SALIIM PROJECTS is proud to present “Well Within: Portraits by Sarah Fantuzzo, Alpha Massaquoi Jr, and Karla Pankratz”, a three-person exhibition of artists from the community. Celebrating the excellence of these local talents, the show highlights the ways these artists explore and portray themselves, their loved ones, and their surroundings through the representations of the human figure. The drawings and paintings exhibited in dialogue demonstrate the breadth and complexity of the artistic language of portraiture and the genre’s power to illuminate how we engage, feel, and view the world around us.

Sarah Fantuzzo

Rendered by fine and delicate brushstrokes and alive in poetic hues, Fantuzzo’s work evokes an uncanny sense of tranquility. The tension of opposites – the reality and the illusion, the substantial and the ephemeral as well as the familiar and the otherworldly – is evident in her painterly oeuvre and characterized by a meticulous attention to light and shadow. Under a penetrated light that is warm and harmonious, the sitters are captured in a moment of transition. While their gazes are turned away from the viewer and their emotions remain uncertain, Fantuzzo delves into the depth of psychological and emotional state of her subjects, incorporating symbols and visual elements as pictorial device. Whether it is through the gestures of hands in conversation, or the way light reveals the form of a time-worn face, Fantuzzo’s figures unveil the pearls of beauty that can be often found beneath the surface.

Fantuzzo has received her BA in Art from Drew University and MFA in Painting from New York Academy of Arts. She has earned many awards, including a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist grant in 2006. She was an Artist-in-Residence at Wesley Seminary in Washington, DC and at The Julia and David White Artist’s Colony in Costa Rica. Currently she lives in Swarthmore. 

Alpha Massaquoi Jr.

Baltimore-native Massaquoi examines issues of the race, religion, and black culture of contemporary America through his depiction of individuals “whose life experiences bare similarities to his own.” Massaquoi painstakingly renders portrayals of his family, friends, teachers and acquaintances using charcoal and pastel, a medium often characterized by its transparency and delicateness. Massaquoi uses the conventional iconographies of traditional European portraiture which were used for people in positions of power and privilege throughout much of Western art history. Alluding to the absence of African Americans from historical and cultural narratives, Massaquoi Jr’s subjects – everyday men and women – tell the story of our own today.

Massaquoi is currently a MFA candidate at Tufts University. He has received numerous awards and residencies such as Vermont Studio Center Residency (2023), Tufts Montague Travel Grant (2022), Maryland State Arts Council Independent Artist Award (2022), Macon Arts Alliance Award (2021), Awesome Foundation Awesome Baltimore Grant (2021). He also had many solo and group exhibitions including at Howard County Center for the Arts (2023), Eubie Blake National Jazz and Cultural Center (2022, 2020), and The Chicago Museum of Science and Industry (2022).

Karla Pankratz

Karla Pankratz works with themes of nostalgia, memory, and connections that surround the artist, engaging traditional subjects of portraiture and genre scenes of everyday life. Drawing upon a wide range of deeply personal sources such as photographs, memorabilia, suburban sceneries of the 1980’s, and interior décor of a house, Pankratz layers, blends, and mirrors a multitude of life and cultures she has lived. In a lively and playful manner, Pankratz portrays herself in distorted or foreshortened perspectives and limits her use of color palette, reminiscent of printing techniques used for the mass reproduction of images in the past.  In her self-portraits, body forms, lines, and gestures are blended and merged, oscillating between the figurative and abstract. Her bold and sensuous use of surface, line and mass provides a sense of motion and fluidity.  Presenting the wall of the gallery space as her visual diary, Pankratz invites the viewers into the intimate and complex space of her mind and memory.

Karla Pankratz has received her BFA from Temple University’s Tyler School of Art. Her work has been exhibited widely in the Philadelphia region as well as in New York.  Pankratz has also worked with a number of Philadelphia art institutions, including the Mural Arts Program and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.