Ryan Cardoso – The 11

Featured image (above): The spit on her finger to wipe the drool on my face always embarrassed me in the mornings (2021)

Exhibition Statement:

The 11 is a public exhibition by Ryan Cardoso of photographs and flags raised in celebration of growing up on the southside of Providence. The exhibition spans from 526 Broad St. to 1481 Broad St. and is produced by The Department of Art, Culture, and Tourism in Rhode Island. This body of work is from 2020-2021, and has been created to reflect on the good times, hard times, and loving times of being raised on the southside of Providence.

Going Where I’ve Been: running for the 11, con con, summer on the porch, mouse traps, the B.E.T. salon, Porto Pelo, chimi trucks, $1 for the pastelito, WP, high school house parties, black and milds, Mi Sueno car washes, loud music at 3am, Crown Fried Chicken, Ripta, transfers, KP, trading sneakers at the corner, overnight parking tickets, Henny, Brugal, beef, friendship, family, love, home. (if you was there you know)

Artist Statement:

Ryan Cardoso is a visual artist exploring the portrait and its importance in archiving the elegance, domesticity, and relationships of blackness. His work centers around image and the moving image with the intention to create documents that archive what it means to exist as a first generation African American. Using a wide range of tools from analog photography, collected family images, archived family video, iPhone video, screen recordings, and recorded sound Ryan is able to create a diverse collection of works that exercise different styles. He feels that it is important to use all forms of technology to create an accurate depiction of what it means to live in a world where technology is the leading force in everyone’s daily lives. Living within the future of technology has given him tools to push and test new practices while still depending on the analogue, physical, hands on process. Ryan finds that combining both the digital push and traditional practice has allowed for the style of mistake to turn into quality. Subjects in the work are usually family members and friends and are a study of them in intimate moments within their space. While the process is always a collaboration between Ryan and the subject and it often reveals a part of their private life, he also works to hold space to remind the viewer that this is in-fact a moment paused, not passed. Ryan’s gaze as the image maker and adding lyricism to mundane moments is usually emphasized through lighting, staging, and styling. Ryan creates images with the intent that they will hold as answers in school history books of what the casual and sublime moments of life look like in the 21st century sprinkled with a bit of magic and mysticism.

The 11 – Exhibition List