The artists were selected through an open call as part of the Museum’s long-running SOLOS program.

Arlington, VA – Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington is proud to announce eight solo exhibitions featuring work by artists based in the Mid-Atlantic taking place at the Museum in 2023 and 2024. The eight participating artists applied to an open call for proposals and were selected from more than 175 applicants. The selected artists include Andrew Barco (Manassas, VA), Federico Cuatlacuatl (Charlottesville, VA), Christina P. Day (Philadelphia, PA), Elliot Doughtie (Baltimore, MD), Liz Ensz (Baltimore, MD), Lillian Bayley Hoover (Baltimore, MD), Clarissa Pezone (Baltimore, MD), and Steve Wanna (Mt. Rainier, MD).

The eight artists were selected by a jury that included artist Nekisha Durrett, Betsy Johnson, assistant curator, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and Jova Lynna, director, Temple Contemporary, Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University.

This reimagined SOLOS series now presents the selected exhibitions throughout the year. This new format for one of the Museum’s longest-running programs emphasizes MoCA Arlington’s commitment to supporting and exhibiting work by the region’s most exciting contemporary artists, alongside contemporary artists working nationally and internationally.

SOLOS 23-24 Exhibition Schedule:
May 31 – August 20, 2023: Christina P. Day and Steve Wanna

Fall 2023: Andrew Barco and Elliot Doughtie

Winter 2024: Lillian Bayley Hoover

Spring 2024: Liz Ensz, Federico Cuatlacuatl, and Clarissa Pezone

A schedule of artist talks and other related programs will be announced for each individual exhibition.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Andrew Barco
b. 1979, Durham, NC
Lives and works in Manassas, VA

Andrew Barco is an artist, craftsman, and educator currently based in Manassas VA.  With a BA from Wesleyan University, intensive woodworking training from the Center for Furniture Craftmanship, and an MFA in sculpture from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, he has produced work in many contexts with goals of immediacy, humor, and social engagement.  Recent highlights include large-scale installations at Threewalls gallery (Chicago, IL), ACRE Projects (Chicago,IL), and Experimental Sound Studio (Chicago, IL), public site-specific performance at the Arnold Arboretum (Jamaica Plains, MA), Rapid Pulse international performance festival (Detroit, MI and Rosendale, NY), Out-of-Site performance festival (Chicago, IL), and ICA Chicago, and online video projects with students in the SkyArt art program.

Federico Cuatlacuatl
b. 1991, Coapan, Cholula, Mexico
Lives and works in Charlottesville, VA

Federico Cuatlacuatl is an artist born in San Francisco Coapan, Cholula, Puebla, Mexico and currently based in Charlottesville, VA. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art at the University of Virginia. Federico’s work is invested in disseminating topics of Nahua indigenous immigration, social art practice, and cultural sustainability. Building from his own experience growing up as an undocumented immigrant and previously holding DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) status, Federico’s creative practice centers on the intersectionality of indigeneity and immigration under a pressing Anthropocene.

His work has been exhibited and screened extensively across North America, South America, and Europe, including recently at the National Museum of Anthropology (Mexico City, Mexico), Kunstmuseum Bonn (Bonn, Germany), Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (Richmond, VA), Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art (Virginia Beach, VA), Film + Art Festival (San Cristobal, Venezuela), and Casa de Iberoamerica (Cadiz, Spain).

Christina P. Day
b. 1977, Ridgewood, NJ
Lives and works between Philadelphia, PA & Baltimore, MD

Christina P. Day’s art practice recontextualizes roles related to material lifespan: designer, fabricator, owner, maintainer. Her improvisational building language stems from textile design strategy and is focused on the conversation of material as content. Her work takes form in architectural installation, surfacing methods, textile pattern logic and physical match finding.

Day is a full-time faculty member of the Fiber Department at Maryland Institute College of Art (Baltimore, MD), where her teachings focus on cloth production methods and experimental fashion.?She has been awarded residencies at Sculpture Space, Vermont Studio Center, Haystack Open Studios, RAIR, and MASS MoCA and will be participating in this year’s cohort of the Maker-Creator Fellowship at Winterthur. Recent exhibitions and research on material history have been completed at Fleisher Art Memorial (Philadelphia, PA), Hagley Museum and Library (Wilmington, DE) and Kirkcaldy Museum (Kirkcaldy, Scotland).

Elliot Doughtie
b. 1985, Dallas, TX
Lives and works in Baltimore, MD

Elliot Doughtie works in drawing, sculpture, and installation, with a desire to form intimate relationships between common objects and the awkwardness of having a body. He has been in many exhibitions including venues such as: L’OEil du Poisson (Quebec City, Quebec), Nasher Sculpture Center (Dallas, TX), LangerOverDickie (Chicago, IL), and School 33 (Baltimore,MD). Doughtie has a BA from Tulane University, a MFA from Mount Royal School of Art at MICA, and is a recipient of a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant.

Liz Ensz
1983, Minnesota
Lives and works in Baltimore, MD

Liz Ensz was born in Minnesota to a resourceful family of penny-savers, metal scrappers, and curators of cast-offs. With an interdisciplinary approach, their works of installation, textiles, and sculpture present a comparative study of the mass-cultural investment in disposability and the human desire to imagine permanence through emblems, monuments, and commemoration. In the fall of 2018, Ensz joined the Maryland Institute College of Art as a full-time faculty in Fiber.

Ensz has exhibited their work internationally, including The Henry Moore Institute, (Leeds, UK), Frontviews Gallery (Berlin, Germany), HTW University of Applied Sciences School of Art and Culture (Berlin, Germany), Franconia Sculpture Park (Shafer, MN), Smack Mellon (Brooklyn, NY), Roots and Culture Contemporary Art Center (Chicago, IL), Boston Center for the Arts (Boston, MA), Unsmoke Systems (Pittsburgh, PA), Current Gallery, (Baltimore, MD), and Goucher College (Baltimore, MD). They have been awarded residencies at The John Michael Kohler Arts/Industry Program in Foundry, Sheboygan, WI; Franconia Sculpture Park, Shafer, MN; Salem Art Works, Salem, NY: Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, IL; Playa, Summer Lake, OR; LATITUDE, Chicago, IL; and Blue Mountain Center, Blue Mountain Lake, NY.

Among other awards, they have been the recipient of City of Chicago DCASE Individual Artist Grant, The Creative Baltimore Fund Grant, The Clare Rosen and Samuel Edes Fellowship Semi-finalist Prize, The Gilroy Roberts Fellowship for Engraving, and The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Travel Fellowship. Liz received a BFA in Fiber from the Maryland Institute College of Art (2005), and an MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2013).

Lillian Bayley Hoover
1980, Raleigh, NC
Lives and works in Baltimore, MD

Lillian Hoover earned her BFA from the University of North Carolina, Asheville and her MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art. Her paintings are included in several public collections including the Baltimore Museum of Art, Weatherspoon Museum, and the DC Commission on Arts and Humanities. In 2020, Hoover received a Pollock-Krasner Grant. Other honors include the Bethesda Urban Partnership’s Trawick Award, multiple Individual Artist Awards from Maryland State Arts Council, the Bethesda Young Artist Painting Award, numerous selections as semifinalist for Baltimore’s Sondheim Prize, and a travel grant from Philadelphia’s Center for Emerging Visual Artists. She has been awarded fellowships to attend residencies at I-Park, Vermont Studio Center, Alfred and Trafford Klots International Program for Artists, Monson Arts Center, and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Recent solo exhibitions include Presence In Absence at Goya Contemporary (2021) and In This World at BlackRock Center for the Arts (2018). Her work has appeared twice in New American Paintings and was selected for the cover of the 69th issue. Hoover lives in Baltimore MD, where she maintains her studio practice and teaches at Towson University.

Clarissa Pezone
b. 1990, Sacramento, CA
Lives and works in Baltimore, MD

Clarissa Pezone is a sculptor from Sacramento, CA, now residing in Baltimore, MD. She received her BA from Humboldt State University in northern California and an MFA from Indiana University Bloomington. Interests in realism, classical figurative sculpture, and personal mythology are at the heart of her research and practice. Her studio practice encompasses installation, figurative sculpture as well as trompe l’oeil objects using clay, paint and mixed media. She has been the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including the Christyl Anne Boger Memorial Award, Young Sculptors Award, as well as a Windgate Fellowship to attend Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts. Her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions nationwide, including the Indianapolis Art Center (Indianapolis, IN), The Morris Graves Museum of Art (Eureka, CA), and the American Museum of Ceramic Art (Pomona, CA).

Steve Wanna
b. 1976, Lebanon
Lives and works in Mt. Rainier, MD

Steve Wanna is a multi-disciplinary sound and visual artist whose work includes music, sound design for dance collaborations, sculpture, installation, photography, and works for mixed media. His work showcases the hidden, often ignored beauty he finds in chaotic and seemingly random phenomena. Abstract, experimental, and multimedia, his work is inspired by science, nature, and philosophy, often incorporating elements of controlled randomness—uncertainty is built into the process.

Born and raised in Lebanon, Wanna immigrated to the US with his family as a teenager. He holds a doctorate in Music Composition from the University of Maryland. Wanna’s works have been presented at venues and galleries at home and abroad. Recent exhibitions include a 2-person show at the Delaware Contemporary title Inquiry: At The Intersection of Curiosity, which featured an installation of eight sound sculptures from his ongoing series Inner Spaces, and a solo show at Touchstone Gallery in Washington, DC.