‘Origins & Ancestries’: Meet the artists

Expressions is proud to host the art project “Origins & Ancestries: Genesis,” embodying the cultural traditions and heritage of the Caribbean. Ten of the region’s top artists have created hundreds of original high-quality handmade artworks for the project.

Below are the participating artists. 100% of the net proceeds go to the artists or to worthy Caribbean nonprofits such as Hope for Haiit, Sea Turtle Conservancy and others. All of the artworks live on chain and have added utility. And nearly all have dimensions of at least 4000 to 5000px.

Won’t you help us spread the word so that we can make the Web3 art ecosystem a more diverse, inclusive space? “Origins & Ancestries: Genesis” is due to drop around Sept. 13, 2023, on Expressions.com.

Carlos Dávila-Rinaldi

Puerto Rico

Carlos’s parallel production of abstractions presents the viewer with a rich visual language full of gesture, color and movement.

Sometimes minimalistic and other times complex, the networks of shapes and line create vibrant canvases buzzing with his signature style. The Accumulation Series is an ongoing body of work for which he has become known.

He works in his “dream studio” on a small plot of land nestled on Lake Caraízo in Caguas. “This is my Eden,” he says. His physical paintings often sell in the five figures.

Isabel Bérénos

Curaçao

Isabel is a female painter living and working in Curaçao. She works with acrylic paint and creates abstract line works on linen, canvas, and on paper — and then adapts them to digital form. She loves the abstract form and shies away from figurative representations of people, animals and objects. She says, “I do paint abstractions of flowers and refer to bodies of water and spiritual non-tangible natural phenomenons in my pieces.”

Rodell Warner

Trinidadian

Rodell is a Trinidadian artist working primarily in new media and photography. His works have been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Berlin Biennale, and the National Gallery of Jamaica.

Most recently his digital animations using archival photography have been exhibited at the Art Gallery of Ontario in the 2021 exhibition “Fragments of Epic Memory” and at TERN Gallery in Nassau, the Bahamas, in the 2021 solo exhibition “Augmented Archives.”

Rodell lives and works between Port of Spain in Trinidad, Kingston, Jamaica, and Austin, Texas.

La Ninfaaa

Puerto Rico & Spain

Sofía Maldonado-Suárez is a Puerto Rican artist of Cuban descent who lives in San Juan. She is founder of La Ninfaaa, an artists’ collaboration with partners Norelys Rumbos and Crysta Dominguez of Spain. She has spent most of her career focused on derelict spaces, constructing a poetic experience of colorful abstractions, within uninhabited buildings. Her urban walkabouts inspired a desire to transform the environment with color by painting abandoned structures using a paint sprayer.

Her career has been focused on public art and color field painting. In 2020, the Latin Recording Academy named Sofia as the official artist for the 21st Annual Latin GRAMMY Awards.

Sofía also has a dynamic studio practice as a painter and digital illustrator. She develops a sense of community through workshops and versatile community engagement projects. Collaborations with musicians and underground subcultures are an integral part of her artistic practice and aesthetic.

Edward Bowen

Trinidad

Edward is one of the most celebrated artists in Trinidad. With multiple exhibitions, he is a specialist in a series of drawings titled, “The Architect of Impossible Physics.” Edward is a full-time painter and educator. When he is not making art, he is a landlord of a rural estate at Sans Souci on the north coast of Trinidad, where he has a guest house and home/studio. Most recently, Edward has had an exhibition at Y Art Gallery in Port of Spain titled, “The Rainwater Paintings.” He prides himself on being a lifelong painter, draftsman , and a former tutor at the University of the West Indies.

Karly

Jamaica

Karly (Kxrly Miyagi) is the top pixel artist in all of Jamaica. Having practiced pixel art for more than six years now, Karly has long been fascinated with video games and its unique ways of telling a story, especially those created within pixel art. In his art, Karly uses well-known video games and its characters as well as creations of his own to share the experience of being a Jamaican through a pixelated lens. He has been able to bring his style of pixel art to the mainstream and worked with contemporary dancehall and international music artists as well as a Jamaican brand with an animated short series still in development. He currently lives in Kingston.

Sandra Pérez-Ramos

Puerto Rico

Sandra Pérez-Ramos is a Puerto Rican visual artist and community art leader working, exhibiting and creating public art in the Washington, DC metro area. She is also a Resident Artist in Gallery 209, affiliated with Artists & Makers Studios in Rockville, Maryland.

Her body of work includes drawings, fiber arts, mixed media, murals and public art, often bringing traditional motifs and contemporary aesthetics into a whimsical interplay. She believes in the concept of “collective unconscious” and interconnection is a recurring theme in her work. She is inspired by folk arts, traditional textiles and ancient symbols that show mystical and natural similarities across cultures.

Ronald Cyrille

Guadeloupe

Recognized for his public art works and surreal imageries, Ronald Cyrille (aka Black Bird) creates paintings, drawings, sculptures, and murals that present his personal mythology.

His colorful and energetic brushstrokes reveal otherworldly figures in dreamlike settings, evincing humor, satire, and Caribbean histories. Inspired by the writings of Édouard Glissant and Aimé Césaire, Cyrille evokes the lusciousness of the Caribbean landscape alongside the region’s instability and idiosyncrasies.

Cyrille’s work has been presented in solo exhibitions at prestigious venues including the Volta Art Fair, New York; Rémy Niansouta Cultural Center, Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe; the Clément Foundation, and Atrium, both in Fort-de-France, Martinique. Cyrille has participated in group exhibitions at Hunter East Harlem Galleries, New York; the Little Haiti Cultural Center, Miami; and Tout-Le-Monde Festival, Miami, among others.

He lives and works in Guadeloupe.

Picardo

Miami, Florida

Picardo is a bilingual full-time artist of Dominican Republic heritage who has lived in Puerto Rico, New York and Michigan before settling in Miami. He infuses his paintings with rhythm and emotion to create a powerful visual space for viewers. The movement of each body’s shapes carries the eye through the entire composition, engaging an expressive dialogue between color, gesture, organic lines, and space. In his work, shape-making becomes its own language like a sublime sensory experience. He has established an avid following through his expressive abstract works. Picardo believes art is an exceptional vehicle for addressing societal issues and that artists have a special obligation to address our social shortcomings.

Justin Reinir Croes

Aruba

Justin Reinir Croes is a Caribbean/Aruban two-spirited multidisciplinary artist who came to the Netherlands in 2014 to pursue a career in art. Connection and heritage is central to his work. He likes to collaborate with nature and culture to create art inspired by his indigenous roots in Aruba and queer sensibility. Making art helps him grapple with existential questions about the human condition, nature and the culture of Aruba with its ancient and contemporary iconography. He works in multiple artforms, including digital art, animation, painting, drawing, sculpture and performance. His goal is to reconnect with his ancestors and to use art to decolonize, heal and inspire others to be themselves.