STAN SQUIREWELL
ARtist-in-residence / May 15 - august 8 2021
Stan Squirewell (b. 1978) is a painter, photographer, installation, and performance artist. Born and raised in Washington, DC in the Barry Farm neighborhood, just a few blocks away from The Nicholson Project, Squirewell established a serious art practice while working from his Harlem-based studio before moving to Louisville, KY where he currently lives and works. His work examines who curates and controls the narratives that become accepted as history; from what perspective is history written, whose stories are told, and whose are neglected?
Squirewell’s own family history provided an impetus for this line of inquiry after, in his 20s, he learned that his ancestry was not what he had been told, but included indigenous roots. Looking back at census and enlistment records, it became apparent how racial, cultural, and ancestral roots become blurred or even erased, sometimes by accident and sometimes on purpose. This inspired Squirewell to ask from whose perspective history is written. It also inspired him to begin questioning the education system, as he realized that whoever controls the educational narrative controls the cultural consciousness. Says Squirewell, “Marginalized communities are often overlooked and omitted from history in general. The history I was taught did not have my ancestry represented. As a child of the hip hop era, born in the 70s, growing up in the 80s and 90s, I look at my work as almost remixing, crate-digging, but my crates are museums, private collections, and historical narratives. I remix my pieces according to my own way of writing history. The main thing I want the viewer to take away is to question what you think you know, what you’ve been told, and what you believe.”
Squirewell’s artistic training began at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts. Since graduating he has continued his tutelage under many of DC’s legends including artists Michael Platt and Lou Stovall. He holds an MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art’s Hoffberger School of Painting (2007) where he studied under the late Grace Hartigan and is the first winner of the Rush Philanthropic and Bombay Sapphire Artisan series. He has performed with Nick Cave (SoundSuits) at the National Portrait Gallery, and Jefferson Pinder with G-Fine Arts. His work is held in private and public collections including the Reginald F. Lewis Museum in Baltimore, MD, the Robert Steele Collection, and the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture, among others.
During his residency at The Nicholson Project, Squirewell will use his time to research the archives at the National Gallery of Art and the Library of Congress and to develop new work in preparation for his first upcoming solo museum exhibition.
Learn more about Stan’s work at www.stansquirewell.com
Interested in becoming our next artist-in-residence?