Manuel Acevedo

Manuel Acevedo (b. Newark, NJ, 1964) is a Bronx-based multidisciplinary artist. Acevedo began his career as a street photographer in Newark. Over time, he broadened his media to develop a distinctive style that combines photo-based projected imagery, wall drawing, animation and text. Through these means, Acevedo amplifies the subtle nuances of the lived urban experience and landscape. His work, including installations, public art projects, and proposals for utopian projects, intermingles contested histories of specific areas while addressing issues of gentrification, immigration, and ever shifting boundaries of space.

Acevedo has been exhibiting his work in the United States and abroad for over thirty years. Exhibitions include Down These Mean Streets: Community and Place in Urban Photography curated by E. Carmen Ramos at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington D.C.; Intersecting Trajectories at Rush Arts Gallery in NY; and Mirror Mirror at Express Newark - Rutgers University. He has had solo exhibitions at the Bronx River Art Center, Latino Cultural Center in Dallas, TX, and Jersey City Museum. Acevedo is a recipient of the 2021 BRIO grant and 2019 Colene Brown Art Prize at BRIC. Among his other awards and residencies are those received from the Joan Mitchell Foundation, Visual Artist Network, Longwood Arts Project, Mid-Atlantic Foundation, Museum of Art & Design (Artist Studios), and Studio Museum in Harlem, AIR.

Acevedo is currently working to archive negatives, prints and journals for his WARDS of NEWARK photo series (early to late 1980’s documentation) and self-published book. In conjunction with raising a family in the Bronx, he anticipates returning to critical public engagement through teaching, as well constructing socially relevant, text-based visuals and architectonic models for large-scale interactive spaces. His work is built on thirty-five years of practice inspired by the richness and complexity of urban experiences and city lore.