Houston, Texas
archipelaga@gmail.com

Born in Texas, Ayanna Jolivet Mccloud is an artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY. She received her BA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  Jolivet Mccloud has had exhibitions at Diaspora Vibe Gallery and Art Center/ South Florida in Miami;  Polvo Arts Studio and Gallery 214 at Northern Illinois University in Chicago; Commerce Street Warehouse in Houston; and at Centro Cultural Recoleta in  Buenos Aires, Argentina. She has participated in artist residencies in Morelia, Michoacán, México as part of Identidades; Art in Public Spaces International Encounter organized by 5célula and also in Nassau, Bahamas as part of Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator’s International Cultural Exchange. In 2008, Jolivet Mccloud is participating in an upcoming exhibition at the Brooklyn Arts Council; presenting her site-specific installation, Fourth Meridian at Chashama Project Studio; and curating an exhibition, Canibala, New Performance in the Americas at Diaspora Vibe Gallery.

Jolivet has worked in arts administration for ten years in development, education, and programming at nonprofit art organizations around the U.S. including The Center for Book Arts, New York; PERFORMA, New York; White Box, New York; DiverseWorks Artspace, Houston; and Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator, Miami. She has worked in various capacities as a grant writer, curator, and teacher. She is currently, developing a new project, labotanica, which intersects poetics and social transformation, through public programs, grant awards, and an archive.

"My work weaves a web of relationships around landscapes, both real and imagined. Elements such as dreaming, ritual, orality, memory, labor, and play are central in my explorations. I believe memory and language are often encoded in the body and seek to frame these sensorial ways of knowing. As an artist I locate myself on the periphery, and I'm constantly looking to shift the dynamics so that I am not the sole creator of meaning. While my work is very personal, I am interested in creating an art which is influenced by community, collaboration, and participation, and therefore has multiple points of entry".

www.archipelaga.com / www.labotanica.org