To catch a glimpse of Amber Esseiva’s handiwork, simply stop by the ICA at VCU sometime in the next three months.
There, in the first level gallery, you’ll find “Dear Mazie,” Esseiva’s celebration of groundbreaking Black and queer architect Amaza Lee Meredith. To create the exhibition, Esseiva, who is the ICA’s acting senior curator, spent years dipping into Meredith’s archives at Virginia State University before commissioning works by 11 contemporary artists and architects.
A native of Paris who moved to Miami as a pre-teen, Esseiva majored in art history as an undergrad at VCU before getting her master’s from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College.
“I always knew that I wanted to be within the arts, and my time at VCU was very influential,” Esseiva says. “I spent a lot of time with the fine arts students in the Fine Arts Building and was really interested in studio visits and in the production of works of art.”
Before coming to the ICA as an assistant curator in 2017, Esseiva was the director of the Retrospective Gallery in Hudson, New York, and program coordinator and marketing manager for Basilica Hudson, a nonprofit arts center co-founded by Melissa Auf der Maur of Hole and Smashing Pumpkins fame. She also served as a guest curator at the 2016 Glasgow International biennial festival of contemporary art and at VCUarts Qatar in Doha.
Esseiva says she’s driven to work with living artists who grapple with modern-day issues.
“That really draws me, artists that are both interested in expanding their work through new mediums and new ideas, and artists that are also interested in questioning and challenging the world around them,” she says.
Recently, Esseiva finished serving for two years at curator-at-large for the Studio Museum in Harlem, which highlights the art of African Americans, members of the African diaspora and artists from Africa.
Looking ahead, Esseiva says the ICA aims to host a large sculpture exhibition of a VCU faculty member, bring part of the Venice Biennale to the arts center and welcome guest curators to exhibit works about the African and Caribbean diasporas.
