Directionality, semiotics, and deep roots with Alumni Artist-in-Residence, Michael Cuadrado.
Michael Cuadradro’s first encounter with Ox-Bow spanned the entirety of the summer of 2017. As a Summer Fellow, he spent 13 weeks on campus, splitting his time between the studio and a work placement in the kitchen. The season hosted visits to the beach, evenings on the volleyball court, and nights around the campfire. Cuadrado described his summer as a time not only to deepen his practice, but also his sense of self. He had just finished his junior year of undergraduate studies at the Pratt Institute, where he rooted his work in figurative painting, drawing, and collage. Having come out the year before, many of the renderings involved portrayals of nude men, and at Ox-Bow he found a receptive community not only for his art, but also his burgeoning identity. As the youngest of the fellows, the staff and faculty seemed extra intent on nurturing this youthful, energetic artist.
Ox-Bow’s rural campus stood in stark contrast to Pratt’s New York cityscape, but Cuadrado took to the new environment with ease. By the time he returned to New York for his final year of undergraduate, he found himself daydreaming about Ox-Bow, its quiet meadow and open air studios. In 2019, Cuadrado fulfilled this dream and stepped into a new role in the housekeeping department. As another season came to a close, Cuadrado looked towards returning to Ox-Bow for another bustling year in 2020. Of course, as was the case all across the globe, things took an unexpected turn at Ox-Bow.
Rather than spending that summer hustling to change beds and sweep floors, Cuadradro found himself on an ultra quiet campus. There were no students romping through studios or dancing on the meadow. Only Cuadrado and a few other staff members resided on campus. As the Covid-19 pandemic progressed, Cuadrado once again found campus providing a sort of reprieve from the city. While others took to making sourdough and riding stationary bikes, Cuadrado became an avid reader during the early stages of the pandemic. “This is going to sound heady,” Cuadrado admitted, “but I was reading this book on the beginnings of semiotics.” Having spent so much time in solitude, he (like many others during 2020) began to question just about everything. So he returned to the basics of the visual world, curious what the most rudimentary characters symbolized. He also cracked open Sara Ahmed’s Queer Phenomenology, which explores the idea of directionality within semiotics. “I was lost,” Cuadrado said of those first pandemic months, “so I was like, ‘Let’s just go back to the beginning.’” And in this exploration of semiotics, Cuadrado found new footing.
Photo courtesy of the artist, Michael Cuadrado.
“That winter I made a lot of work, because what else was I going to do?” Cuadrado said in both jest and earnest. For weeks, he spent his days reading in the morning, pausing for lunch, and then heading to the studio for the afternoon. With semiotics on the mind, arrows began to appear in his work as he explored Ahmed’s proposed interpretations of directionality. These paintings would eventually carry Cuadrado to the portfolio that brought him to Yale for his MFA, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
Cuadrado eventually transitioned from housekeeping to Programs Manager. With experiences as a fellow, campus staff, and now administration, Cuadrado emphasized the holistic view of Ox-Bow that he was able to glean. With each position, his understanding of the organization deepened, and it was only through much discretion and consideration that he decided to leave Ox-Bow in the fall of 2022 to pursue a Masters in Fine Arts at Yale. There Cuadrado continued to invest not only in his arts practice, but also the realm of academic and research-based writing. He maintained his pandemic practice of reading copious amounts of literature and became particularly attracted to theory-based courses at Yale.
In 2024, Cuadrado applied for the Summer Residency at Ox-Bow, which returned him to campus for a 3 week stay. “This was my first summer coming to Ox-Bow where I wasn't staff or working alongside staff,” Cuadrado reflected. During this time, Cuadrado stepped back into the ease and slowness of Ox-Bow. “I started the residency thinking I would work on ‘large’ oil paintings… However, I found myself continuously making smaller chalk pastel drawings or thinking about potential installations.” He indulged in both long afternoons in the studio and easy evenings around the campfire. “The most generative experiences outside the studio were conversations with other people,” Cuadrado said. It was these very conversations, as so often is the case at Ox-Bow, that made their way into the studio and onto the paper.
Michael Cuadrado Gonzalez (b. 1995) is an artist born in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He received a BFA in Drawing from Pratt Institute in 2018 and an MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Yale University in 2024. Cuadrado has attended residencies at Wassaic Project, BOLT at the Chicago Artists Coalition, Ox-Bow School of Art and Artists' Residency, and the School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University. He has exhibited nationally including solo exhibitions at Harkawik and Coco Hunday.
This article was written by Shanley Poole, Engagement Liaison & Storyteller and was based on an interview and email correspondence conducted from April to September of 2024.
Photos by Dominique Muñoz (Summer Fellow, 2024).