II., III., & IV. Alex Ito, Hideyuki/Sueko (9066), 2016 [led lights, acrylic, digital print on vinyl, aluminum, wood and paint]
Monday, April 25, 2016
'Bouquet Complex' Alex Ito & Masami Kubo @ Kimberly Klark [NYC/USA]
I. Masami Kubo, Figure 02: A History of Two Chairs, 2016 [wood construction, paint, projected image and narration]
II., III., & IV. Alex Ito, Hideyuki/Sueko (9066), 2016 [led lights, acrylic, digital print on vinyl, aluminum, wood and paint]
II., III., & IV. Alex Ito, Hideyuki/Sueko (9066), 2016 [led lights, acrylic, digital print on vinyl, aluminum, wood and paint]
'netherrrrrr' Sondra Perry @ Good Weather [NORTH LITTLE ROCK/USA]
What is nothingness? What is thingliness? What is blackness? What’s the relationship between blackness, thingliness, nothingness and the (de/re)generative operations of…a life in common?
ϟ
Do you remember where we are? No way where we are is here. Where we were, where we are, is what we meant by mu…the void of our subjectivity.
ϟ
In the hold, blackness and imagination, in and as consent not to be a single being, are (more and less than) one.
ϟ
The night holds fantasy, not identity.
Fred Moten (2013)
You can’t see it. And yet it’s right here/there. The netherrrrrr. And so it is in the netherrrr and to recognize the netherrrrrrrrr, to socially disrupt the netherrr, Sondra Perry has dismantled the finite and covered it in the expansiveness of nothingness (the “void of our subjectivity”). A chroma key blue, a deep digital space, an elusive space, a virtual space that is an understudy for blackness. A space which is radical. A space interrogating black invisibility in American society through abstraction and potentiality. A space rattling a foundational condition: the maintaining/protection of that which we call white supremacy—a power relationship which has an oppressive spine. And the netherrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr pressed towards contradiction in this codified space, finds passage as the natural state, fugitivity and imagination in the nothingness. This strategic shiftiness dodges commodification, avoiding labels, categories, and naming. No measure. No pyramids. No silos. No spectrums. No binaries. Nothing. Only a recognition of positionality and in presenting this work, a generosity and shared vulnerability, that may transubstantiate into a shared revolution.
LINK
ϟ
Do you remember where we are? No way where we are is here. Where we were, where we are, is what we meant by mu…the void of our subjectivity.
ϟ
In the hold, blackness and imagination, in and as consent not to be a single being, are (more and less than) one.
ϟ
The night holds fantasy, not identity.
Fred Moten (2013)
You can’t see it. And yet it’s right here/there. The netherrrrrr. And so it is in the netherrrr and to recognize the netherrrrrrrrr, to socially disrupt the netherrr, Sondra Perry has dismantled the finite and covered it in the expansiveness of nothingness (the “void of our subjectivity”). A chroma key blue, a deep digital space, an elusive space, a virtual space that is an understudy for blackness. A space which is radical. A space interrogating black invisibility in American society through abstraction and potentiality. A space rattling a foundational condition: the maintaining/protection of that which we call white supremacy—a power relationship which has an oppressive spine. And the netherrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr pressed towards contradiction in this codified space, finds passage as the natural state, fugitivity and imagination in the nothingness. This strategic shiftiness dodges commodification, avoiding labels, categories, and naming. No measure. No pyramids. No silos. No spectrums. No binaries. Nothing. Only a recognition of positionality and in presenting this work, a generosity and shared vulnerability, that may transubstantiate into a shared revolution.
LINK
Tuesday, April 19, 2016
The Center for Afrofuturist Studies welcomes its first artist-in-residence [ARTICLE]
The Center for Afrofuturist Studies at Public Space One, launched in January, is bringing the first of its planned artists-in-residence to Iowa City starting in May.
From May 1–7, Tiona McClodden will be at the Center. The filmmaker, storyteller and visual artist lives and works in North Philadelphia. Her art critically examines race, gender, sexuality and their intersections. She is dedicated to the exploration of visual storytelling.
McClodden’s first public event is an artist talk on Tuesday, May 3. She will be presenting work from Be Alarmed: The Black Americana Epic. McClodden will also gather with elementary school students on Wednesday, May 4 at the Frank Conroy Reading Room of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, to create new work.
Over the course of her residency, McClodden will be studying and researching the work of Ana Mendieta, who studied at the University of Iowa in the 1970s. The works created in conjunction with this study and her work with the elementary students will culminate in an exhibit which will be at Public Space One on May 6–7. The official gallery opening will take place May 6 at 6 p.m.
LINK
below: Tiona McClodden
From May 1–7, Tiona McClodden will be at the Center. The filmmaker, storyteller and visual artist lives and works in North Philadelphia. Her art critically examines race, gender, sexuality and their intersections. She is dedicated to the exploration of visual storytelling.
McClodden’s first public event is an artist talk on Tuesday, May 3. She will be presenting work from Be Alarmed: The Black Americana Epic. McClodden will also gather with elementary school students on Wednesday, May 4 at the Frank Conroy Reading Room of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, to create new work.
Over the course of her residency, McClodden will be studying and researching the work of Ana Mendieta, who studied at the University of Iowa in the 1970s. The works created in conjunction with this study and her work with the elementary students will culminate in an exhibit which will be at Public Space One on May 6–7. The official gallery opening will take place May 6 at 6 p.m.
LINK
below: Tiona McClodden
'Malcolm X & Barry Goldwater, 1964', 2013 by Jason Patterson
[portraits: fixed chalk pastel on raw canvas. under clear acrylic and polymer varnish. 27 x 23in; frame: aquarellable pencil on pine wood. under polymer finish; 59.25 x 27.75in]
LINK
LINK
Friday, April 15, 2016
Malick Sidibé, Photographer Known for Social Reportage in Mali, Dies at 80 [ARTICLE]
Malick Sidibé, whose black-and-white photographs of young partygoers captured the exuberance of newly independent Mali in the 1960s and ’70s and made him one of Africa’s most celebrated artists after his work was shown abroad in the 1990s, died on Thursday in Bamako, Mali. He was 80.
His son Karim Sidibé said the cause was complications of diabetes, The Associated Press reported.
Mr. Sidibé started out taking pictures at weddings and christenings in the 1950s, using a Kodak Brownie camera, but after opening his own studio he branched out into a more ambitious form of social reporting. He attended Saturday-night parties at which young Malians, dressed to the nines, danced the twist, the rumba and the merengue to the Beatles, James Brown and Afro-Caribbean music. This was Mali’s youthquake, and Mr. Sidibé was its photographic witness.
“For me, photography is all about youth,” he told The Daily Telegraph of London in 2008. “It’s about a happy world full of joy, not some kid crying on a street corner or a sick person.”
His small-format photographs, surrounded by a brown tape border, were intended to be kept as souvenirs or sent as postcards. But after Western collectors discovered his work in the 1990s, they began presenting it, in enlarged sizes, in galleries and museums in Europe and the United States. He quickly became, with the older Seydou Keita, Mali’s most famous photographer and an international star.
Mr. Sidibé was the first African to receive the Hasselblad Award, in 2003, and at the 2007 Venice Biennale he received the Golden Lion Award for Lifetime Achievement, the first given to either a photographer or an African artist.
“He really changed the way Westerners look at Africa,” said Jack Shainman, whose Manhattan gallery currently has an exhibition of Mr. Sidibé’s work. (It runs through next Saturday.) “He captured the newfound freedom after colonialism — that time, and that moment,” he said.
Malick Sidibé was born in 1935 or 1936 in Soloba, a village in what was then French Sudan. He grew up in an extended family of 60 and herded sheep and cattle for his father.
He was chosen by the village chief to be the first child in his family to attend school, a white institution in Yanfolila, where he learned French. His skill at drawing with charcoal earned him a place at the Sudan School for Craftsmen (now the National Arts Institute), where he was trained as a jewelry maker.
A French expatriate photographer, Gérard Guillat-Guignard, hired Mr. Sidibé to decorate his combined studio and shop, Photo Service Boutique, and then took him on as an apprentice. While running the cash register and delivering photographs to customers, Mr. Sidibé closely observed Mr. Guillat and absorbed the fundamentals of photography.
Before long, he started working commercially. “I did the African events, the photos of Africans, and he did the European events — the major balls, official events,” Mr. Sidibé told the photography website gwinzegal.com in 2008.
After going out on his own, he created Studio Malick in 1958, where he specialized in portrait photography with his own distinctive touch. He coaxed his subjects into more informal poses that gave his work a lively, vibrant quality. Tonally bold and beautifully composed, they often showed subjects glorying in a new possession — a sheep or a motorcycle — or showing off in modern clothes.
“Generally, women come to get photographed as soon as they have a new hairdo or purchase a trendy piece of jewelry: a bracelet, a necklace, a handbag,” Mr. Sidibé told The Los Angeles Times in 2002. “For men, it’s when they buy a new bicycle or motorcycle.”
He found a rich subject in the parties and dances put on by social clubs with names like the Sputniks, the Black Socks and Las Vegas. On some nights, he would attend four parties, one after the other, photographing young Malians able, for the first time, to dance close together.
“At that time, young people were very motivated,” he told the French newspaper Libération in 1995. “Every Saturday night you had to dress elegantly. People would plan their outfits all week long. To make an impression, you had to be impeccable, with a trouser crease so sharp you could cut off the head of a chicken with it.”
He later produced a portrait series called “Vue de Dos,” which showed women with their backs turned to the camera.
In the early 1990s, when he had turned to camera repair work to earn a living, Mr. Sidibé was discovered by the photographer Françoise Huguier and by André Magnin, a curator who had been sent to West Africa by Jean Pigozzi, a French collector.
Mr. Magnin organized an exhibition of Mr. Sidibé’s work at the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art in Paris, and a coffee-table book appeared soon after. In 1999, Jeffrey Deitch showed Mr. Sidibé’s party photos in Manhattan in the show “The Clubs of Bamako.” A documentary about him, “Dolce Vita Africana,” was shown on British television in 2008.
He is survived by three wives and 17 children.
As he grew older, Mr. Sidibé stopped going to the parties, unable to blend in, but he remained sentimental about the era and the free and easy way that young Malians of all classes mingled on the dance floor.
“I loved the music and the atmosphere, but above all I loved the dancers,” he told The Telegraph. “The moments when young people dance and play as though the stars belong to them — that’s what I loved the most.”
LINK
His son Karim Sidibé said the cause was complications of diabetes, The Associated Press reported.
Mr. Sidibé started out taking pictures at weddings and christenings in the 1950s, using a Kodak Brownie camera, but after opening his own studio he branched out into a more ambitious form of social reporting. He attended Saturday-night parties at which young Malians, dressed to the nines, danced the twist, the rumba and the merengue to the Beatles, James Brown and Afro-Caribbean music. This was Mali’s youthquake, and Mr. Sidibé was its photographic witness.
“For me, photography is all about youth,” he told The Daily Telegraph of London in 2008. “It’s about a happy world full of joy, not some kid crying on a street corner or a sick person.”
His small-format photographs, surrounded by a brown tape border, were intended to be kept as souvenirs or sent as postcards. But after Western collectors discovered his work in the 1990s, they began presenting it, in enlarged sizes, in galleries and museums in Europe and the United States. He quickly became, with the older Seydou Keita, Mali’s most famous photographer and an international star.
Mr. Sidibé was the first African to receive the Hasselblad Award, in 2003, and at the 2007 Venice Biennale he received the Golden Lion Award for Lifetime Achievement, the first given to either a photographer or an African artist.
“He really changed the way Westerners look at Africa,” said Jack Shainman, whose Manhattan gallery currently has an exhibition of Mr. Sidibé’s work. (It runs through next Saturday.) “He captured the newfound freedom after colonialism — that time, and that moment,” he said.
Malick Sidibé was born in 1935 or 1936 in Soloba, a village in what was then French Sudan. He grew up in an extended family of 60 and herded sheep and cattle for his father.
He was chosen by the village chief to be the first child in his family to attend school, a white institution in Yanfolila, where he learned French. His skill at drawing with charcoal earned him a place at the Sudan School for Craftsmen (now the National Arts Institute), where he was trained as a jewelry maker.
A French expatriate photographer, Gérard Guillat-Guignard, hired Mr. Sidibé to decorate his combined studio and shop, Photo Service Boutique, and then took him on as an apprentice. While running the cash register and delivering photographs to customers, Mr. Sidibé closely observed Mr. Guillat and absorbed the fundamentals of photography.
Before long, he started working commercially. “I did the African events, the photos of Africans, and he did the European events — the major balls, official events,” Mr. Sidibé told the photography website gwinzegal.com in 2008.
After going out on his own, he created Studio Malick in 1958, where he specialized in portrait photography with his own distinctive touch. He coaxed his subjects into more informal poses that gave his work a lively, vibrant quality. Tonally bold and beautifully composed, they often showed subjects glorying in a new possession — a sheep or a motorcycle — or showing off in modern clothes.
“Generally, women come to get photographed as soon as they have a new hairdo or purchase a trendy piece of jewelry: a bracelet, a necklace, a handbag,” Mr. Sidibé told The Los Angeles Times in 2002. “For men, it’s when they buy a new bicycle or motorcycle.”
He found a rich subject in the parties and dances put on by social clubs with names like the Sputniks, the Black Socks and Las Vegas. On some nights, he would attend four parties, one after the other, photographing young Malians able, for the first time, to dance close together.
“At that time, young people were very motivated,” he told the French newspaper Libération in 1995. “Every Saturday night you had to dress elegantly. People would plan their outfits all week long. To make an impression, you had to be impeccable, with a trouser crease so sharp you could cut off the head of a chicken with it.”
He later produced a portrait series called “Vue de Dos,” which showed women with their backs turned to the camera.
In the early 1990s, when he had turned to camera repair work to earn a living, Mr. Sidibé was discovered by the photographer Françoise Huguier and by André Magnin, a curator who had been sent to West Africa by Jean Pigozzi, a French collector.
Mr. Magnin organized an exhibition of Mr. Sidibé’s work at the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art in Paris, and a coffee-table book appeared soon after. In 1999, Jeffrey Deitch showed Mr. Sidibé’s party photos in Manhattan in the show “The Clubs of Bamako.” A documentary about him, “Dolce Vita Africana,” was shown on British television in 2008.
He is survived by three wives and 17 children.
As he grew older, Mr. Sidibé stopped going to the parties, unable to blend in, but he remained sentimental about the era and the free and easy way that young Malians of all classes mingled on the dance floor.
“I loved the music and the atmosphere, but above all I loved the dancers,” he told The Telegraph. “The moments when young people dance and play as though the stars belong to them — that’s what I loved the most.”
LINK
'Laughter Is Medicine' Jasmine Nyende @ Machine Project [LOS ANGELES/USA]
Join us Friday, April 15th and Saturday, April 16th at 8pm for Laughter Is Medicine, a Mystery Theater performance by artist Jasmine Nyende. For two nights Nyende channels the legacies of black female stand-up comics of the past, in an attempt to uncover the elusive mainstream black female comic ideal. This event is $10 general and $5 for Machine members.
I read in an article that audiences don’t respond well to female comedians in Hawaiian shirts. There’s nothing relaxing about a woman talking. I’m testing you.
Image designed by Jonathan Smith
Wednesday, April 13, 2016
Tuesday, April 12, 2016
Stan Douglas
I. Exodus, 1975, 2012 [digital c-print mounted on aluminum; 71 x 101 1/2 in. (180.3 x 257.8 cm)]
II. Olde Curio Shop, 2010 [digital c-print mounted on dibond aluminum; 59 1/2 x 84 in. (151.1 x 213.4 cm)]
LINK
II. Olde Curio Shop, 2010 [digital c-print mounted on dibond aluminum; 59 1/2 x 84 in. (151.1 x 213.4 cm)]
LINK
Monday, April 11, 2016
Sunday, April 10, 2016
Thursday, April 7, 2016
Wednesday, April 6, 2016
AN ANTHOLOGY OF FICTION BY TRANS WOMEN OF COLOR [Now Available For Purchase]
A meditative thriller in which Marjorie, an undaunted witness in an environment bristling with violence, moves through the restless cars of a train that carries her toward her past…
A post apocalyptic tale: the dead now walk among the living, but Lisa knows there are other kinds of monsters in her midst…
Penny and Gretchen are part of a small crew of space hunters caught in a dizzying race to find a lost treasure, but that won’t stop them from showing their true feelings for one another…
“It was a mistake to do this show,” Jules thinks, as she watches herself reduced to a stereotype of a tragic black trans woman when her interview airs on tv. And the audience? They cry, savoring every second of it…
This anthology is something new: a collection of stories written, edited, and self-published by trans women of color working collectively to equally share the profits from our work. Featuring stories by Jasmine Kabale Moore, Joss Barton, Gillian Ybabez, Jamie Berrout, Catherine Kim, manuel arturo abreu, Jeffrey Gill, Libby White, Lulu Trujillo, Alma Díaz, Saki.
The stories in this anthology confront major themes and issues in the lives of trans women of color with profound honesty and attention toward helping one another heal. A story like “The Girl and the Apple,” by Jasmine Kabale Moore, not only unflinchingly describes the sense of ever-present danger that many of us feel in public spaces (including the hyper-vigilant condition of trauma that results from repeated exposure to intense scrutiny and violence) it also provides invaluable emotional support to other trans women of color by accurately reflecting, and therefore validating, our experiences and our perceptions of reality.
A number of other stories explore their own kinds of traumas and begin to show us a way to survive them, a day at a time. In contrast, there are also stories in our anthology that take up a completely different subject matter – genre fantasies, memories and the past, self-acceptance, relationships with family and friends, romance and intimacy, and language itself – but they do so in the specific context of our lives as trans women of color.
'RESURGENCY' @ Center for Contemporary Native Art at Portland Art Museum [PORTLAND/USA]
A POETRY READING DEVOTED TO RECLAIMING COLONIZED LANDS, IDENTITIES, CULTURAL (MIS)REPRESENTATIONS, GENDER CONSTRUCTIONS, & LOST CONNECTIONS TO ANCESTRY. JOIN Demian DinéYazhi, Melissa Bennett & Manuel Arturo Abreu AS THEY TRANSMIT AUTONOMY THROUGH THE ORAL ART OF POETRY IN THEIR ONGOING QUEST FOR SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE.
Part of programming for Dene bāhī Naabaahii Exhibition in the Center for Contemporary Native Art at Portland Art Museum - March 18th - August 28th, 2016i.
Demian DinéYazhi’ (b. 1983) is a Portland-based transdisciplinary artist born to the clans Naasht'ézhí Tábąąhá (Zuni Clan Water’s Edge) & Tódích'íí'nii (Bitter Water) of the Diné (Navajo). His work is best understood through the lens of curatorial inquiry, zine production, street interventions, education, workshops, & transdisciplinary methods of art production. DinéYazhi’ received his BFA in Intermedia Arts from Pacific Northwest College of Art in 2014. He is the founder & director of the artist / activist / warrior initiative, R.I.S.E.: Radical Indigenous Survivance & Empowerment, as well as the creative director of LOCUSTS: A Post-Queer Nation Zine. He is the recipient of grants from Evergreen State College (2014), PICA - Portland Institute of Contemporary Art (2014), & Art Matters Foundation (2015).
Website: @heterogeneoushomosexual & Instagram:heterogeneoushomosexual
Melissa Bennett (Umatilla/Nimiipuu/Sac & Fox) is a writer & emerging storyteller interested in story as medicine, especially its ability to heal historical trauma among indigenous communities. Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Melissa writes poetry and creative non-fiction with a focus on social justice, culture, tradition, and spirituality. Melissa is currently a member of the Northwest Indian Storytellers Association and WordCraft Circle of Native Writers & Storytellers. She is a 2015 recipient of the Evergreen State College Longhouse Native Creative Development Grant and serves on the Board of Directors for PlayWrite, Inc.
manuel arturo abreu (b. 1991, Santo Domingo) is a poet and artist from the Bronx. Working in found text, lyric, ephemeral sculpture, and photography, they explore precarity, magical thinking, and the pretensions of the white Left. Their first book, List of Consonants, is available from Bottlecap Press. It merges from-scratch text with found text in mourning for a friend who died by suicide in 2013. manuel’s next chapbook, transtrender, is forthcoming Summer 2016 from Quimérica Presse. It deals with gender as a racial colonial construct, the trap of visibility, and the constraints of the lyric form. They are also working on a second full-length book, areítx, which refutes colonial narratives about the Taino, the original Dominicans. They are the managing editor of Civil Coping Mechanisms and co-founder of home school, a free pop-up art school in Portland.
Find manuel at @twigtech & @Deezius
LINK
Part of programming for Dene bāhī Naabaahii Exhibition in the Center for Contemporary Native Art at Portland Art Museum - March 18th - August 28th, 2016i.
Demian DinéYazhi’ (b. 1983) is a Portland-based transdisciplinary artist born to the clans Naasht'ézhí Tábąąhá (Zuni Clan Water’s Edge) & Tódích'íí'nii (Bitter Water) of the Diné (Navajo). His work is best understood through the lens of curatorial inquiry, zine production, street interventions, education, workshops, & transdisciplinary methods of art production. DinéYazhi’ received his BFA in Intermedia Arts from Pacific Northwest College of Art in 2014. He is the founder & director of the artist / activist / warrior initiative, R.I.S.E.: Radical Indigenous Survivance & Empowerment, as well as the creative director of LOCUSTS: A Post-Queer Nation Zine. He is the recipient of grants from Evergreen State College (2014), PICA - Portland Institute of Contemporary Art (2014), & Art Matters Foundation (2015).
Website: @heterogeneoushomosexual & Instagram:heterogeneoushomosexual
Melissa Bennett (Umatilla/Nimiipuu/Sac & Fox) is a writer & emerging storyteller interested in story as medicine, especially its ability to heal historical trauma among indigenous communities. Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Melissa writes poetry and creative non-fiction with a focus on social justice, culture, tradition, and spirituality. Melissa is currently a member of the Northwest Indian Storytellers Association and WordCraft Circle of Native Writers & Storytellers. She is a 2015 recipient of the Evergreen State College Longhouse Native Creative Development Grant and serves on the Board of Directors for PlayWrite, Inc.
manuel arturo abreu (b. 1991, Santo Domingo) is a poet and artist from the Bronx. Working in found text, lyric, ephemeral sculpture, and photography, they explore precarity, magical thinking, and the pretensions of the white Left. Their first book, List of Consonants, is available from Bottlecap Press. It merges from-scratch text with found text in mourning for a friend who died by suicide in 2013. manuel’s next chapbook, transtrender, is forthcoming Summer 2016 from Quimérica Presse. It deals with gender as a racial colonial construct, the trap of visibility, and the constraints of the lyric form. They are also working on a second full-length book, areítx, which refutes colonial narratives about the Taino, the original Dominicans. They are the managing editor of Civil Coping Mechanisms and co-founder of home school, a free pop-up art school in Portland.
Find manuel at @twigtech & @Deezius
LINK
Tuesday, April 5, 2016
Monday, April 4, 2016
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)