Creative Exile

Jimmy Valdez Osaku- Creative Exile

September 7, 2020 – April 23, 2021

The Creative Exile of Jimmy Valdez Osaku, at the Mary L. Fifield Art Gallery from September 7, 2020 to April 23, 2021, features the art and poetry of New York-based Jimmy Valdez Osaku in a powerful exploration of loss, loneliness, and endurance. Organized just as COVID-19 was shutting down the United States, the exhibition includes older works plus paintings and writings produced in response to the pandemic. Valdez’s art chronicles his journey, struggles as an immigrant, and suggests that we have all become exiles in a virus-plagued world.

According to poet, translator, and educator Rhina P. Espaillat, BHCC's 2019-2020 Distinguished Artist Scholar in Residence,   “Jimmy’s work reflects the divided self straining to create its own autobiography, speaking to what it contains and is constantly aware of, but cannot unify.”

The full exhibition catalog contains a selection of the artist's poetry translated by Espaillat, as well as reflections from BHCC Faculty, the artist himself, and others.

View Jimmy Valdez Osaku Catalog