Roberto Visani
Roberto Visani, a Brooklyn-based sculptor and multi-media artist, has exhibited at the New Museum, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Bronx Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and Barbican Galleries, London. His awards include residencies from Lower Manhattan Cultural Council; Chelsea College of Arts, London; and Art Omi, NY. Recent exhibitions include Form/Reform at the Brattlesboro Museum in Brattleboro, VT and The Promise at the Speed Museum of Art in Louisville. Visani holds degrees from the University of Michigan and Minnesota State University, Mankato and currently serves as an associate professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
I can’t remember the first time I saw the now infamous print of the Brookes slave ship (c. 1788) which illustrates how enslaved Africans were packed to maximize profit into every conceivable space within the cargo hold. Rendered as merely objects, the figures in the Brookes illustrations are there, filling in empty space as cargo, currency.
