The Café Royal Cultural Foundation NYC has awarded a 2023 Fall Visual Grant to Mickey Aloisio for his upcoming exhibition, “E is for Empty Yourself”.

Mickey Aloisio is an artist and educator based in Brooklyn, NY. Aloisio received his AAS
from Suffolk County Community College, his BFA from the Fashion Institute of
Technology, and his MFA from the School of Art at Yale University. He is a recipient of
the Eliza Prize, awarded by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Pride Photo Award
Open Category First Prize in Amsterdam, the FST Studio Fund for New York Artists, the
Alice Kimball English Traveling Fellowship, and the Critical Practice Research Grant,
both awarded by the Yale School of Art, and the Manhattan Graphics Center Scholarship
artist award. Recent group exhibitions include Rdykes Cavern of Fine Gay Wine at
Hauser and Wirth in New York, NY, Dispatcher at Casemore Kirkeby Gallery in San
Francisco, CA, and Dead Letter Office at Marlborough Gallery in New York, NY, amongst
others. Aloisio was a 2021-22 Core Fellow at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and is
currently an AIM fellow at the Bronx Museum of the Arts in New York. Aloisio will be
having his first solo exhibition at Marlborough Gallery in New York this January, and will
be exhibiting new work in Bronx Calling: The AIM Sixth Biennial exhibition this spring.

E is for Empty Yourself is a large-scale photographic installation focusing on Mickey’s father, their relationship, and his journey through drug addiction and substance abuse recovery in the aftermath of a career as a police officer. Mickey’s dad, Paul, worked the night shift as an NYPD officer in the Bronx during the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s. Last year, Paul moved into a new apartment in Queens; the first time he’s lived alone in over 15 years.  This project will focus on this new chapter of his life, creating photographs centered on five main categories: drug addiction and alcoholism, religion, economic precarity, attempts at self-agency, and the relationship he has created with iconographic– and predominantly male– pop cultural symbols that he surrounds himself with.

 “I position my father’s struggles as yet another, albeit more personal, failure of the criminal justice system; a system known for the exploitative ways in which it has used its workers as pawns for political gain. This project title comes from the titular photograph in the series, referencing a quote that Paul had circled in one of his self-help books, depicting the space behind his bed. This image lays bare the intimate markings of one year's worth of tossing and turning through the night, to the point that the paint and sheetrock of the wall have been chipped through to expose the metal stud framing. Within this work, I am trying to bring in considerations of class, education, and workplace conditions into larger discussions around state violence, the future of the American worker, and the institution of policing. This is the story, above all, of a working-class New Yorker, who has contributed to the legacy of this city in his own way, and whose life since has been irrevocably determined by that experience.”

This work will be presented in the AIM Biennial at the Bronx Museum of the Arts in spring 2024.

Please visit Mickey’s Instagram and website for more information.