I am known in Philadelphia primarily as a Breaking hip hop artist. As I consider hip hop a folk art, my contribution to the establishment of a traditional folk art to establish recognition for the dance form of Breaking is a significant achievement to the hip hop field. My work has continued to grow beyond the boundaries of hip hop’s original ideas of staying inside the ‘keeping it real’ box. I perform hip hop to more than its usual audiences and its music. My creative process for art yields a larger, more expansive return from more than 30 years of experience, practice, and investment in the form. I bring together all the elements that were part of my adolescent period that made me the artist I am today, creatively and imaginatively.
Discipline:
Interdisciplinary Art – movement
Raphael Xavier
Discipline:
Interdisciplinary Art – movement
Region: Philadelphia, PA
MacDowell Fellowships: 2014
Guggenheim Fellow
Studios
Nef
Raphael Xavier worked in the Nef studio.
Nef Studio, the first entirely new studio built after 1937, was donated by esteemed photographer, explorer, author, and MacDowell Fellow Evelyn Steffanson Nef in 1992. Endowed funds for the studio’s maintenance in perpetuity and an annual Fellowship for photographers were given in addition to funds for construction. Mrs. Nef said she had known about MacDowell all her…