Denisse Griselda

Bio: Straddling the lines of assimilation, refuge, and self-preservation, Denisse Griselda’s current work interrogates the boundaries of representation by publicly engaging with memory. Her autofictional practice is dedicated to investigating how to archive and split open marginalized histories poised between fiction and reality, the histories that are manufactured as (in) visible and which lend themselves to their own representation and mystification. Denisse Griselda Reyes is a performance artist, animator, and filmmaker working in New York, NY. She graduated from Wesleyan University in 2015 with a BA in Art History. Currently, she is completing her MFA in Visual Arts at Columbia University.

www.denissegriselda.com
Instagram: @9riselda

Thesis Exhibition

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Artist Statement: My work begins as a psychological dig, the initial site being my own Identity. I dig through my past: the painful memories, the sublime experiences, and the loose thread that connects me to my family’s Salvadoran history. With the information I uncover, I create films, videos, and paintings. The dramatic complexities of personal and trans-historical trauma manifests through my hyperbolic recreation of these experiences. This research reveals my own history, the kernel of truth I carry with me, and a mythological history, the narratives that falsely generate and preserve stereotypes. Is my visibility as an artist fixed to this narrative—whether real or imagined—of pain and suffering? Why do I have to perform excess, why do I have to embody the Other, in order to be human? I am not trying to answer these questions. Recreating tragedy is inherently a failure.

Variations of an Original, (16:58 looped, Three channel video with sound (2 monitors, 1 projection), excerpts from the film "Cry with Me", (2021) directed, written and edited by Denisse Griselda Reyes, produced by Rowena Kosher, Director of Photography: Erin Nene-Lee Ramirez Sound: Louis Di Fusco, 2021)

First Year Exhibition

*Así Volvemos*, (72 x 72 in, Oil, antiquing solution, and pumice on canvas, 2021)

Open Studios

Ava Ravich

John A. Rivas