Manuel Arturo Abreu (born 1991) is a Dominican artist, poet, critic, and curator from the Bronx. Abreu has written two books, poems, and essays, and participated in and curated group art installations. Their book ''Incalculable Loss'' is a finalist for the 2019

Oregon Book Award The Oregon Book Awards are presented annually by Literary Arts to honor the "state’s finest accomplishments by Oregon writers who work in genres of poetry, fiction, graphic literature, drama, literary nonfiction, and literature for young readers. ...

s: Sarah Winnemucca Award for

Creative nonfiction Creative nonfiction (also known as literary nonfiction or narrative nonfiction or literary journalism or verfabula) is a genre of writing that uses literary styles and techniques to create factually accurate narratives. Creative nonfiction contra ...

, while their poetry collection ''transtrender'' was a finalist for the 2018

s: Stafford/Hall Award for Poetry. Abreu co-facilitates a free pop-up art school called home school in

Portland Portland most commonly refers to: * Portland, Oregon, the largest city in the state of Oregon, in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States * Portland, Maine, the largest city in the state of Maine, in the New England region of the northeas ...

, OR.

Education

Abreu received his BA in Linguistics from Reed College in Portland, Oregon in 2014. Their thesis was on accusative

clitic doubling In linguistics, clitic doubling, or pronominal reduplication is a phenomenon by which clitic pronouns appear in verb phrases together with the full noun phrases that they refer to (as opposed to the cases where such pronouns and full noun phrases a ...

Dominican Spanish Dominican Spanish () is Spanish language, Spanish as spoken in the Dominican Republic; and also among the Dominican diaspora, most of whom live in the United States, chiefly in New York City, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts ...

Writing

In addition to two books of poetry and one book of prose, Abreu has written a number of essays, and published conversations with artists and poets. Their poetry is focused on many subjects, including art, race, gender, and other topics. They have published at

Rhizome In botany and dendrology, a rhizome (; , ) is a modified subterranean plant stem that sends out roots and shoots from its nodes. Rhizomes are also called creeping rootstalks or just rootstalks. Rhizomes develop from axillary buds and grow hori ...

Art in America ''Art in America'' is an illustrated monthly, international magazine concentrating on the contemporary art world in the United States, including profiles of artists and genres, updates about art movements, show reviews and event schedules. It i ...

, AQNB, and elsewhere. They are known for highly polemical essays dealing with

antiblackness Negrophobia (also termed anti-Blackness) is characterized by a fear, hatred or extreme aversion to Black people and Black culture worldwide. Caused amongst other factors by racism and traumatic events and circumstances, symptoms of this phobia i ...

in culture and art. They wrote an essay about, "Online Imagined Black English," a phenomenon where users of social media users imagine the qualities of African American Vernacular English due to increased exposure to Black media, adopt it for expressive purposes that generally rely on stereotypes of Black people as lazy, criminal, cool, hypersexual, and otherwise. They also wrote an essay about the commodifying nature of

social practice art Social practice or socially engaged practice is an art medium that focuses on engagement through human interaction and social discourse. Social practice goes by many names, including relational aesthetics, new genre public art,abreu, manuel artu ...

which reflects on ideas from

Claire Bishop Claire Bishop is a British art historian, critic, and Professor of Art History at The Graduate Center, CUNY, New York where she has taught since September 2008. Bishop is known as one of the central theorists of participation in visual art and ...

Art shows

Abreu participated in group art installations at Rhizome and the New Museum (online), the Cooley Gallery (Portland), Chicken Coop Contemporary (Portland), Veronica project space (Seattle), AA/LA Gallery (Los Angeles), and the Art Gym ( Marylhurst University). *''Not Total,'' Portland Community College Paragon Gallery, Portland, OR (2019) *''I Scare Easily'', Yaby, Madrid (2019) *''obsequies,'' AA, LA Gallery, Los Angeles (2018) *''a re:trospective''; a group show curated as part of the home school project in collaboration with the Re:Art Show; Old Pfizer Factory, Brooklyn, NY (2018) *''First Look: New Black Portraitures'', New Museum, NY (2017) *''resilience'', Institute for New Connotative Action, Seattle (2016)

Awards

Bibliography

* Nominated for the Sarah Winnemucca Award for Creative Nonfiction 2019. * *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:abreu, manuel arturo 1991 births Living people Educators from Portland, Oregon