ANGISA:
A LANGUAGE
OF LIVING
Angisa: A Language of Living is a solo exhibition held at the Andrew Reed Gallery from July 11 to August 16, 2024. The exhibition explores the cultural history of Suriname, focusing on creolized cultures through painting, collage, photography, and installation. Inspired by his 2023 residency in Suriname with the Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Institute, Tulloch examines the Angisa, a traditional Afro-Surinamese headkerchief, as a symbol of storytelling and cultural preservation.
The exhibition includes works that blend figures and natural landscapes, exploring themes of Marronage and masquerade as tools of survival and identity. Using cold wax, UV printing, and mixed media, Tulloch combines photographic archives with painterly techniques to create layered, dimensional works. Pieces like The Raft of Samaaka and Forest Teller reflect his personal relationships with Surinamese communities and explore connections between history, memory, and the natural world.
The gallery features decorative wood carvings, sublimation-printed tapestries, and hanging Angisas that highlight Suriname's Maroon heritage and Dutch colonial influences. The exhibition examines how landscapes, cultural memory, and shared histories shape identity and community.
www.andrewreedgallery.com/angisa-a-language-of-living
Select Works
(Images by Zachary Balber, courtesy of Andrew Reed Gallery)
POETICS OF PLACE
Set in the ruins of a Miami home’s porch space, the installation reflects on the dystopian future shaped by climate gentrification in the city. Through projection, video, and architectural interventions, Poetics of Place poses questions about the cultures at risk of being lost amid rising tides and new development. The work explores the memories and presence of Miami’s past, present, and future, offering a cultural stage for what must be preserved.
Tulloch, as both an artist and architect, uses the installation to highlight underrepresented stories and lived experiences of Miami’s Black communities. The project examines how space shapes cultural identity and how cultural identity cultivates landscapes. The porch, a central element of the installation, is depicted as a vital vernacular for social development, placemaking, and cultural identity.
In partnership with Locust Projects, Poetics of Place also features interdisciplinary performances that activate the space, serving as an homage to the Miami of the past and a call to protect the future of its vulnerable Black and Caribbean communities.
https://locustprojects.org/exhibitions/project-room/poetics-of-place.html
(Images by Zachary Balber, Courtesy of Locust Projects)
Tides: Spatial Memory of Being
Tides: Spatial Memory of Being
A site-specific installation for NADA House 2023
September 1- October 1, 2023
For the fifth edition of NADA House, CUE Art Foundation presents Tides: Spatial Memory of Being, a site-specific installation by Cornelius Tulloch. The work is presented on the porch of Nolan Park House 18 at Governors Island, in conjunction with Tulloch’s solo exhibition at CUE’s gallery space entitled Vendah.
The installation reimagines the porch space of the house by embedding within its railing fabric that depicts collaged scenes of Black and Caribbean domestic life. Screening in the porch space, Tulloch explores the notion of spatial memory within vernacular architecture. A montage of the artist’s archival family photos and imagery of ornamental ironwork are incorporated into the facade of the existing structure. The installation recontextualizes the lived experience of the porch space, and puts it into conversation with other cultural contexts.
Tides builds upon Tulloch’s ongoing practice that explores vernacular architecture to investigate cultural hybridity in tactile and sensory ways. The simple architectural language of the porch allows for a continual transformation. As the entryway to the home and a middle ground between the private interior and the public realm, the porch functions as a threshold between domestic experience and forms of cultural exchange that build community. Referencing the water that surrounds Governors Island, Tulloch connects the site spatially to the archipelagos of his ancestry, reflecting upon the persistent fluidity of people and culture.
VENDAH
The gallery was transformed into a vibrant marketplace, incorporating found materials like wood, tarp, and fabric to build immersive installations. Visitors engaged with the works as both observers and participants, reflecting on cultural memory and shared histories. Vendah also featured a collaborative program, "Rooted Wanderings," with performances and an exhibition walkthrough.
Accompanying this show, Tulloch presented Tides: Spatial Memory of Being, a site-specific installation on Governors Island as part of NADA House, further exploring diasporic movement and the sensory landscapes of culture.
https://cueartfoundation.org/vendah
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/51f13e79e4b0799d35dfa1a8/t/65039a33b9e746478ae91ad2/1694734902918/On+View_Vendah_Press+Release_CUE+Art+Foundation.pdf
Show Catalogue: https://issuu.com/cueart/docs/vendah
Rooted Wanderings
Performance piece in collaboration with Dj Young Wavy Fox (sound art/production), Iyanna the Model (performer), Coco Villa (performer), Savannah Sayarat (costume designer)
BOUGAINVILLEA
An Exploration of Adornment
Faena Art Project Room, 2022
Bougainvillea: An Exploration of Adornment is a site-specific installation by Cornelius Tulloch that explores Caribbean cultural aesthetics. The fashion and music of Jamaica’s Dancehall scene echoes the state of the country and the lived experiences of those on the island. In this exhibition Tulloch reimagines the everydayness of contemporary Caribbean culture through the lens of dancehall, Jamaican Junkanoo, and masquerade. This new photographic series plays with Black visual aesthetics and creates an environment that overflows from the photographs into the design elements constructed specifically for the Faena Art Project Room.
Fashion has always been a regarded form of expression throughout Jamaica, and this series invites the viewer into the artist’s unique relationship with culture to rethink how to tell their own stories and reflect a contemporary lifestyle in the clothing and adornment they wear.
Cornelius Tulloch thanks his collaborators Diana Eusebio and Nadia Wolff for their work on this exhibition.
Exhibtion Interview Walkthrough: https://www.instagram.com/reel/CiN3B6LJYwa/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Faena Art: https://www.faenaart.org/cornelius-tulloch
Bougainvillea Photo Series
Performance (In collaboration with Iyanna the Model, NAdia Wolff, Arsimmer McCoy, and Muzelle; Documented by Sol Alonzo)
