CONDUCTOR New York: Youssef Taki, José Capaz, Annalee Davis
Overview
Booth A4
AWL Gallery is pleased to participate in CONDUCTOR, presenting works by Youssef Taki and José Capaz, alongside a special project by Annalee Davis. Being held from 29 April to 3 May at the Powerhouse Arts, the presentation brings together Taki’s exploration of memory, representation, and displacement with Capaz’s engagement with systems of power, social behavior, and psychological tension, alongside Davis’s research-driven practice addressing landscape, history, and postcolonial narratives.
Youssef Taki (b. 1995, Morocco) is an artist, educator, and researcher whose practice bridges artistic production and critical inquiry, drawing on decolonial thought and his experience as a migrant in Europe. Through image-making, archival research, and vernacular materials, he examines how colonial and postcolonial structures shape identity and memory. In External Memories (2024), he reconstructs fragile migrant digital memory through recovered obsolete storage devices, forming a living archive of fragmented personal images where loss and interruption become intrinsic to memory.
Youssef Taki (b. 1995, Morocco) is an artist, educator, and researcher whose practice bridges artistic production and critical inquiry, drawing on decolonial thought and his experience as a migrant in Europe. Through image-making, archival research, and vernacular materials, he examines how colonial and postcolonial structures shape identity and memory. In External Memories (2024), he reconstructs fragile migrant digital memory through recovered obsolete storage devices, forming a living archive of fragmented personal images where loss and interruption become intrinsic to memory.
José Gabriel Capaz (b. 1988, Cuba) is a visual artist working primarily in painting, exploring systems of power, social behavior, and psychological tensions within contemporary Cuban life. His layered compositions reflect on structures of control and collective dynamics, constructing ambiguous visual narratives that oscillate between irony, unease, and critical introspection.
Annalee Davis (b. 1963, Barbados) is a visual artist, writer, educator, and cultural instigator whose practice engages with biography, land, and the enduring legacies of plantation economies in the Caribbean. Her work reflects on how these histories continue to shape contemporary landscapes, identities, and cultural memory. In Pray to Flowers (2022–2023), she explores care, cultivation, and the entangled histories of post-plantation landscapes, bringing together personal and collective narratives.
Installation Views
