El Salón

Cassandra mayela allen | Eva Mayhabal Davis | Fabiola R. Delgado

Thursday, August 8th, 2024 | 6:30PM

Join us for a conversation between artist Cassandra Mayela Allen and independent curators Eva Mayhabal Davis and Fabiola R. Delgado on the occasion of Mayela Allen's exhibition, “Desahogando: Undrowning.”

El Salón is a network of artists that come together to share and nourish artistic practices as a form of community building through recurring gatherings. These events often take the shape of a potluck, symbolizing the act of sharing not only food but also ideas, friendships, and creative space.

Cassandra Mayela Allen has lived and worked in New York since 2014, when she was forced to migrate from Venezuela. Her practice delves into identity, migration, and belonging, drawing from personal experiences, research, and conversations. Recent solo exhibitions include: JO-HS (Mexico City, Mexico, 2023); NADA House (New York, NY, 2022); Olympia (New York, NY, 2021). Group exhibitions include: Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (Detroit, MI, 2024); V1 Gallery (Copenhagen, Denmark, 2024); apexart (New York, NY, 2024); Olympia (New York, NY, 2023); EFA Project Space (New York, NY, 2023); Acompi and NARS Foundation (New York, NY, 2021). Mayela Allen was an Artist in Residence at Modern Ancient Brown (Detroit, MI, 2024) and will be in residence at Campo Garzon this December (Pueblo Garzon, Uruguay, 2024). Her work has been featured in the New York Times, Bomb Magazine, and Vogue Mexico.

Fabiola R. Delgado (b. Cabimas, Venezuela) is an independent curator and creative producer based in Washington DC. Formerly a Human Rights lawyer and a political asylum seeker, she channels her commitment to justice through artistic and cultural experiences. Recognizing storytelling as the essence of her practice, she works on projects that challenge dominant narratives, recenter peripheral perspectives and foster intergenerational creative learning.

Fabiola is a recipient of the first National Leaders of Color Fellowship – a collaborative program from the six U.S. Regional Arts Organizations. She has worked with prestigious institutions including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, National Museum of American History, National Museum of Asian Art, Anacostia Community Museum, apexart NYC, Washington Project for the Arts, Times Square Arts, the Brooklyn Museum, Museum of Food and Drink, S.O.U.R.C.E. Studio, and The FUNDRED Project with renowned artist Mel Chin.

Eva Mayhabal Davis has organized exhibitions at BronxArtSpace, En Foco, Expressiones Cultural Center, MECA International Art Fair, and Ray Gallery. Davis was Gallery and Studio Program Manager at Smack Mellon from 2016 to 2019. In 2020, she will be the Curator-in-Residence at Brooklyn’s Kunstraum LLC. She has spoken on her curatorial work at AC Institute, Artists Space, Queens Museum, The 8th Floor, NYC Crit Club, and Queensborough Community College. Her writing has been featured in Hemispheric Institute’s Cuadernos, Nueva Luz: Photographic Journal, CultureWork Magazine and the Guggenheim Museum Blog.

She was a Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation Curatorial Fellow at the Bronx Museum of the Arts and an alum of the No Longer Empty: Curatorial Lab. In 2018, she participated in the Art & Law Program Fellowship, and in 2019 she was a Leadership Advocacy Fellow for the National Association for Latinos in Art and Culture and a NYFA Leadership Boot Camp participant. Davis was born in Mexico, raised in the United States, and studied art history at the University of Washington. Now based in New York, she works with artists and creatives in the production of exhibitions, texts, and events. As a cultural liaison her focus is on supporting equity and social justice values in arts and culture.