery, Goucher College, Baltimore, MD (2019); Vernacular Interior, Hales Gallery, New York (2019); Familiar Boundaries. Infinite Possibilities, August Wilson Center, Pittsburgh, PA (2018); and Strange Beach, Fridman Gallery, New York (2018).

Alyssa Velazquez

Alyssa Velazquez is a cultural historian, playwright, actress, and writer of gender, performance, and material culture. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in Material Intelligence, The Tower, Scraps Literary Journal, The Establishment, AutoStraddle, GRLSQUASH, The Fashion Studies Journal, Women’s History Magazine, Juggad: A Material Religions Project, and the Votive Project. Past residencies include Lambda Literary Writer’s Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices 2024, City Books Writer-in-Residence, and as a Freshworks Artist at Kelly Strayhorn Theater in Pittsburgh, PA. She is a proud member of Dramatists Guild of America. She holds a MFA from the Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture, and a BA from Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland.