This body has learned its lesson.
This body was taken from me so long ago, though it was never mine to begin with.
This body serves as target practice for you to direct your outrage.
This body draws so much anger from those I have been trained to desire.
"How does one live in a body when they have spent a lifetime trying to escape it?"
"How thin do you have to be to be loved?"
It must be nice to just be a body.

 — Néstor Pérez-Molière

What does this body mean and do to us?  How do we inhabit it and how does it inhabit us?  Through MY BODY / MY BATTLE artists Jake Alfieri and Néstor Pérez-Molière invite us to reflect as they present work that oblige us to look closer at our bodies, especially during these times when our bodies continue to expand and/or contract their feelings and emotions daily.

Jake Alfieri presents a piece that is part of a larger series titled Ego versus Soul.  He calls them Face Books.  He likes to play with words especially when they have dual meanings.  The entire series includes pieces that explore Spiritual messaging in contrast to what our Ego’s focus on.  This piece talks about social media with its ego based agenda; and our society's obsession with external symbols of worth.  How many Likes, Followers, Friends and so on.  On the opposite Face Books the heat transferred text comes from a book titled A Course In Miracles.  This book is a teaching tool for Awakening.  For years after his daily meditation he would open this book to a random page.  It was a miracle to him that every time he did this the page he opened would reflect whatever my meditation was that day.  The placement and pattern made with each book resembles sewn squares seen in traditional textile quilts.  Like those quilts, it tells a story.

For MY BODY / MY BATTLE artist Néstor Pérez-Molière presents Touch Grab Pinch Twist, a series of softground and aquaint etchings created between 2019 and 2022.  Nestor's art entails a process of self-discovery; a series of confessionals revealing private conflicts; hoping towards catharsis.  Through this cathartic process he hopes to connect with the viewer's struggles and depathologize negative feelings so that they can be seen as a source for political action rather than its antithesis.  Néstor exposes mental health issues like depression, dysmorphia, food addictions, and loneliness: describing their mechanisms, scrutinizing their origins, and illuminating the impossibility of fixing them.

Jake Alfieri is a graduate of the California College of Art, with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Textiles.  His work has been exhibited in museums, galleries and alternative spaces throughout NYC and the tri- state area.  Selected exhibitions include the African American Museum of Philadelphia, the Belskie Museum, the Rubin Museum and the Bronx Museum for the Arts.  He has won numerous awards in sculpture.  He is a two time winner of the BRIO Award ('Bronx Recognizes Its Own'’').  His work sits in private and corporate collections across the United States and abroad.

web: jalfieri.com

Néstor Pérez-Molière received an MFA from Hunter College and holds a BSc in Botany.  He was part of the Artist in the Marketplace 2017 and Creative Capital's Taller 2019 mentorship programs, and was included in The Bronx Museum of the Art's Fourth Biennial.  He has exhibited at the Museo de las Américas, the Clemente Soto Vélez, Longwood Gallery, and the Liga de Estudiantes de Artes de San Juan, Puerto Rico.  Interested in becoming an educator, he currently teaches digital and darkroom photography, as well as media literacy at the Parsons School of Design, Art Academy of Cincinnati, International Center of Photography, THE POINT CDC, and StrudelMediaLive.

web: ndpmoliere.com