IEA Resident Artist Jacoub Reyes

The artist states "My layered identity invites me to see taxonomy as a system that requires decolonization. My mother is a first-generation Catholic Caribbean; my father is Muslim and a South Asian immigrant. My mom moved us from the industrial inner-city of the North to the expansive suburbia of the South, just as the war on Iraq gave way to a new wave of racism and Islamophobia. Later, I began to name the societal pressures that led to the self-removal of large parts of my racial and ethnic tapestry that reduced my proximity to whiteness. Much of my work synthesizes this research and uses the body metaphorically to symbolize complex internal emotions associated with the colonial and diasporic experience. 

I am invested in dismantling the boundaries between oral history, academia, personal stories, and ancestral trauma; instead, I see these as essential parts of a complete narrative. I aim to redefine the trauma responses of fight, flight, freeze, and fawn as instruments of colonization. Primarily, my work focuses on re-contextualizing Caribbean art through a diasporic lens. 

I challenge the contemporary communication of the mixed-race or multi-cultural experience. Mixed cultural identity is not relegated to a hyphenated background; but rather a sum of all parts that are interdependent and foundational. The faceless figures of invasive and native plants examine the multiplicity of colonization. Displaying native and invasive plants in various tensions and settings upheaves how we see and experience race, class, and ability. My process to create these works involves finding materials, making tools, and printing without a press or traditional technologies. I work within a space deeply grounded in tradition but flourishes only due to innovation and creativity."

The IEA is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, The New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, the Schein-Joseph Endowment and the Ralph C. Wilson, Jr Foundation. 

The IEA is a high technology research studio facility within the School of Art and Design, which encourages and supports projects that involve interactive multi-media systems, experimental sonic/video production, digital imaging, and publications. The IEA is committed to developing cultural interactions spurred by technological experimentation and artistic investigations. 

The IEA offers two types of residency: Time-based/ New Media and Print Media. The IEA video and sound studio offers artists an integrated system with real-time video, image-processing software, hardware and video capture. The IEA’s Experimental Print Media Program Residency seeks artists who want to explore Digital Printmedia technologies to further and expand their working practice. Artists  have access to state-of-the-art digital arts facilities.