Shellyne Rodriguez

Shellyne Rodriguez, 2024

Shellyne Rodriguez (b. 1977) is a Bronx-based artist, educator, historian, writer, and community organizer who works in a variety of media, including drawing, painting, collage, and sculpture. Rodriguez stewards the histories and stories of people that have shaped her lived experience, describing her practice as “the depiction and archiving of spaces and subjects engaged in strategies of survival against erasure and subjugation.” Through her multidisciplinary practice, Rodriguez documents the ways in which the diverse social fabric of the South Bronx is rewoven as the people and cultures coexist. Rodriguez utilizes language as well as cultural and sociopolitical references to create unified portraits of individuals from various communities formed in what she describes as the “periphery of empire.” Engaging with the legacy of the Ashcan School, who bore witness to the rise of the modern metropolis and depicted how the poor and working class in New York enclaves were transformed by this, Rodriguez views figures such as Alice Neel, Jane Dickson, and Martin Wong as an extension of this tradition and situates her practice alongside them. Rodriguez earned her MFA from Hunter College in studio art and her BFA in visual and critical studies from the School of Visual Arts. Her work has been shown at The Nathan Cummings Foundation, New York, NY; Cue Art Foundation, New York, NY; Casa Warmu, Quito, Ecuador; Queens Museum, New York, NY; and El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY, among others. Rodriguez has held residencies at Hunter College, New York, NY and the Shandaken Project, Catskills, NY. She is an Adjunct Professor at the Cooper Union and has been a teaching artist at the Bronx Museum and Museum of Modern Art. Works by Rodriguez have recently been featured in group exhibitions at the Museum of the City of New York, New York, NY; Virginia MoCA, Virginia Beach, VA; National Academy of Design, New York, NY; and Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico, San Juan, Puerto Rico, among others. Third World Mixtapes: The Infrastructure of Feeling, Rodriguez's first solo exhibition with the gallery, was on view in spring 2023. In Summer 2024, Rodriguez's work was included in P·P·O·W's group exhibition Airhead.

Shellyne Rodriguez

b. 1977
Lives and works in Bronx, NY

Education

2014
MFA Studio Art, Hunter College, New York, NY

2011
BFA Visual & Critical Studies, School of Visual Arts, New York, NY

Solo Exhibitions

2023
Third World Mixtapes: The Infrastructure of Feeling, P·P·O·W, New York, NY

2021
Shellyne Rodriguez: 80 Blocks From Tiffany’s: The Insistence of Life on the Periphery of Empire, The Bronx Museum, Bronx, NY (online)

2016
Fragmentacion, Remix y Reinvento, curated by Maria A. Garcia, Casa Warmu, Quito, Ecuador

Select Group Exhibitions

2024
Re/Presenting: Art Beyond the Color Line, Mead Art Museum, Amherst, MA
In Our Corner: Exchanges in the Asian American Art Movements and Beyond, Think!Chinatown, 80WSE, New York, NY
Airhead, P·P·O·W, New York, NY
Making Room: Museum as Space for Self-Expression, The Bronx Museum, Bronx, NY

2023
Puerto Rico Negrx, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico, San Juan, Puerto Rico
Contra todo autoridad...excepto mi mamá, Embajada, San Juan, Puerto Rico
Kept Alive Within Us, Art Gallery of Guelph, Guelph, Canada
Drawing as Practice, National Academy of Design, New York, NY
Ceramics Now, Greenwich House Pottery, New York, NY
Collector’s Edition, Virginia MoCA, Virginia Beach, VA
This is New York: 100 Years of the City in Art ad Pop Culture, Museum of the City of New York, New York, NY

2022
Rostro, curated by Ever Velasquez, Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

2021
Shellyne Rodriguez and Danielle De Jesus: Siempre En La Calle, Calderón, New York, NY

2019
What is Here is Open, Selections from the Trash Collection, Hunter East Harlem Gallery, New York, NY
Pasado y Presente: Art after the Young Lords 1969-2019, The Nathan Cummings Foundation, New York, NY
PELEA: Visual Responses to Spatial Precarity, curated by Shellyne Rodriguez, The Latinx Project, New York University, New York, NY

2018
Original Language, curated by Natasha Marie Llorens, CUE Art Foundation, New York, NY
Bronx Now!, Bronx River Art Center, Bronx, NY
FOUR, We Buy Gold, Sargent’s Daughter, New York NY
HER ART WILL BE CANNIBAL, Longwood Art Gallery, Bronx, NY
Living Proof, Hunter East Harlem Gallery, New York, NY

2017
Citicien, Defend Puerto Rico, New York, NY
BLACK FOLK presents: Reclaimed Rage; Resistance, BronxArtSpace, New York, NY

2016
Movement Is Rising: Demystify, Destroy, Rebuild!, The Museum of Impact, Newark, NJ
We Still Imagine, Make and Read Books, Space 776, Brooklyn, NY
Power to the People, Art Connects, New York, Queens, NY
Window Project 4: Rest in Power, #BlackBrownIndigenousSolidarity, Queens Museum (offsite at Immigrant Movement International Corona), Queens, NY
Wild Seeds, Temporary Agency, Happy Lucky No. 1 Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
After the Firmaments Crash Down... What?, Thomas Hunter Space, Hunter College, New York, NY

2015
Power, Protest, and Resistance: The Art of Revolution, Rush Arts Gallery, New York, NY
iPRESENTE! The Young Lords in New York, El Museo Del Barrio, New York, NY
Sublime of the Mundane, FiveMyles, Brooklyn, NY
Clorox/Envy, Stillhouse Group, Brooklyn, N
When You Cut Into The Present, The Future Leaks Out, No Longer Empty, Bronx, NY
New Work New York MFA Biennial, Brooklyn, NY
Immediate Female, Judith Charles Gallery, NY
Respond, Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY

Residencies and Awards

2019
Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop SIP Fellow
Inaugural Artist in Residence, Latinx Project, NYU
Public Sculpture Percent for Art Commission, Bronx, NY

2017
Finalist for the June Jordan Fellowship at Columbia University
Rema Hort Mann Foundation Grant Nominee

2016
Guest artist, IMI Corona, Queens Museum
Rema Hort Mann Foundation Grant Nominee

2015
Artist-in-Residence, Sculpture Department, Hunter College
Rema Hort Mann Foundation Grant Nominee

2014
Shandaken Project Residency, Catskills, NY

Public Collections

Mead Art Museum, Amherst, MA
Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico, San Juan, Puerto Rico

Bibliography

2021
Emily Harvey Foundation, Petrossiants, A., and Rosales, J. “Diversity of Aesthetics,” New York, NY.

2013
Rodriguez, Shellyne. “Cake Vol. 1,” Printed Matter, 2013.
Rodriguez, Shellyne. “Cake Vol. 2,” Printed Matter, 2013.

Selected Works

Selected Works Thumbnails

Shellyne Rodriguez
Uncle&#39;s Jack Fruit Hustle, 2022
color pencil on paper
59 x 43 ins.
149.9 x 109.2 cm

Shellyne Rodriguez
Uncle's Jack Fruit Hustle, 2022
color pencil on paper
59 x 43 ins.
149.9 x 109.2 cm

Shellyne Rodriguez
The Common Denominator, 2023
color pencil on paper
43 3/4 x 28 1/4 ins.
111.1 x 71.8 cm

Shellyne Rodriguez
See Thou Character. Give Thy Thoughts No Tongue, 2023
color pencil on paper
50 1/4 x 36 1/2 ins.
127.6 x 92.7 cm

Shellyne Rodriguez
BX Third World Mix Tape no. 4, Caminos (Slow and Steady), 2022
color pencil on paper
62 x 46 ins.
157.5 x 116.8 cm

Shellyne Rodriguez
Mister Softee no.2, 2022
color pencil on paper
38 1/2 x 59 1/4 ins.
97.8 x 150.5 cm

Shellyne Rodriguez
We Took the Kids Outside, 2021
color pencil on paper
42 x 48 ins.
106.7 x 121.9 cm