About Aileen Bassis

Aileen Bassis is an interdisciplinary artist who works with book arts, installation, printmaking, and photography. The New York City native received a B.A. in Studio Art from Binghamton University and a M.A. in Creative Art from Hunter College. 

Bassis’ work has been exhibited in one person shows at Brown University’s Watson Institute, LaGuardia Community College, Lewis Latimer Museum, and Rutgers University Robeson Center, Newark, College of St. Elizabeth in NJ, Moravian College, PA, Seigfred Gallery at Ohio University, and in NYC at York College, the Ceres Project Room, Chashama 266, and Gallery 402. She has exhibited in numerous group exhibitions across the United States, as well. Her artist books can be found in public collections throughout Yale University, Wellesley College, Tufts University, Rhode Island School of Design, and the King St. Stephen Museum in Hungary. Additionally, Bassis’ prints are in the collections of the New York Public Library, the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp, and the Nelimarkka Museum in Finland.

 

 

 

 

Artist Statement

My art practice is content driven, by this I mean that there are particular areas such as issues of identity, immigration, income inequality, racial disparities, the environment, migration and displacement etc, that I feel compelled to explore through making art. My process begins with a subject that I approach in different formats. The forms of my work can vary, but it’s usually some kind of work on paper that may include altered books, unique and small editions of artists books, printmaking, drawing and collage. The images are based in my photographs, often ordinary, often fragmented. The organization, the combination of images, the inclusion of text or additional art media serve to create a more pointed and polemical interpretation.

This etching is from a series about immigration and migration. I’m interested in examining at what point people decide to leave their homelands for an uncertain future. Each print has a sentence that begins with, “It was time to leave when…” This work looks out at the world, selecting and rendering the space between the known and the unknown with text and images comprised of both the real and the imagined, giving viewers the opportunity to reflect and re-examine our society and forces shaping the lives around us.

Exhibitions 

  • York College, New York City
  • The Ceres Project Room, New York City
  • Chashama 266, New York City 
  • Gallery 402, New York City
  • Brown University’s Watson Institute, Rhode Island
  • LaGuardia Community College, New York
  • Lewis Latimer Museum, New York
  • Rutgers University Robeson Center, Newark
  • College of St. Elizabeth, New Jersey
  • Moravian College, Pennsylvania
  • Seigfred Gallery at Ohio University, Ohio

Achievements

  • Recipient of a project grant and two Su Casa residency grants from the Queens Council for the Arts
  • Fellowship in Photography from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts
  • Dodge Foundation Fellowship to the Vermont Studio Center
  • Fellowship to the Fine Arts Work Center
  • Two grants from the Puffin Foundation
  • Two artist residencies in poetry to the Atlantic Center for the Arts

Artist Interview