The West Harlem Art Fund is pleased to present our 2023 Visual Muze/Summer Artists in Residence on Governors Island. Visual Muze is a unique storytelling residency and retreat. It provides visual artists, performance artists, multi-media designers, and writers the opportunity to explore narrative forms within collaborative projects, works in progress, guest lectures, and crafts. Participants can choose to work independently or in teams to create original works in print, film, public performance, or digitally for a culminating exhibition. Process, creative strategy, and inspiration will be emphasized.

Damali Abrams the Glitter Priestess is a New York City based artist. Damali attended the Whitney Independent Study Program and earned an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and a BA from New York University

Damali is a member of SEQAA (Southeast Queens Artist Alliance). She is a recipient of the Women’s Studio Workshop Right Now! Production Grant and the Queens Council on the Arts New Works Grant. She has been a fellow at Culture Push, the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, A.I.R. Gallery, and apexart in Seoul, South Korea. Damali has also been an Artist-in-Residence at RU (Residency Unlimited), Fresh Milk in Barbados, Groundation Grenada, The Center for Book Arts, Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning (JCAL), and LMCC on Governors Island. She was a Creative-In-Residence at Brooklyn Public Library.

Damali has presented her work at School of Visual Art (SVA), St. John’s University, Sonoma State University, Soho House, UConn Stamford, Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC), Barbados Community College, New York University (NYU), SUNY Purchase, Hunter College School of Social Work, and Syracuse University’s 601 Tully. 

Damali’s work has been exhibited at many spaces including El Museo del Barrio, MoCADA (Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art), Rush Arts Gallery, Longwood Gallery, The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, JCAL, and The Point.

Her work has been featured in Artforum, Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory, and on the blogs of art21, Fresh Milk, and Groundation Grenada. Her writing has been published by Harlequin Creature and Women’s Studio Workshop.

“I am improvising with collected pressed petals of many colors and shapes to create abstract collages that reflect my inner workings. Inspired by Surrealist automatism, I try to suppress conscious control over the visual result. This process expresses the longing for a communion with the world around me.” Valérie Hallier

Multimedia artist Valérie Hallier came to the US with a Fulbright Scholarship after graduating from the ENSAD in her native Paris, France. In NYC, she received a MFA from SVA. Her work is being shown internationally. Main solo shows include “Screened Calls & Slow Portraits” at Medianoche gallery (NYC) and “Portraits Lents” at the ESAM, Caen, France. Group show locations include the LMCC Arts Center, Brooklyn Arts Council, A.I.R. gallery, Housatonic Museum (CT), ACM Siggraph (FL) and SCAN Arts Symposium (PA.) Commissioned by the Drawing Center (NYC) for Draw Now! Hallier has completed residencies at BRIC Media Arts’ first Biennial, LMCC Swing Space on Governor Island, Pioneer Works with the NY Theremin Society, NARS Foundation in Brooklyn and West Harlem Art Fund on Governors Island.

Representing nature, culture, and technology simultaneously within the artwork, Hallier speaks directly to the carnal and finite qualities of our humanity. She questions the patriarchal silos created between nature and culture and the hierarchy created between the living and the non-living. Hallier’s atomized visual vocabulary accumulates simple units like petals, recycled materials, beads or pixels, in order to materialize the complexity of our condition. Processes deployed are repetitive, compulsive and meditative, bridging the analog, digital and virtual worlds. Flowers, often genetically altered, have become a potent symbol in the work. In the ongoing series “Déflorée Self,” petals become vessels that translate the cerebral and emotional journey of letting go of traumatic experience, a recurrent theme in her work.

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Dianne’s intriguing and compelling minimalist abstracts are haunting and beautiful. Her sculptures and installations are an extension of that beauty. Dianne’s work represents her inner connection to self, which reflects the artistic and spiritual journey that has enabled her to find her voice as an artist. Her work incites our emotions with lush palettes, expressive brushstrokes, texture, and form. She creates provocative and meaningful imagery that challenges the viewer to see and consider pure color, movement, and organic shapes. While her work remains rooted in her African origins, its purpose is more universal. She puts it this way: “human civilizations and cultures all have Africa as their mother and are therefore more similar than we realize. I want my work to justly portray that connection, the essence of human existence, and thereby possibly affecting the whole of humankind for the better.”