Lavar Munroe Explained

Lavar Munroe
Birth Date:19 November 1982
Birth Place:Nassau, Bahamas
Nationality:Bahamian American
Education:Savannah College of Art and Design
Washington University in St. Louis
Known For:Painting, drawing, sculpture, installation art

Lavar Munroe (b. Nassau, Bahamas, 1982) is a Bahamian-American artist,[1] working primarily in painting,[2] cardboard sculptural installations,[3] and mixed media drawings.[4] His work is often categorized as: a hybrid medium that straddle the line between sculpture and painting.[5] Munroe lives and works in the United States.

Early life

Lavar Munroe was born November 19, 1982, in Nassau, Bahamas where he resided in the community of Grants Town[6] until age 21. In 2004, Munroe migrated to the United States for tertiary level education, where he remained until present.

Background and career

In 2007, Munroe received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Savannah College of Art and Design. He obtained a Master of Fine Arts degree from Washington University in St. Louis in 2013.

In 2014, he was awarded a postdoctoral research fellowship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.[7] Munroe was included in Prospect.4: The Lotus in Spite of The Swamp, the New Orleans triennial [8] curated by Trevor Schoonmaker, and the 12th Dakar Biennale,[9] curated by Simon Njami, in Senegal. In 2015, Munroe's work was featured in All the World's Futures, curated by Okwui Enwezor as part of the 56th Venice Biennale.[10] Noteworthy group shows include those at the Nasher Museum of Art in Durham; Perez Art Museum, Miami; the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas, Nassau; MAXXI Museum of Art, Rome; Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco; Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, Virginia Beach; and The Drawing Center,[11] New York.

Munroe was awarded residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, MacDowell Colony, the Headlands Center for the Arts, Joan Mitchell Center, Thread: Artist Residency and Cultural Center (a project of the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation) and was an inaugural Artists in Residence at the Norton Museum of Art.[12] He is a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant. Munroe represented The Bahamas at the 2010 Liverpool Biennial.[13]

In April 2016, Munroe's ten-year survey SON OF THE SOIL debuted at the National Art Gallery of the Bahamas[14] as the largest retrospective to date of Munroe's art, which spanned the artist's 10 years of work (2008-2018) and included nearly 50 original paintings, sculpture and drawings.

Munroe produces interdisciplinary artworks, and describes himself as a "trickster".[15] He says he borrows from the narrative elements of illustration, theatre, and surrealist representations of ancient mythologies.[16]

In 2023, Munroe was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. The actor and director Robert De Niro has underwritten Lavar Munroe’s Fellowship in Fine Arts in honor of his father, the painter Robert De Niro Sr., a 1968 Guggenheim Fellow.[17]

Munroe lives and works between Baltimore, MD and Nassau, Bahamas.

Work

Where Heroes LayIn 2013, Munroe produced a series of 12 life-sized cardboard beds titled "Where Heroes Lay"[18] engaged a material exchange between the artist and a homeless person in downtown Washington, D.C. Munroe presented The Hero's soiled bedding material as a consumer good in the art-market, knowing that the objects would serve as weapons of critique and ridicule towards mainstream society."[19]

Venice BiennaleIn 2015, Munroe was invited to exhibit in the 56th Venice Biennale: All The Worlds Futures, curated by the late by Okwui Enwezor.[20] [21] [22] Munroe presented three large format paintings in the exhibition.[23]

Human ZooIn 2014, Munroe was awarded a Postdoctoral Fellowship at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.[24] [25] While there, his research interest was the human zoo.[26]

Memorials

Munroe's 'Memorials' have taken on various forms, including but not limited to a ceramic funerary urn that Munroe created which housed his father's ashes, his father's soiled parachute which he sewed and braided prior to him being hospitalized,[27] life-size erected sculptural forms, and mural sized wall drawings which symbolized dreams that foretold his father's death.

Gun Dogs

Munroe's ongoing series called 'Gun Dogs', comprise mostly life size cardboard sculptures of vicious dogs.[28]  

Redbones

The early inception of Munroe's Redbones Series is based on photo documents and artifacts collected in Senegal: Goree Island, Tambacounda, Saint Louis and the Sinthian Village.[29]

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Minamore . Bridget . Bridget Minamore. Get Up, Stand Up Now: Q&A with artist Lavar Munroe . Google Arts and Culture . 12 June 2019.
  2. News: Walker . Julie . The Black Artists You Should Know at Basel . 5 December 2019 . Church in the Wild" (2019) Mixed media on canvas. Courtesy of the Artist and Jenkins Johnson Gallery, New York and San Francisco Jenkins Johnson Gallery Untitled Art Fair . Paper Magazine.
  3. Web site: Keisha . Oliver . Studio Visit: Lavar Munroe. Finding New Meaning to a Familiar Space . NAGB . National Art Gallery of The Bahamas . July 24, 2017 . October 2, 2019 . https://web.archive.org/web/20191002212447/https://nagb.org.bs/mixedmediablog/2017/7/24/studio-visit-lavar-munroe-finding-new-meaning-to-a-familiar-space . dead .
  4. News: Graeber. Laurel. The New York Times. Putting Pencil to Paper, in Galleries and in the Voting Booth. October 22, 2020.
  5. Web site: Lavar Munroe's Grotesque Gestures . www.juxtapoz.com . Juxtapoz Art and Culture . 14 November 2017.
  6. Web site: Humphrey . Kim-ling . Lavar Munroe The Artist Trickster . The Culture Trip . 10 February 2015 . 1 February 2021.
  7. Web site: Post-Doc Fellow Lavar Munroe participating in 56th Venice Biennale Department of Art and Art History. art.unc.edu. 2021-01-30. 2021-05-12. https://web.archive.org/web/20210512151826/https://art.unc.edu/2015/03/post-doc-fellow-lavar-munroe-participating-in-56th-venice-biennale/. dead.
  8. Web site: PROSPECT.4: THE LOTUS IN SPITE OF THE SWAMP. 2021-01-30. Prospect New Orleans. en-US.
  9. Web site: Dakar Biennial Announces Participating Artists. January 29, 2016. artnet News.
  10. Web site: The 2015 Venice Biennale List of Artists Is Out—See Our Exclusive. March 5, 2015. artnet News.
  11. News: Putting Pencil to Paper, in Galleries and in the Voting Booth. Laurel. Graeber. The New York Times . October 22, 2020. NYTimes.com.
  12. Web site: Norton Museum of Art Establishes New Artist-in-Residence Program. 2021-01-30. www.artforum.com. 19 September 2019 . en-US.
  13. Web site: Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art. www.biennial.com.
  14. Web site: The Case for Lavar Munroe: The Son of Soil. NATIONAL ART GALLERY OF THE BAHAMAS. 2021-01-28. 2019-10-02. https://web.archive.org/web/20191002051541/https://nagb.org.bs/mixedmediablog/2018/10/30/the-case-for-lavar-munroe-the-son-of-soil. dead.
  15. http://www.thenassauguardian.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=41967&Itemid=59 Where Heroes Lay
  16. Web site: Myth and Transformation: Lavar Munroe in Conversation with AM DeBrincat. 22 September 2023 .
  17. Web site: ANNOUNCING THE 2023 GUGGENHEIM FELLOWS . John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation . 8 May 2023.
  18. Web site: Where Heroes Lay . Lavar Munroe . Lavar Munroe Studio . 1 February 2021.
  19. Web site: Chad Saville - Magazine Editor and Digital Producer, Web content producer. chadsaville.com.
  20. Web site: Art Forum . ARTISTS ANNOUNCED FOR 2015 VENICE BIENNALE . Art Forum . 5 March 2015 . 1 February 2021.
  21. Web site: Boucher . Brian . The 2015 Venice Biennale List of Artists Is Out—See Our Exclusive Who made the cut? . Artnet . 5 March 2015 . 1 February 2021.
  22. News: Farago . Jason . Okwui Enwezor, Curator Who Remapped Art World, Dies at 55 . The New York Times . 18 March 2019 . 1 February 2021.
  23. Web site: deFINE ART . Lavar Munroe 'JOURNEY ELSEWHERE: MUSINGS FROM A BOUNDLESS ZOO' . SCAD Museum of Art . 1 February 2021.
  24. Web site: Bauer . Jj . POST-DOC FELLOW LAVAR MUNROE PARTICIPATING IN 56TH VENICE BIENNALE . UNC Art and Art History . The University of North Carolina . 1 February 2021 . 12 May 2021 . https://web.archive.org/web/20210512151826/https://art.unc.edu/2015/03/post-doc-fellow-lavar-munroe-participating-in-56th-venice-biennale/ . dead .
  25. Web site: Postdoc Awards for Research Excellence . UNC Research . University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill . 1 February 2021.
  26. Web site: Huete . Betsy . Lavar Munroe: Zoo at the Edge of the World . Glasstire . Glasstire (Texas Visual Art) . 1 February 2021.
  27. Web site: Walters . Sydney . "The Eye Sees Not Itself" at Nicodim . Art and Cake Magazine . 4 June 2018 . 1 February 2021.
  28. Web site: ZIYING . DUAN . LAVAR MUNROE REVIEWED BY SQUARE CYLINDER . Jenkins Johnson Gallery . Square Cylinder . 1 February 2021.
  29. Web site: Minamore . Bridget . Get Up, Stand Up Now: Q&A with artist Lavar Munroe . Google Arts and Culture . 1 February 2021.