Latest news with #JordanCasteel
New York Times
05-06-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Punk, Monet and Puerto Rico: New Photography From Elle Pérez
Subtle resistance to representation is on display in a handful of new shows, where some artists are refusing the notion that figuration must be their primary subject, or what is required to be successful. 'Source Notes,' Lorna Simpson's riveting new show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, highlights her shift toward painting while still emphasizing the artists' career-long interest in destabilizing expectations of Black life and the art that makes sense of it. The painter Jordan Casteel's newfound focus on florals is a dreamy drift away from her signature portraits. And one of the most fascinating new artists I found to be coyly refusing to play the game of identity politics is the New York photographer Elle Pérez, whose exhibition at the American Academy of Arts and Letters in Upper Manhattan centers the politics of personhood over the consumption of that same self. The lens lingers on physical terrain: yards, curving coastlines. The portraits included are mantle-size, which, in the cavernous space, dares you to come close and forge an intimate relationship with the work. At first glance, one could erroneously wonder if the show, comprising nearly 30 images, a slide show, a short film and a collage, is a premature retrospective. The works on display span the artist's career from 2009 to 2025 and seem to be organized semi-chronologically. But it quickly becomes clear that 'The World Is Always Again Beginning, History With the Present,' organized by Jenny Jaskey, chief curator, in collaboration with Pérez, functions as a cut section invitation into the sacred practice of process. This is a show that starts before you get to the show. The Academy is nestled in the vibrant and rapidly gentrifying neighborhood of Washington Heights, near Boricua College. The elaborate iron gates of the 1923 building that welcome visitors invoke the Gilded Age and its arts patronage, a sorely needed reminder of possibility amid devastating arts defunding. As Pérez explains inside: 'This is the neighborhood that made me.' Pérez was born in 1989 in the Bronx to Puerto Rican parents who were also born and raised there. (As Pérez said in a recent interview, 'My grandparents were the generation that made the jump.') Instead of traditional blocks of wall text, the artist chose to install fragments of their poetry, like those lines, which start the exhibition. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
New York Times
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Jordan Casteel Honors Her Grandmother at the Met Gala
The first time the painter Jordan Casteel saw the dress Charles Elliot Harbison designed for her to wear to this year's Met Gala, she immediately started to cry. 'Not only was it beautiful to see this garment that is tailored quite literally for me,' she said from her couch after her final fitting for what will be her first time attending the event. 'It is something that feels like they were thinking about me from the beginning to the end in designing it.' 'This is a fever dream,' she added. While Ms. Casteel had seen sketches and mood boards and was in constant communication with Mr. Harbison during the design process, the abstract came to life when she was in the room with the garment and the several tailors who were pinning and pricking the dress to her specific needs. 'I feel feminine, I feel bold,' she said about wearing the gown. 'This is a moment where our freedom — there's the complexities of the world that we exist in, but for this day for this carpet for this moment, we are showing up and this outfit makes me feel like I am stepping into a version of myself that no one would expect but that I know I belong.' She added, 'I feel I am powerful and I am beautiful and you will see me, my Black body is going to be seen.' Ms. Casteel, 36, describes the dress as Afro-futurism, or 'the things that we imagine for ourselves,' she said. 'When I put it on, I think it's the feminine part that feels really good.' The dress is really a two-piece: a skirt and a top. They both have strong volume points around the hip and Ms. Casteel is expecting to reveal more and more of it as the night goes on. And while the dress is a focal point of the night, it is what will not be seen from the red carpet that she feels proudest to wear. Beneath the dress will be a necklace that belonged to Ms. Casteel's grandmother, Margaret Buckner Young, who was an author, educator and the first Black woman to serve on the board of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 'We are all thinking about the dandies in our life,' Ms. Casteel said, referring to the theme of the gala this year. 'She fashioned herself. I am holding her spirit as close as humanly possible in this moment.' 'This is for her,' she added. 'That is also the freedom.'
