Art Practice
bio
Ariel Cavalcante Foster is a millennial Brazilian-American artist, curator, consultant, and cultural worker based in Baltimore, Md with a BA from Goucher College (2016) in Studio Art and Arts Administration.
Ariel’s organizational work includes leading art workshops via Ritmo Studio, co-directing The Parlour (an arts, music and community space) and being an active member of several artist-run collective initiatives.
In 2017, Ariel participated in the art residency, Casa na Ilha, in São Paulo, BR, a home for artists to create site-specific work and collaborate with the local residents and native islanders.
She has exhibited work throughout the East Coast including New Woman’s Space (NY), Vox Populi (PA) and in the Maryland region such as Le Mondo, Area 405, Pigment Sauvage, The Strathmore Mansion, MONO Practice, The Menial Collection, Resort and the Silber Art Gallery in Goucher College. Her work is part of Goucher College Library and Special Collections and is a recipient of the Rosenberg Travel scholarship.
In 2018, Foster participated in the Baltimore Artist Retreat and joined the Urban Arts Leadership Fellowship Cohort. In 2019 she worked as an Inclusion Strategist, Co-chair of the Diversity, Equity, Access and Inclusion (DEAI) Board Committee and Community Arts Program Assistant for Baltimore Clayworks.
In 2020, they started FIELD (to Foster Freedom) as a consultant and facilitator for businesses, organizations and individuals with the purpose to co-create a collective growth built on all encompassing love, empathy and real people that generates connections, removes barriers and creates lasting personal change.
In 2021, we co-created Orgasmic Guidance with Nikki Morgan and Dashawn Simmons a 4 week series of cultivating sexual (creator energy) for transformative worldview shifts and life changes that center embodiment and value our collective existence and co-creation.
In the fall of 2021, Ariel launched their Social Awareness Sessions (SAS) and created a self-guided artist residency in Florianolopis, Brazil, where they are deepening their embodiment work through a greater understanding and expression of the body and it’s power.
The Process
Ariel Cavalcante Foster’s artist practice expresses embodiment, rhythm and the invisible forces around and within us. Ariel uses art to express their energy and our entanglement with the natural world.
Ariel’s art practice includes printmaking, textiles, painting, movement, digital imaging, AV and text. Their fabric installations distill concepts of nature, human forms and pattern into symbolic compositions. Their installations immerse the participant in nature devoted spaces to transport them into a sensational and nature-stimulated place by using suspended tapestries, found organic material, light, video and sound. Her tapestries decompress the repetitive nature of patterns with the use of space and form. The imagery is based on field studies in natural environments, plants, animals, human beings in nature and the land. Hand-carved linoleum blocks made for repetitive textile pattern-making are reimaged into figurative forms and symbols within spatial compositions and color. The chance for body and movement in fabric informs the design of her installations, enabling her to transform the flatness of prints into three dimensional works and sculptures.
She experiments with the relationship between the artist and the multiplicity of printmaking; how the mechanical is human and of natural origin. Her press is her body; through the pressure of her feet and guided by music, it becomes a dance. A performance that goes unseen, hidden behind the work itself, speaks to the labor and process of the artist practice and the unseen forces of our worlds.
Contact
arielfoster1@gmail.com | EMAIL
202-469-0024 | CALL
instagram @arielcfoster | VISUAL SOCIAL
clubhouse @cavalcante | VOCAL SOCIAL