Codify Art is a multidisciplinary collective of QTPOC artists.
As an artistic, curatorial, and producorial organization, our mission is to showcase work by artists of color, particularly women, queer, and trans artists of color. We are committed to facilitating urgent conversations, clearing and claiming space, and holding doors open. Together, we champion a practice that accurately reflects the breadth, depth, and richness of our communities, in all their intersections.
To "codify art" is to reclaim art through radical redefinition.
The existing vocabulary of the arts and society at large often proves inadequate for engagement with the stories of marginalized groups. Codifying builds an alternative, inclusionary language with which the artist can communicate their experience and through which the viewer can understand and respond. We clear common ground; we teach, learn, and teach continuously.
Codify Art is a call to action.
We are artists, designers, directors, and writers. We are musicians, poets, choreographers, and actors. We are Actors. We are agents and agitators and advocates of a new, dynamic dialogue. We move and make on a platform of diversity dedicated to effecting positive change in the arts and beyond. We invite you to: Codify Art with us.
THE TEAM
Jarrett Key
www.jarrettkey.com
Jarrett Key is a Brooklyn based artist whose work integrates movement, heightened language, and music predominantly. He is a recent grad from Brown University, where he doubled concentrated in Theater Arts and Public Policy.
Jarrett is primarily a Producer and Director/Choreographer for theater, music, and dance. Since his arrival to the city, Jarrett has integrated visual and literary art into his body of work. Jarrett enjoys telling stories and engaging the community in the moments he creates in his work.
Son Kit
www.sonkit.info
Son Kit is a learner and a doer,
a mover, a maker, and a faker.
(JK about that last one).
First spawned in Los Angeles, CA, Kit scored their degrees in Visual Art and Literary Arts at Brown University in Providence, RI. Since then, they have been working on the creation of a New Canon of Korean-American Speculative Fiction Authored Entirely By Them, utilizing video, illustration, installation and text to explore non-binary second-gen yellow narratives. They are in an “It’s complicated” relationship with techno-orientalism. Find them on a Brooklyn-based couch.
Sharina Gordon sharinagordon.com
Sharina Gordon is a social justice educator and career coach based in Brooklyn. An Africana Studies and International Relations graduate of Brown University, she's committed to having the hard conversations about power and privilege. Interested in afrofuturism, #blackgirlmagic and world-building, she also enjoys writing memoir and speculative fiction on the side.
Broadly Sharina is invested in creating safer communities for queer people of color and others historically and currently on the margins. Her desire is to help equip our communities - through art, activism and teaching - with the tools necessary to achieve our goals.
Leandro Zaneti
Leandro A. Zaneti is a theater producer and artist with a focus on movement and the body. He is a graduate from Brown University with a dual degree in Theater Arts and Economics. He has worked as the Assistant to the Production Executives and as Assistant Production Manager at The Public Theater (read: he knows how to get things done).
Leandro's artistic mission is to find where and why stories need to be told. He endeavors to create work that is both temporally and spatially relevant. He is interested in the utility of art in inspiring personal, spiritual and social change.
Jon Key
www.jonkeyart.co
Jon(athan) Key is an artist, designer, and writer originally from Seale, Alabama. Living and working in Brooklyn NY, he divides his time running Morcos Key design studio with Wael Morcos Key, painting and teaching at Cooper Union.
As a painter, Jon’s work excavates the lineage and history of his identity through four themes: Southerness, Blackness, Queerness, and Family. Jon’s work is portrayed graphically through four colors: Green, Black, Violet and Red. Respectively, these colors intertwine memory and intimate recounting of the four pillars grounding the work. Jon’s work has been showcased recently in Spring/Break Art Fair, Punch at Jeffrey Deitch NY, Untitled Art Fair, Rubber Factory, Steve Turner Gallery and upcoming at Armory Art Fair 2020. Jon was also selected as a Forbes 30 under 30 for the 2020 Art and Style section. Jon is the graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design.