ORIGINS & ANCESTRIES
The Artists & Creatives Foundation, in partnership with Amberfi, is launching a groundbreaking NFT collection named “Origins & Ancestries” that will become the first art drop on the Expressions marketplace.
The collection embodies the traditions and heritage of cultures around the world through the creative arts—a combination of 2D and 3D digital art and traditional paintings, sculptures and murals that have been digitized. Unlike the vast majority of NFT projects, which produce collections of generative art, all art in the “Origins” project will be handmade.
The big idea here is to help tell the stories of major cultures around the world through modern art. What are the cultural traditions, ancient heritages, and folkloric motifs that inform and influence contemporary artists in different regions of the world?
Coming soon to a sustainable blockchain near you!
LAUNCHING IN EARLY SPRING 2023
Each Origins & Ancestries drop consists of a total of 1,000 exclusive works by 10-12 artists in each region of the world, starting with the Caribbean!
Why the Caribbean? Because it is RICH in history and the stories being told are bold, bright, and brilliant. They teem with self-discovery, shared traumas, blended communities, and harmonious ties that bring forth a wealth of knowledge from those who grew up in each region.
Below are the artists participating in this drop — available only at Expressions, the marketplace where creatives come to thrive. Learn more about their stories by following our socials as we approach this one-of-a-kind launch.
Carlos Dávila-Rinaldi
Puerto Rico — Carlos’s parallel production of abstractions presents the viewer with a complex 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.
Isabel Berenos
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 living in Austin, Texas — 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.
Sofía Maldonado-Suárez
Puerto Rico (born in Cuba) — Sofía is a Puerto Rican artist of Cuban descent who lives in San Juan. 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 is 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. The artist 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.
Calvert Jones
St. Vincent and the Grenadines — Calvert is an entrepreneur and self-taught visual artist. His professional career spans photography, videography, graphic design, interior design, and fine art. He also serves as a director of Invest SVG and an advisor to the Minister of Tourism, Culture & Sustainable Development on the Metaverse and Digital Platforms. Calvert is passionate about charitable, environmental, health, food security and social justice issues. He hopes to use his art and canvas to influence society culturally and educationally and to bring together aspects of hospitality, lifestyle, food and drink and conservation. You can expect documentary series and feature films as expansions from his artwork. His optimism and appreciation for all life has to offer is his fuel.
Dominique Hunter
Guyana — Dominique is a multidisciplinary visual artist living and working in Guyana. She received her BFA from the Barbados Community College in 2015 and secured the Leslie’s Legacy Foundation Award for Most Outstanding Work. Past residencies include Caribbean Linked IV (Aruba) and the Vermont Studio Center Residency (USA), following the Reed Foundation Fellowship award. Hunter has exhibited locally as well as in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York and Miami. Her works have appeared in several prestigious collections including Guyana’s National Collection.
Humberto Diaz
Cuba — With about 20 solo shows and more than 100 group shows, Humberto creates works that engage the viewer’s perceptions both physically and psychologically. The artist deftly manipulates our expectations, rendering the familiar and the everyday in disturbing new contexts, and leaving us on the edge between the possible and the impossible, the real and the unreal. He has been invited as artist in residence in US, Cuba, Turkey, UK, Spain, Austria, Poland, Canada, Switzerland, Aruba and Mexico, among other countries. National Awards: Sosabravo´s Prize, Biennial of Ceramic “Amelia Peláez” 2021; Grant, STUDIO 21, CDAV 2010; National Curatorial Award 2005, National Council of Visual Arts; The Big Prize, VI Biennial of Ceramic “Amelia Peláez” 2001. His works are in private and public collections in Europe and the Americas.
Karlando Cardiff Butt
Jamaica — Karlando (Kxrly Miyagi) is a self-taught pixel artist from Mandeville, Jamaica, and currently lives in Kingston, Jamaica. Having practiced pixel art since a young age — for six years now — Karly has 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.
Ronald Cyrille
Guadeloupe — Recognized for his public art works and surreal imageries, Ronald 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.
