The Urban Individualists Render the Heart of Brooklyn

In The Cage, a painting by Helene Ruiz that currently hangs in the Williamsburg Music Center on Bedford Avenue, a woman peers intently into a metal cage containing a bulbous, bright red heart—presumably, her heart—which looks as if it’s pulsating.  Behind the cage is a clock adjacent to a key, which hangs from a nail that has been pounded into the wall so hard that there are visible cracks sprouting from the point of impact.

Impact is what a collective called the Urban Individualists seeks. Dedicated to bringing together artists from across mediums and backgrounds into a dynamic, collaborating entity of visual and performing artists, their show Hard Hearts displays 29 works containing abstract or literal renderings of hearts.

“Everything stems from a root – the tree stems from a root, the plant stems from a root – you have to get to the root of the person in order to get to the heart,” said Mia Roman Hernandez, a Brooklyn-born collective member who painted a piece called The Roots to My Heart. “You can’t just walk into someone’s life and get to the heart – you have to start somewhere.”

At the show’s opening night on July 17, the Urban Individualists performed original poetry and music while guests, sipping Cabernet and sampling cheeses, mingled with artists and studied the paintings, photographs, and collages lining the walls of the Williamsburg performance space.

One of the most refreshing parts about the Urban Individualists, founded last October by Helene Ruiz, a Frida Kahlo-inspired Bronx-based painter, is the diversity in talent it represents. Featuring guitar players, bassists, painters, poets, mixed media artists, photographers, saxophone players, sculptors, and vocalists, the Urban Individualists are an eclectic bunch.

Hard Hearts is the first of two back-to-back Urban Individualists exhibits at the Williamsburg Music Center. It features the female members of the collective, but on October 23 the group’s male contingent will take over the space with an exhibit called Heaven and Hell.

What makes Hard Hearts interesting, despite its potentially banal theme, is the fact that each of its participating artists have responded to the prompt in diverse and sometimes conflicting ways.

“I think one of the things the show wanted to do was just watch how each of these artists would address the subject,” said Gloria Holwerda-Williams, a visual artist and musician from Spanish Harlem who, along with Ms. Ruiz, came up with the show’s theme.

“I questioned whether my work should be in this exhibit,” said Mariam Muradian, an artist from Seattle whose photographs and mixed media pieces appear in the show. “I’m part of the Urban Individualists but for me, as a woman, the theme ‘Hard Hearts’ is kind of the opposite of what I’m trying to communicate. There are contrasts everywhere in the conditions of peoples’ hearts, but when it becomes so hard and so brittle, how do you continue to live in this world? You have to have a way of revitalizing and re-polishing your soul.”

Ms. Muradian’s mixed media pieces emphasize color, light, and texture, and were created in response to a ritual she participated in with Incan women while living in Mexico in the 1980s.

The aforementioned Ms. Hernandez works in the financial district during the week and creates art in her spare time. Most of her pieces are more explicitly political than other works in the exhibit, approaching the idea of hardened hearts in terms of violence.

The focal point in her mixed media piece In Love and War is a toy machine gun painted white and mounted on a piece of wood painted in camouflage patterns. From the tip of the gun hangs a cascade of clay hearts, toy soldiers, and bullet casings that, according to Ms. Hernandez, represent pain, suffering, loss, heartache, and the political tensions that lie behind war. The white of the machine gun is meant to stand for “the loss, the phantom spirits, the ghosts that are now in the afterlife because of war. Not just the current war,” she said. “But all wars.”

Another piece by Ms. Hernandez, a collage called Silenced by the Bullet, is a reaction to the assassination of Neda Agha-Soltan, killed over a month ago during an Iranian protest in the aftermath of the country’s disputed election. The work is a mixed media piece, containing newspaper clippings, wood, and, like In Love and War, clay hearts and bullet casings. Ms. Hernandez said she punctured holes in the hearts “to represent the hole that was put in Neda’s heart the day she was shot down.”

The idea, broadly, is that artists, however unique their visions might be, can make stronger statements when they come together as a collective than they can as individuals. Ms. Ruiz and the collective members focus on expanding opportunities for artists who might not otherwise seek them out. They encourage each other to share information about grants and venues, and to propose ideas for exhibition themes.

“A lot of the artists are kicking up themes that they’re interested in,” said Ms. Holwerda-Williams. “So they’ll make a work to propose it, and then we’ll make works that address it, and then we’ll try to find a space for it.”

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“We’re not against mainstream,” said Ms. Holwerda-Williams.  “But we think mainstream, the idea of it, in its current form, unfortunately limits artists of all kinds from regular access to their magazines and spaces.”

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The art collective is founded upon mutual support, shared resources and ideas, and emphasizes collaboration on projects like Hard Hearts and Heaven and Hell.

“We think that artists are too often isolated, either economically or because of a lack of resources,” asserts Ms. Holwerda-Williams. “Like many people who are low income, they’re feeling isolated at times and are not able to approach grants or organizations. We have a fee, but our fee is $10 a month. People give their time, their expertise, whatever they can give.”

Most of the Urban Individualists live and work in New York, but with members based out of places as scattered as Chicago, Seattle, and Australia, the collective is an international organization that hopes to expand its network into all parts of the world. Similarly, the Urban Individualists represent a range of ages, with artists as young as 26 and as old as 59.

“This is a way to get you active in a community with other artists,” said Ms. Holwerda-Williams.  “We don’t do critiques – if you want one you can ask somebody, but we’re here to help you continue to find avenues and venues with which to get your work out and for the community to see your work and take it in.”

As Hard Hearts makes clear, the Urban Individualists are not united in terms of artistic style or medium or even message, but they do share the vision of an art world that is accessible to all.

“We’re not against mainstream,” said Ms. Holwerda-Williams.  “But we think mainstream, the idea of it, in its current form, unfortunately limits artists of all kinds from regular access to their magazines and spaces.”

(Paintings both Helene Ruiz)

(Photos by Lauren Raheja) 

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