Manuel Arturo Abreu

Manuel Arturo Abreu (born 1991) is a Dominican artist, poet,[1][2] critic, and curator from the Bronx.[3] 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 Awards: Sarah Winnemucca Award for Creative nonfiction, while their poetry collection transtrender was a finalist for the 2018 Oregon Book Awards: Stafford/Hall Award for Poetry. Abreu co-facilitates a free pop-up art school called home school in Portland, OR.[4][5][6]

Education

Abreu received his BA in Linguistics from Reed College in Portland, Oregon in 2014.[7] Their thesis was on accusative clitic doubling in Dominican Spanish.[8]

Writing

In addition to two books of poetry and one book of prose,[9][10][11][12][13] Abreu has written a number of essays,[14][15] and published conversations with artists and poets.[16][17][18][19] Their poetry is focused on many subjects, including art, race, gender, and other topics.[20][21] They have published at Rhizome, Art in America,[22][23] AQNB, and elsewhere.

They are known for highly polemical essays dealing with antiblackness 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.[15][24][25][26][27][28] They also wrote an essay about the commodifying nature of social practice art[29][30] which reflects on ideas from Claire Bishop.

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).

• Black Artists of Oregon, Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR (2023)
• Cry Me a River, Simian, Copenhagen, Denmark (2023)
• THE ARCHIVE AS... Kunstverein München, Munich, Germany (2023)
• With CASSANDRA Press, On Self-Defense, Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen, Norway (2023)
• Transactions with Eternity, Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin (2022) [31]
• With CASSANDRA Press. Quiet as It’s Kept, Whitney Museum of American Art (2022)
• ECLIPSE: Athens Biennale 7, Athens (2021)
• Study Room. HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark, Graz (2021)
• Life Constantly Escapes, Kunstraum Niederösterreich, Vienna (2021)
• pen pressure, Haus Wien, Vienna (2020)
• Not Total, Portland Community College Paragon Gallery, Portland, OR (2019)[32][33]
• Radical Reading Room, Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY (2019)
• I Scare Easily, Yaby, Madrid (2019)
• obsequies, AA|LA Gallery, Los Angeles (2018)[34]
• 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)[35][36]
• This is a Black Spatial Imaginary, PCC Cascade Paragon Gallery, Portland, OR (2017)
• From Concrete to Liquid... Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva, Switzerland (2017)
• Cabin Pressure, BBQLA, Los Angeles, CA (2017)
• Quota, SOIL Gallery, Seattle, WA (2017)
• First Look: New Black Portraitures, New Museum, NY (2017)[37]
• resilience, Institute for New Connotative Action, Seattle (2016)[38]

Awards

Year	Award Name	Placement	Project
2019	Precipice Fund Grant	Recipient	home school[39]
2019	Yale Union residency	Recipient	home school[40]
2019	Centrum Emerging Artist Residency[41]	Recipient	N/A
2019	Oregon Book Awards: Sarah Winnemucca Award for Creative nonfiction	Finalist	Incalculable Loss (Institute for New Connotative Action Press)[42]
2018	Oregon Literary Fellowship[43][44]	Fellow	N/A
2018	Oregon Book Awards: Stafford/Hall Award for Poetry	Finalist	transtrender (Quimérica Books / Ugly Duckling Presse)[45][46]
2017	Precipice Fund Grant	Recipient	home school[47]
2017	Precipice Fund Grant	Recipient	black apotrope[47]
2017	Open Media Signal Fellowship[48]	Fellow	N/A
2017	Rhizome Microgrant	Awardee	home school[49]
2016	Regional Arts & Culture Council Grant	Awardee	home school[50]
2015	Precipice Fund Grant	Recipient	home school[51]

Bibliography

• Abreu, Manuel Arturo; Ford, Eleanor (2018). Incalculable loss. INCA Press. ISBN 9780997763935. OCLC 1085290773. Nominated for the Sarah Winnemucca Award for Creative Nonfiction 2019.[9][10]
• Abreu, Manuel Arturo (2016). transtrender. ISBN 9781937027841. OCLC 975486061.[11][12][13]
• Abreu, Manuel Arturo (2015). List of Consonants. Bottlecap Press. ISBN 978-1-946340-07-8.

References

1. Crandall, Max (August 2016). "A Look at 'Vetch' a Magazine for Trans Poetry and Poetics". Lambda Literary Foundation. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help)
2. "NewHive hosts an intriguing first Trans Planet Online Reading". UWIRE. October 2017. Retrieved 15 March 2019.
3. "manuel arturo abreu: Incalculable Loss | INCA". Retrieved 5 March 2019.
4. Abreu, Manuel Arturo (13 December 2018). "manuel arturo abreu – Poet | Academy of American Poets". manuel arturo abreu. Retrieved 5 March 2019.
5. "A Free, Pop-up Art School In Portland Attempts to Exist Outside the Art World". Willamette Week. Retrieved 24 January 2020.
6. "A safe space for deep criticism of art". Oregon ArtsWatch. 22 June 2018. Retrieved 24 January 2020.
7. "manuel arturo abreu". Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA). Retrieved 22 March 2019.
8. "Accusative Clitic Doubling in Dominican Spanish, 2014 | Semantics | Semiotics". Scribd. Retrieved 24 January 2020.
9. 23 Jan, Suzette Smith •; Pm, 2019 at 3:30. "Pump Your Reading List Up: The 2019 Oregon Book Finalists Are Here". Portland Mercury. Retrieved 14 March 2019.
10. "What New Yorkers Should Put on Their Summer Reading Lists". The Village Voice. June 2018. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help)
11. "Yani Robinson reviews Manuel Arturo Abreu's Chapbook, Transtrender". Apogee Journal. 1 May 2017. Retrieved 12 March 2019.
12. "Thinking Beyond Colonial Gender: A Review of Manuel Arturo Abreu's Transtrender". Retrieved 12 March 2019.
13. "The violence of naming + necessity: Reading through porous bodies in manuel arturo abreu's transtrender". atractivoquenobello. 30 January 2017. Retrieved 12 March 2019.
14. abreu, manuel arturo (October 2017). "Embodying Survivance". Art in America. 105: 92–95 – via ESBCO.
15. "Online Imagined Black English—Manuel Arturo Abreu". arachne.cc. Retrieved 15 March 2019.
16. "JACOB KIRKEGAARD – ARTICLES & INTERVIEWS". fonik.dk. Retrieved 15 March 2019.
17. "Butching it up + dumbing it down: Ser Serpas in conversation on shitty childhoods, respectability + erasure". atractivoquenobello. 9 August 2017. Retrieved 15 March 2019.
18. "n-prolenta: Against Black Disposability by manuel arturo abreu". atractivoquenobello. 11 November 2016. Retrieved 15 March 2019.
19. "Still I shitpost: Cory in the Abyss on a communism of the visual + antiblackness in the meme-o-sphere with manuel arturo abreu". atractivoquenobello. 12 December 2017. Retrieved 15 March 2019.
20. "We've Always Been Here, Fighting by Christopher Soto". Poetry Foundation. 18 March 2019. Retrieved 18 March 2019.
21. "The Room in Spite of by Ari Banias". Poetry Foundation. 18 March 2019. Retrieved 18 March 2019.
22. abreu, manuel arturo (25 September 2017). "Embodying Survivance". ARTnews.com. Retrieved 26 January 2020.
23. abreu, manuel arturo (29 April 2019). "Claim Boundaries: Artists of the Northwest at Portland Art Museum". ARTnews.com. Retrieved 26 January 2020.
24. "What Up Internet". Rhizome. Retrieved 15 March 2019.
25. "Bobby Shmurda: Viral and Invisible | New Criticals". www.newcriticals.com. Retrieved 15 March 2019.
26. Writer, Bobbi Booker Tribune Staff (13 July 2018). "'Digital blackface' unmasks social media unease". The Philadelphia Tribune. Retrieved 18 March 2019.
27. "2015: The Year According to Black Futures (Kimberly Drew & Jenna Wortham)". walkerart.org. Retrieved 15 March 2019.
28. D'Clark, Rayvenn Shaleigha D'Clark (January 2018). "Poor Meme, Rich Meme". Retrieved 15 March 2019.
29. abreu, manuel arturo. "We Need to Talk About Social Practice". Art Practical. Retrieved 26 January 2020.
30. "We Need to Talk About Social Practice - Frontpage - e-flux conversations". conversations.e-flux.com. Retrieved 26 January 2020.
31. Afzali, Noushin (10 August 2022). "Form and Being Collude in 'Transactions with Eternity'". Ocula. Retrieved 2 September 2023.
32. "Not Total by Rindon Johnson, Jonathan Gonzalez, and manuel arturo abreu". pcc.edu. Retrieved 26 January 2020.
33. "Not Total: Jonathan González, manuel arturo abreu, and Rindon Johnson | PCC Cascade Paragon Arts Gallery". 60 Inch Center. Retrieved 26 January 2020.
34. ""obsequies" at AA|LA (Contemporary Art Daily)". contemporaryartdaily.com. Retrieved 26 January 2020.
35. Mallett, Whitney (6 November 2018). "A 'Retrospective for Emerging Artists in Bushwick'". Vulture.
36. "a re:trospective at Pfizer Pharmaceutical Factory – Art Viewer". Retrieved 26 January 2020.
37. "online black art is moving from instagram to bitmapping'". i-D at Vice. Retrieved 27 March 2019.
38. "manuel arturo abreu | INCA". Retrieved 26 January 2020.
39. "2019 Grant Recipients". PICA. Retrieved 24 January 2020.
40. "YU". Retrieved 26 January 2020.
41. "Centrum's Emerging Artist Residency | Centrum". centrum.org. Retrieved 26 January 2020.
42. "Announcing the 2019 Oregon Book Awards Finalists". Literary Arts. Retrieved 5 March 2019.
43. "Past Recipients: Writers". Literary Arts. Retrieved 5 March 2019.
44. Davidson, Caroline (May 2018). "Recent Winners". Poets & Writers: 91–101.
45. Maxwell, M. (February 2018). "Three locals earn nominations". The Register.
46. Wang, Amy (February 2018). "2018 Oregon Book Awards Finalists Announced". The Oregonian.
47. "2017 Grant Recipients". PICA. Retrieved 5 March 2019.
48. Center, Open Signal: Portland Community Media (4 March 2019). "Introducing Our Fall…". Open Signal: Portland Community Media Center. Retrieved 5 March 2019.
49. "Announcing the 2017 Microgrant Awardees". Rhizome. Retrieved 5 March 2019.
50. Bauer, Mary (16 December 2016). "RACC awards $733,608 in project grants for 2017". Regional Arts and Culture Council. Retrieved 5 March 2019.
51. "2015 Grant Recipients". PICA. Retrieved 5 March 2019.