VERNANDO REUBEN

Vernando Reuben is a Jamaican-born visual artist living and working in Brooklyn, New York. Working across multiple mediums, including mixed media collage, drawing, painting and video, Reuben’s work envisions a world full of hope and joy for Black queer people, where subjects are safe and free to be their authentic selves. Reuben’s background as a Jamaican immigrant is reflected in his bold and explorative use of color, texture, and materiality and through his portrayal of queer African and Caribbean men as divinely powerful and sensual beings. For his collages, Reuben assembles fragments of painted, printed, cut, scratched and abraded paper. These disparate elements are manipulated and layered to achieve a cohesive narrative exploring queer subjects navigating desire and interconnectivity, while also highlighting the radical and transgressive potentiality of the idealized tropical canopies and interior cruising utopias surrounding them. 

Reuben is a 2023 artist-in-residence at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and has been featured in Jay-Z’s feature magazine Edition, as one of 12 artists to watch according to artist Nathaniel Mary Quinn. Reuben’s work has been exhibited at Bienvenu, Steinberg & J; NADA New York; Little Haiti Cultural Center; Prizm Art Fair in Miami Beach, as well as in Black queer media spaces such as The Tenth Magazine.