BLACK ART NEAR + FAR

Amy Sherald: American Sublime

"American Sublime, Sherald’s first solo exhibition at a New York museum, considers the powerful impact of her paintings on contemporary art and culture while positioning her squarely within the art historical tradition of American realism and figuration. In her intentional privileging of Black Americans as her subjects, she extends that tradition to include a population who has historically been omitted from portraiture and representation. Sherald has described her paintings of everyday people as a more expansive vision of interiority and selfhood." -Whitney Museum of Art (2024)

Lineage

Mark Thomas Gibson's Lineage exhibition, running from October 15, 2024, to January 17, 2025, at the Library Company of Philadelphia, reexamines Samuel Jennings' 1792 painting Liberty Displaying the Arts and Sciences. Through four large-scale works, Gibson explores the future of humanity, informed by community engagement, including Philadelphia high school students and local leaders. His paintings offer retellings of historical events and challenge viewers to reconsider their understanding of history and its implications.

Basquiat × Banksy

"Basquiat × Banksy marks the first time that artwork by either artist has been presented at the nation’s museum of modern and contemporary art. The exhibition also includes 20 small works on paper and wood from the collection of Larry Warsh that were made by Basquiat between 1979 and 1985 and demonstrate the artist’s deep familiarity with art history, his use of language, and his signature motifs, such as skulls and crowns. The film Downtown 81 (shot in 1980–1981 and released in 2000), a send-up of the denizens of Manhattan’s ’80s avant-garde that stars Basquiat as a struggling artist named “Jean,” will also be on view." -Press release

The Mythic Age

"Transformation is the central tenet of Naudline Pierre’s practice: evolution of the self, metamorphosis of the female form, escape from our earthly existence into the luminous unknown, and material oscillations from fresco-like dry brushing to aqueous gestures. Pierre paints scenes that are ever-shifting, in states of mystery and ecstatic potentiality. Her characters’ limbs and wings extend beyond the picture plane, as if to suggest that this atmospheric world, devoid of a horizon line, continues infinitely. Pierre transforms and reinvigorates disparate art historical references that span centuries, pointedly looking back to artists who did not and could not imagine her as their viewer, yet share a desire to reinvent and reimagine the universe. In her newest works, Pierre references Baroque and French academic painting of the 1800s, which opened the door to modernity and the heretical embrace of iconography in the service of personal, political, and radical self-expression. She draws freely from this distinctly male, European legacy of image-making, forming an intergenerational line between artists of radically different backgrounds to refashion historical motifs for a new audience."

signifying the impossible song

"signifying the impossible song explores the material culture of objects and the protected knowledges they hold. Encompassing mixed-media artworks, found objects, assemblage, photography, sculpture and painting, the exhibition points to the collective unravelling and structural failings of political systems. There are multiple forces in effect – integration and disintegration, defiance and displacement – the cyclical rhythm suggesting the human project as an ongoing process of fabrication and refabrication." - Excerpt of Press Release

Promised Land

"Larkin Durey is delighted to present an exhibition of new work by Lavar Munroe. This is the artist’s tenth solo show with the gallery. Lavar Munroe works in the spirit of an anthropologist, studying the human condition via intensive, immersive travels across the African continent and a similar sense of discovery in his studio. His work attests to the power of storytelling, folklore, fable and community, illuminating the threads that weave us together across culture, time and geography, and spark our collective imagination."-Excerpt from Press Release

An Awkward Relation

"An Awkward Relation is a new exhibition from interdisciplinary artist Sonia Boyce (b.1962, London, UK). It is conceived to be in dialogue with the exhibition of Brazilian artist Lygia Clark, The I and the You, showing at the Gallery concurrently. The exhibition brings together a number of pivotal and rarely seen works to explore themes of interaction, participation and improvisation – all of which have played a definitive role in Boyce’s practice since the 1990s and reflect a shared interest with many of the radical approaches that Clark pioneered in her own work. Boyce was introduced to Clark’s work in the 1990s and felt a strong synergy with the Brazilian artist’s experiential and participatory practice. An Awkward Relation explores the feelings of both involvement and uneasiness intrinsic to an approach that invites visitors to engage, touch and experience artworks and their surroundings in new and unscripted ways. The title of the exhibition is indicative of this complex, often difficult, relationship between artists, works and audiences. It also recognises that while there are similarities between Boyce and Clark’s work, there are also clear differences, which necessarily, and inevitably, stem from the very different artistic, geographical and socio-political contexts in which the artists were working, as well as the specific intentions behind what they were doing." -Excerpt from Press Release

The Brooklyn Artists Exhibition

"Spotlighting artists who have lived or maintained a studio in Brooklyn during the last five years (2019–24), The Brooklyn Artists Exhibition honors the borough’s dynamic present, storied past, and bright future. Selected by a committee led by esteemed artists Jeffrey Gibson, Vik Muniz, Mickalene Thomas, and Fred Tomaselli, participants represent a full range of disciplines, from drawing and painting to sculpture, video, installation, and beyond. Their creations tackle themes that resonate on both local and global levels—migration and memory, identity and history, uncertainty and turbulence, healing and joy. Together these works capture the vibrancy of both Brooklyn and its artists, who are bound by deep-rooted connections and a shared love of this singular place." -Press

1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair - London

1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair is the first and only international art fair dedicated to showcasing visual artists of the African Diasporas. 1-54 London is the finale of the tri-annual art fair, talking place at Somerset House; the fair will be held in the West, East, South and Embankment galleries. 1-54 London will coincide with Frieze London.

In Jubilant Pastures

"Miles McEnery Gallery is pleased to announce In Jubilant Pastures, an exhibition of new paintings by Detroit-based artist Conrad Egyir, on view 5 September through 26 October. Accompanying the exhibition is a fully illustrated publication featuring an essay by Charles Moore. In Jubilant Pastures, Conrad Egyir’s first solo exhibition with Miles McEnery Gallery, presents a body of eleven paintings that interrogate themes of identity and belongingness. Born in Ghana, Egyir’s exploration of self and others shines through, questioning what it means to assimilate to a new land while maintaining one’s roots. The deeply iconographic work combines religious symbols, Ghanaian visual lexicon, migration ephemera, and nods to Black contemporary and historical artists." -Press

Columnar Disorder

Chicago-born architect Germane Barnes explores the connections between identity and the built environment—using research, design, and activism to mine the social and political agency of architecture and uncover the spatial histories and futures of Black self-determination.

Four Womxn: New Musings on Blackness

Grounded in a Black lesbian gaze, Boston Poet Laureate Porsha Olayiwola’s Twerk Villanelle (2019) engages visitors textually in the space. Video installations by Shanequa Gay, Le’Andra LeSeur, and C. Rose Smith continue, each evaluating the different experiences of Black womxn. Gay’s The Crooked Room (2018) combines distorted video and photography to convey the unsettling and unifying state of living in the United States as a Black women. In White Out (2018), LeSeur examines the effect of navigating a world dominated by predominantly white spaces on Black queer womxn like herself. Influenced by contemporary fashion, queer theory and 19th-century photography, Smith’s Untitled no. 000 (2020) considers how a white cotton dress can signify hierarchy, ethics, and control.

J. Cunha: Tropical body

This exhibition is a retrospective of Cunha's life and career and is divided into three parts, organized chronologically: Part 1: “Made in Brasil”, where we see the beginning of the artist's career, divided between painting and dance, concerned with reflecting on the Northeast and criticizing the advance of capitalism and the loss of local identities. In part 2 “Pass by here”. The following 25 years of his career are presented, from the 1980s to 2005, a period marked by the deepening of his graphic activity. In the third and final part, “Neobarroco Afro-pop”, the artist’s most mature phase is presented, from the 2000s to the present day. His painting gains scale, his attention turns to caboclo graphics, pop icons and cangaço symbols.

Ongoin’

"Lehmann Maupin is pleased to present ongoin’, a solo exhibition of new works by Nari Ward, on view from August 28 through October 19, 2024 in Seoul. Ward’s second exhibition in Seoul features copper panel works, sculpture, and wall-based installations that address aspects of healing and care that shape local communities— specifically in Harlem, the artist’s longtime neighborhood in New York. Additionally, ongoin’ explores the artist’s dedication to artistic interpretations of spiritual ceremonies and rituals, probing the fractured images and unseen forces often associated with such practices."

AFTER LIFE

"AFTER LIFE" features artists who have previously participated in WOORI, an annual festival in the Upper West region of Ghana hosted by the Nubuke Foundation. The festival showcases indigenous cultures, knowledge and practices on textile weaving. From catastrophic cyclones to record breaking heat waves, the force of the climate crisis is hitting Africa hard. This is despite Africans being amongst those who contribute the least to the conditions causing the global climate crisis. AFTER LIFE threads together each artists’ response to the unfolding climate crisis through the materials they use and the stories they are telling."

WHERE WE COALESCE

"Incorporating the Ethiopian Modernist tradition of including Amharic alphabetic script in paintings, Tadesse interprets the human figures as a type of lettering, the figures echoing the vertical loops and angles of Amharic text. In this way, the subjects of his work can be perceived as their own type of meaning makers, not merely passive beings, but actively participating in the creation of their environment. In the artist’s words, ‘through repetition they have become my symbols, my language.’" -Exhibition Excerpt

Great Rivers Biennial

"For the 2024 Biennial, artists Saj Issa, Basil Kincaid, and Ronald Young have proposed exhibitions that involve ceramics, paintings, video, textiles, and sculptural assemblage. The three award winners were unanimously chosen in summer 2023 by a distinguished panel of independent jurors: Rita Gonzalez, Terri and Michael Smooke Curator and Department Head of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Jamillah James, Manilow Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; and Caroline Kent, a Chicago-based artist and Assistant Professor of Painting at the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern University. The jurors made the selection after visiting the studios of ten semifinalist artists who were chosen from a pool of 96 applicants."

The Length of The Horizon

"Kapwani Kiwanga masters aesthetic seduction. Her works allow for going beyond sensory and visual pleasure, as upon closer inspection, they reveal historical sociopolitical dimensions that double the impact and give Kiwanga’s works a lasting effect. The exhibition is created in collaboration with the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg in Germany. It is accompanied by an extensive, richly illustrated catalog in Danish and English with texts by Cecilia Alemani, Uta Ruhkamp, Julie Pellegrin, Andreas Beitin, and CC’s director Marie Laurberg. It is distributed internationally by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König and sold in CC’s shop."

A Requiem For Humanity

Rotimi Fani-Kayode

"In a new exhibition this autumn, Autograph will present never-before-seen works from the artist Rotimi Fani-Kayode's wider practice. These photographs delve into ideas of theatre, performance, studio and community – depicting radical forms of black bodily expression. During a tragically brief career, Fani-Kayode used photography to explore themes of race, sexuality, spirituality and the self. He masterfully staged and crafted portraits visualising black queer self-expression. Prominent in the Black British art scene in the 1980s, he remains an important figure in art history." - Autograph

Deadweight

"A thought-provoking exploration of rebellion and transformation, Deadweight comprises four large-scale sculptural works which continue the artist’s interest in creating new worlds for ‘Blackness’ and fascination with the metaphoric potency and regenerative power of the sea. The title Deadweight derives from a nautical term which collapses everything on a ship into a single unit which determines the ship’s ability to float and function as intended. White deliberately inverts this, offering disruption as opposed to stability – a reckoning with the tipping point of the ship to offer the possibility of emancipation through abolition. The works combine force and fragility: undulating angular structures formed from metals manipulated into forms evocative of anchors, a ship’s hull, mammal carcasses or skeletons – lost or abandoned material forms that, through White’s treatment, become symbols of defiance." -Excerpt from Press Release.

SUMMER SUMMER

"SUMMER SUMMER is a group exhibition focused on abstract figuration within three distinctive Caribbean practices. The exhibiting artists are Leonardo Benzant (Dominican-American), Ronald Cyrille (Guadeloupe), and Steven Schmid (The Bahamas). SUMMER SUMMER focuses on the artists’ unfettered yet encompassed figurative approach in their respective mediums." -Press Release Excerpt

INTLOMBE

"Drawing from traditional ceremonies, physical typographies, and legacies of the Xhosa people from the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa, Mbunyuza creates large-scale figural sculptures and objects that document and honor the rituals and land associated with his native people. The title of the exhibition recalls an Intlombe gathering in which divine healers come together in a home for a variety of causes, from social to spiritual. These gatherings often incorporate dancing, singing, and playing drums as a way of invoking the Xhosa ancestors. As a grouping, the works on view connect the artist back to his home through the use of referential forms, color, material, and installation." Excerpt from Press Release.

Projects: Tadáskía

"The exhibition, presented in collaboration with the Studio Museum in Harlem, will be the artist’s first solo presentation in the United States, and features MoMA’s recently acquired work alongside a monumental wall drawing and sculptures made in response to the site at MoMA. Projects: Tadáskía is organized by Thelma Golden, Director and Chief Curator, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and Ana Torok, the Sue and Eugene Mercy Jr. Assistant Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints, MoMA, with the assistance of Kiki Teshome, Curatorial Assistant, the Studio Museum in Harlem." - Excerpt from Press Release.

C. Rose Smith: Taking Back Power

"Focused on the intricate dynamics of visibility and authority, "Talking Back to Power" proposes a reclamation of black visibility. C. Rose Smith’s evocative black and white self-portraits revolve around the white cotton shirt, staged at locations affiliated with the wealth generated from cotton plantations in the Southern United States of America. During the 19th century, cotton was one of the most lucrative global commodities. Built on the forced labor of millions of enslaved Africans, plantation complexes that grew, cultivated and sold this crop formed the basis of monumental economic advancement and progress. Throughout her photographs, Smith fashions a crisp white button-up shirt, a potent emblem of both exploitation and respectability. She poses in opulently decorated antebellum homes in Tennessee, South Carolina and Louisiana, by-products of the wealth amassed by the owners of cotton plantations. Entrenched throughout these buildings is the lingering spectre of the magnitude of violence and anguish that is inextricably linked to chattel slavery. Despite many undergoing meticulous restorations and now serving as tourist destinations, these buildings bear witness to the enduring legacy of human suffering." - Press Release

WE ARE BRIEFLY GORGEOUS

" Sourced from a combination of taken and found imagery, the paintings rely on the sense of the familiar and the hope that a wide range of people will see themselves in the works, feeling welcome to spend time with them. Labinjo often depicts intimate moments, both real and imagined, and often based on figures appearing in family photographs, found images and historical or archival material. In the past, she has explored themes such as identity, political voice, power, Blackness, race, history, community and family and their role in contemporary experience. Her distinctive painting style presents fresh and arresting compositions of colour, pattern and motifs. Fundamentally at the heart of Labinjo’s practice is a bold interest in storytelling and, ultimately, people’s lives." -Snippet from the exhibition.

Away with the Tides

"Calida Rawles envisions water as a space for Black healing and reimagines the African American community beyond the stories we already know as a part of the United States’ collective history. Merging hyperrealism, poetic abstraction, and the cultural and historical symbolisms of water, Rawles creates unique portraits of Black bodies submerged in and interacting with bright and mysterious bodies of water(...) Rawles delves into the particular experience of Black people in Overtown, a Miami neighborhood that went from a thriving cultural and commercial hub for Black people to a community dismantled by gentrification, systemic racism, and mass displacement."

Wish This Was Real

"The exhibition covers nearly ten years of Mitchell’s dynamic artistic practice in photography and video, demonstrating the influence of the “New Black Vanguard,” which American writer Antwaun Sargent describes as the proliferation of images by Black photographers who work between the genres of art and fashion. Considered in three thematic sections that follow different motifs, and featuring his newest works printed on fabric and mirrors, the exhibition encapsulates Mitchell’s diverse explorations of portraiture, nature, and social memory. “I hope there is an honest gaze to my photos,” Mitchell says."

Fighters For Freedom: William H. Johnson Picturing Justice

"William H. Johnson (1901–1970) painted his last body of work, the Fighters for Freedom series, in the mid-1940s as a tribute to African American activists, scientists, teachers and performers as well as international leaders working to bring peace to the world. This landmark exhibition brings together—for the first time since 1946—34 paintings featured in the series. The exhibition illuminates the extraordinary life and contributions of Johnson, an artist associated with the Harlem Renaissance but whose practice spanned several continents, as well as the contributions of historical figures he depicted. Some of his Fighters—Marian Anderson, George Washington Carver, Mohandas Gandhi, and Harriet Tubman—are familiar figures; others—Nannie Helen Burroughs and William Grant Still, among them—are less well-known individuals whose achievements have been eclipsed over time. Johnson celebrates their accomplishments even as he acknowledges the realities of racism, oppression, and sometimes violence they faced and overcame. Johnson clues viewers to significant episodes in the Fighters lives by punctuating each portrait with tiny buildings, flags, and vignettes that give insight into their stories. Using a colorful palette to create evocative scenes and craft important narratives, he suggests that the pursuit of freedom is an ongoing, interconnected struggle, with moments of both triumph and tragedy."

Entryways: Nontsikelelo Mutiti

"Entryways: Nontsikelelo Mutiti" is the inaugural project for a new series that commissions artists to activate the façade of ICA’s building in partnership with Maharam, North America’s leading creator of textiles for commercial and residential interiors. For the 2024 edition, ICA invited Nontsikelelo Mutiti, a Zimbabwean-born visual artist and educator, to reimagine the windows. In the resulting work, Mutiti combined African hair braiding patterns and hair clips with symbols often found in ironwork. Mutiti is deeply interested in the cultures and communities that are formed in hair salons globally, and often incorporates braids in her work as markers of identity, migration, and culture. Similarly, the use of symbols in ironwork, particularly Adinkra symbols from West Africa, are present visually almost everywhere these decorative architectural features are found. These forms were first created by enslaved blacksmiths from West Africa and have become a shared diasporic visual language. The designs are now found across the African diaspora including in Philadelphia and the broader United States. In the same way that hair braiders continue the practice of these braiding systems, ironworkers, and now restoration workers, ensure the survival and persistence of these symbols as important cultural markers." -

Silene Capensis

"Since early childhood Corinne Smith, who also goes by Critty Smitty, has been sensitive to the unknown. Suffering from night terrors, sleep paralysis and, sometimes, a strange difficulty in distinguishing between what is real and what isn’t, Smith is of the notion that maybe it all lies somewhere in between. With the use of Silene Capensis root, also known as the African dream root, the Oakland-based artist has been practicing guided meditation and dream re-entry to access powerful dreams that provide knowledge and symbolism to establish further connection to the divine ancestral lineage and to promote healing. ‍"

Things I Knew When I Was Young

"The exhibition presents a vibrant series of paintings that depart from Elhassan's signature style of portraiture and distinct human figures. Instead, this time she focuses on iconic childhood objects. Imagine walking through your childhood home, each room filled with almost forgotten items. Elhassan's paintings capture this essence - a toy car that once raced across imaginary highways, a rabbit from her neighbours that she always wanted to visit, a cat that was both friend and foe. The centerpiece, "Pillow Amir" is inspired by a childhood memory where four-year-old Amna declared her pillow to be her son named Amir and made her whole family treat him as such. Elhassan's sculptures offer a thought-provoking commentary on the nature of children's games. A pile of melted plastic water guns on a lego pedastal serves as a metaphor for the parallels between war and plastic - both harmful yet chosen and financed by society. Another sculpture features destroyed plastic children's chairs, alluding to the popular game of musical chairs and questioning the competitive, often violent narratives embedded in children's play. The exhibition space includes an installation of pillows beneath a cloudy canopy, inviting visitors to immerse themselves in Elhassan's sonic memories. A sound piece fills the room with her mother's lullabies, squeaky toys, and the soft thud of pillow fights, creating a multisensory experience that bridges the artist’s past and present."

Finding Soft Ground

Finding Soft Ground, Fazlalizadeh’s first exhibition at Art + Practice (A+P), considers the conditions, precarity, and imaginative determination of safety for Black women. Utilizing the three galleries of A+P, Fazlalizadeh transforms each space into distinct installations examining the street, the home, and the natural world in relation to terror and refuge. The works in Finding Soft Ground—which include wheat-pasted prints, oil paintings, drawings, a single-channel film, and site-specific materials—are rooted in Fazlalizadeh’s Black feminist theory. Finding Soft Ground is presented in tandem with Speaking To Falling Seeds, the artist’s installation of monumental portraits of Black Los Angeles women wheat pasted onto the atrium walls of the California African American Museum (CAAM). Both exhibitions draw upon photographs and conversations that took place in the spring of 2023 while Fazlalizadeh was living in Los Angeles. The portraits ask how safety is presumed, built, and felt for the city’s Black residents. This exhibition is curated by Essence Harden, Visual Arts Curator, CAAM, and is co-presented by CAAM and A+P as part of CAAM at A+P, a five-year collaboration.

The Narratives of Black Hair

"The exhibition explores different narratives, historical and present, about Black hair through the works of Nakeya Brown, Shani Crowe, Marius Dansou, Meschac Gaba, Romuald Hazoumè, Taiye Idahor, Favour Jonathan, Murielle Kabile, Alassane Koné, Althea Murphy-Price, J. D 'Okhai Ojeikere, Anya Paintsil, Ngozi Ajah Schommers and Ana Silva, to highlight the cultural heritage and spirituality associated with it."

Styling Identities: Hair’s Tangled Histories

"Hair is an integral part of us. It is personal and intimate while also being one of the most visible ways we express our identity to the world. We use it to reinvent or disguise ourselves. We style our hair to make a statement: to follow trends and conform, or to forge our own path in defiance of social norms. But hair is more than symbolic—it is a tangible manifestation of our DNA, tying us to our ancestors. We keep hair as a token of love and remembrance, honoring a child’s first haircut or a loved one who has passed. Its significance on both a personal and societal level has made hair a powerful focus of art throughout human history. We realize it’s impossible for one exhibition to fully tell the story of hair, but the Wadsworth Atheneum’s exhibition Styling Identities: Hair’s Tangled Histories aims to tell a story about what hair means to us—to our individual staff, to our museum, and to our Hartford communities. Organized by a team of curators passionate about hair, drawn from across levels and departments at the museum, this exhibition is about us as much as it is about hair. Hair is community. Hair is power. Hair is us."

Ubiquity

Drew’s second exhibition at Galerie Lelong, Paris, will highlight a new site-responsive explosion installation and a series of “core” works that include glass and painted plaster. Each new material offers Drew a new canvas of possibility of reinvention and extension and at the same time, the re-purposing of materials gives them new energy and meaning. Drew adapted the site responsive explosion to reflect Lelong’s historic 18th century environment. “The adaptability of the work is the life of the work,” says Drew, and the relationship and reinvention of the sculpture to site is a challenge he accepts.

Resurgent

The National Art Gallery of The Bahamas is proud to present Resurgent, Kermit Miller’s solo debut of artwork that captures the movement and expression of Junkanoo and Bahamian daily life.  With an astute depiction of each subject’s emotion, Miller’s practice is a snapshot of the colorful ways Bahamian people express their joy and relate to one another.  Miller’s use of various junkanoo subjects is a clever way of portraying these heightened emotions; for instance, in Junkanoo Roar (2023), Miller depicts a rusher mid-scream, capturing the familiar extasy that locals feel when experiencing the parade firsthand.  Miller’s practice is also inspired by Bahamian master artist Brent Malone, who also depicted Junkanoo rushers throughout his career. Like Malone, Miller’s focus on brushwork and technique is very important to his practice, especially because he is re-entering the field after a 22-year hiatus.   This small exhibition is a display of Miller’s first experiments after getting back into the practice of painting.  Miller’s practice resurged after the death of his daughter, Ebony Miller, whom he artistically mentored. For 22 years, he eschewed his own artistic career in favor of nurturing her talent.  Now that she has passed, practicing art helps him feel closer to his daughter again, and as he relearns the medium, Miller’s focus on technique and expression is appropriate for an emerging artist in the genre.  This exhibition is curated by Richardo Barrett, Exhibitions & Collections Care Associate, and Letitia Pratt, Associate Curator. 

Paula Wilson: Toward the Sky's Back Door

Paula Wilson: Toward the Sky’s Back Door presents nearly two decades of Paula Wilson’s paintings, sculptures, prints, collages, and videos, with different media frequently intermixed in a single work. Breaking down perceived boundaries to connect global and local narratives, the work explores subjects as wide-ranging as the moth that pollinates Yucca plants, ancient Greek vases, West African D’mba, and modern technologies. Using the same techniques and styles to make art for viewing on the gallery wall as for the rugs she walks on and clothes she wears, Wilson challenges the separations between art and everyday living. Often biographically oriented, her work investigates the polarities of human life, including her own identity as a Black biracial artist and her experiences living in both major metropolises and the small desert railroad town of Carrizozo, New Mexico. Wilson’s work has been exhibited throughout the United States and internationally and is in the permanent collections of The Studio Museum in Harlem, the Albuquerque Museum, the New York Public Library, The Fabric Workshop and Museum, the Yale University Art Gallery, and the Tang Teaching Museum, among others. Born in Chicago, Wilson earned her BFA from Washington University in St. Louis and her MFA from Columbia University in New York. She is the co-founder of the artist-run organizations Carrizozo Artist-in-Residency and MoMAZoZo. The exhibition title comes from a poem by Robin Coste Lewis, “Let Me Live in a House by the Side of the Road and Be a Friend to Man.” Paula Wilson: Toward the Sky’s Back Door is organized by The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College and curated by Tang Associate Curator Rebecca McNamara in collaboration with the artist. The exhibition and accompanying catalogue are supported by Friends of the Tang. The CAAM presentation is organized by Isabelle Lutterodt, Deputy Director, CAAM.

The Long Run

Mariane Ibrahim is pleased to present The Long Run, Clotilde Jiménez second solo exhibition at the gallery’s Parisian space, from June 7 and until September 28, 2024. The Long Run expands the artist’s explorations of movement, identity, community, and competition, building upon previous works, including the Official Olympic Posters series he created for the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Traditional narratives of competition are challenged in works that foreground the importance of solidarity and shared experiences over individual victories. As an artist working in the medium of collage, Jiménez forges bonds between disparate elements, presenting them as a unified whole, mirroring the way athletes embody a fusion of community, nationality, family, and culture. His figures, composed of interlaced gestures and expressions, speak to the interconnectedness of our journeys and how individuals embody collective strength to overcome barriers. In La Danza del Listón, the characters features are intricately embedded, echoing Jiménez's words, 'I am thinking a lot about a group winning, and not just a singular athlete, as many of my figures are constructed with a multitude of faces and gestures that build the image.' Through the new works that compose The Long Run, the artist highlights the communal infrastructure of sports, which relies on cultural pride, global connection and mutual support. The artist's reflections on the Olympic Games reveal an even deeper narrative. The event serves as a celebration that also showcases societal dynamics, as athletes who might come from marginalized spheres in their home countries become celebrated on the world stage. This duality highlights the broader societal implications beyond mere patriotism, as people connect with athletes who reflect their own identities and personal narratives.

The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism

The groundbreaking exhibition The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism explores the comprehensive and far-reaching ways in which Black artists portrayed everyday modern life. Through some 160 works of painting, sculpture, photography, film, and ephemera, explore the new Black cities that took shape in the 1920s–40s in New York City’s Harlem and nationwide in the early decades of the Great Migration, when millions of African Americans began to move away from the segregated rural South. The first art museum survey of the subject in New York City since 1987, the exhibition establishes the Harlem Renaissance and its radically new development of the modern Black subject as central to the development of international modern art. Featured artists include Charles Alston, Aaron Douglas, Meta Warrick Fuller, William H. Johnson, Archibald Motley, Winold Reiss, Augusta Savage, James Van Der Zee, and Laura Wheeler Waring. These artists are shown in direct juxtaposition with portrayals of international African diasporan subjects by European counterparts ranging from Henri Matisse, Edvard Munch, and Pablo Picasso to Germaine Casse, Jacob Epstein, and Ronald Moody. A significant percentage of the paintings, sculpture, and works on paper on view in the exhibition come from the extensive collections of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), including Clark Atlanta University Art Museum, Fisk University Galleries, Hampton University Art Museum, and Howard University Gallery of Art. Other major lenders include the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery, with pending loans from the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. The exhibition includes loans from significant private collections and major European

SEEKERS, SEERS, SOOTHSAYERS

Participating lens-based artists include Gladys Kalichini, Latedjou, Sekai Machache, Nyancho NwaNri, Pamina Sebastião, Buhlebezwe Siwani, Helena Uambembe. Seekers, Seers, Soothsayers features seven artists whose lens-based work explores accounts and experiences connected to the nonphysical world. This invisible world can be thought of as spiritual, supernatural, psychological, or abstract. It is an otherworldly realm. Using experimental film, immersive installation, performance, sound, and narration, the artists depict how ritual, devotion and acts of remembrance can offer connectedness, bring restoration, or provide alternative ways of seeing oneself within the cycle of life. The camera lens is an effective medium that the artists have used to expand, project, and reflect on how historical narratives are carried through the body and passed on from generation to generation. The exhibition includes stories of seekers, those who engage with the celestial to call on the divine, as they attempt to gather up parts of their fragmented histories that were ruptured by colonial exploits. It involves narratives of seers and soothsayers, those bestowed with uncommon gifts. Seers can anticipate the future while making meaning of the past. Soothsayers warn, translate, implore, and mediate between dimensions. They offer language for things felt but often unspoken. There are seven artists in the exhibition. The number seven has been spiritually significant in various belief systems in the past and present. Seven has signified completion and perfection, has symbolized divine introspection and perception, healing and fulfilment. There seven phases of the moon, and seven days, named after deities in the Greco-Roman week. The Abrahamic God rested on the seventh day. The exhibition title is drawn from a poem by Jamaican author, Kei Miller titled Speaking in Tongues (2007), and it forms a mantra for the constellation of works on display. The poem points to a human need to engage with worlds one cannot touch, whilst emphasizing the limits of language to fully describe the lived experience.

A Superlative Palette: Contemporary Black Women Artists

A Superlative Palette: Contemporary Black Women Artists, curated by Dexter Wimberly, showcases the groundbreaking work of twelve contemporary Black women artists from across the globe. These artists have redefined artistic expression, challenging conventional narratives and advocating for social justice and empowerment. Despite historical marginalization, they have persevered, offering diverse perspectives, mediums, and styles that enrich the cultural landscape. Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture at Levine Center for the Arts 551 South Tryon Street Charlotte, NC 28202. Runs through July 28, 2024.

Carving Out Time

LaToya M. Hobbs: It’s Time presents the series Carving Out Time, a life-size suite of woodcuts by Arkansas-born and Baltimore-based artist LaToya M. Hobbs. Unfolding over five scenes, the work depicts one day in Hobbs’s life with her husband, visual artist Ariston Jacks, and their two children. Hobbs shares the labor and intimacy of her private life in these prints, centering the negotiations she brokers daily to balance her manifold responsibilities—as a wife, mother, educator, and artist. The series is also a powerful statement about her influences and self-fashioning as an artist: references to paintings, sculptures, and prints by prominent artists such as Elizabeth Catlett, Alma Thomas, Valerie Maynard, and Kerry James Marshall appear throughout. Carving Out Time (2020–21) is the largest expression within Hobbs’s ongoing Salt of the Earth project, which she characterizes as “the personification of Black women as salt in relation to their role as preservers of family, culture and community.” A contemplation of nuanced concepts of time and labor, the work offers an affecting visual statement that is at once deeply personal and universal. LaToya M. Hobbs: It’s Time is the inaugural presentation of the full suite of prints and provides a unique opportunity to view the drawings that the artist made in preparation for the project, which she generously lent to the exhibition for their first public display. Hobbs received a B.A. in painting from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and an M.F.A. in printmaking from Purdue University. She is a co-founder of Black Women of Print and recently completed residencies at the Penland School of Craft and the Women’s Studio Workshop. Hobbs won the Janet and Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize in 2020 and was a finalist for the Queen Sonja Print Award in 2022. She teaches at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Organized by Elizabeth M. Rudy, Carl A. Weyerhaeuser Curator of Prints, Harvard Art Museums, with Ana Barros (Manager of Campus Partnerships), Jessica Ficken (Assistant Curator of the Collection, Modern and Contemporary Art), Tayana Fincher (Manager of Public Programs), Erica Lawton (Administrative Coordinator, Director’s Office), Sarah Lieberman (Cunningham Fellow in Academic and Public Programs), Tara Metal (Digital Content Manager), Marvin Smith (Staff Assistant, Modern and Contemporary Art), and Jarvis Subia (Manager of Community Partnerships). Research contributions by Nora Rosengarten (Ph.D. Candidate, History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University). Special thanks to these students: Muriel Dol ’24, Imani Fonfield ’25, Eden Getahun ’25, Jai Gillard ’25, Jadyn Matthews ’24, Mariah Norman ’25, Ogechi Obi ’26, Anya Sesay ’25, Ebony Smith ’24, and Maryann Uduebo ’26; and thanks to Maya Alvarez-Harmon ’25, Nneka Arinzeh ’25, and the Association of Black Harvard Women for collaborating with the Harvard Art Museums on this project. Support for LaToya M. Hobbs: It’s Time is provided by the Robert M. Light Print Department Fund, the Melvin R. Seiden and Janine Luke Fund for Publications and Exhibitions, and the generous support of the Harvard Art Museums Prints Committee. Related programming is supported by the M. Victor Leventritt Lecture Series Endowment Fund. Modern and contemporary art programs at the Harvard Art Museums are made possible in part by generous support from the Emily Rauh Pulitzer and Joseph Pulitzer, Jr., Fund for Modern and Contemporary Art.

Leilah Babirye: We Have a History

This exhibition highlights a defining aspect of Babirye’s artistic practice: sculptures that incorporate the visual traits of African masks, merging the traditional with the contemporary. Babirye crafts with metal, ceramics, and hand-carved wood, adding rubber, nails, and other found objects to create contrasting textures. While rooted in the ruling kingdoms of present-day Uganda, Babirye’s artwork goes beyond historical representation. Instead, it weaves personal history and resilience into ambitious sculptures that create space for queer joy and liberation. Emerging from the artist’s own experiences of struggle, Babirye’s art transcends the personal. Through her experiments with form and materials, she is able to convey powerful emotions, provoke thought, and push the boundaries of creative expression.

Mickalene Thomas: All About Love

The Broad is pleased to announce the launch of a new touring special exhibition "Mickalene Thomas: All About Love", running through September 29, 2024. Co-organized by the Hayward Gallery, London, and The Broad, Los Angeles, and in partnership with the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, "Mickalene Thomas: All About Love "will be the first major international tour of this pioneering artist’s work. Marking its debut at The Broad with over 80 works made by the artist over the last 20 years, the exhibition highlights how Mickalene Thomas has mastered and innovated within several disciplines, from mixed-media painting and collage to installation and photography. The exhibition shares its title and several of its themes with the pivotal text by feminist author bell hooks, in which love is an active process rooted in healing, carving a path away from domination and towards collective liberation. “Mickalene Thomas’s visionary artistic practice presents an unapologetic focus on Black female representation, amplifying portraiture’s capacity to capture authentic lived experience and relationships,” said Joanne Heyler, Founding Director of The Broad. “Thomas’s work, while pushing conventional boundaries of technique and material, touches all aspects of culture and society, from notions of beauty to sexuality and politics, powerfully bringing visibility to those who have historically been excluded and marginalized in art history.” Born in 1971 in Camden, New Jersey, Thomas completed her MFA from the Yale University School of Art in 2002 and a residency at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 2003. Soon after she became well known for her large-scale acrylic paintings of Black women in states of leisure and repose using rhinestones, a central material in her practice that symbolizes the complexities of femininity. Depicting women with confident and assured expressions, the subjects of her works are often seen in domestic interiors from Black America, claiming the agency of womanhood while deconstructing the art historical canon. Similarly, Thomas’s photographs, collages, and figurative paintings often re-stage scenes from 19th century French painters such as Henri Matisse and Édouard Manet, pushing back against the subjugation and oppressive narratives upheld by Western archives, cultural institutions, and representation systems. “In Mickalene Thomas’s hands, collage becomes a way of thinking about love in a serious way,” said Ed Schad, Curator at The Broad. “As Thomas keeps the essence of individuals alive in her work—as the individuals are re-imagined and remade, configured from different moods and different circumstances over many years of trust and commitment—it is a love ethic she is after.” The Broad’s debut of Mickalene Thomas: All About Love will reflect some of the artist’s earliest inquiries into visual culture, sexuality, memory, and erotica and move into the present. On view will be the early photographic triptych, Lounging, Standing, Looking (2003), a piece which depicts the artist’s own mother, exploring kinship and care. These modes of intimate relations come to inform work such as Portrait of Maya No. 10 (2017) from the Broad collection. This acrylic and rhinestone work embodies Thomas’s signature ability to apply several layers of material and symbolic meaning into a single surface. At eight feet tall, the subject is empowered, sparkled, and poised, commanding her outward gaze. The exhibition is largely populated by works at this immersive and ambitious scale, such as the twelve-foot wide I’m Feelin Good (2014), which also uses rhinestone elements. Unifying these larger-than-life subjects together in the museum’s galleries will envelop viewers into the bold and dynamic universe the artist has created, where steadfast love overcomes political strife. In addition to towering wall works, video collages such as Angelitos Negros (2016) will also be presented. This work immortalizes the late singer and actress Eartha Kitt, who sings about the absence of Black angels in art history, reflecting a core theme within the exhibition. Through her queries into pop culture and mass media, Thomas offers a reverberating demand for Black women to be seen and understood, and for viewers to become what hooks calls “practitioners of love.” The themes of the exhibition will extend into a full slate of associated programming developed in collaboration with the artist, including a summer concert series and in-gallery programs centering women and Black and queer communities. Additional details will be announced in the coming months.

FEELING HER WAY

PAST DISQUIET

Past Disquiet is a documentary and archival exhibition based on four art collections that were intended to be “museums in solidarity” or “museums in exile”. The exhibition reveals stories told with documents, photographs, pamphlets, press clippings, posters, interviews, and videos curated. Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa ​​V&A Waterfront Silo District, S Arm Rd, Waterfront, Cape Town, 8001, South Africa. Runs through Mar. 24, 2024.

Sit A Spell at The Colored Girls Museum

With the understanding that Black girlhood is often fraught with societal hardships that can interfere with health and well-being, Sit A Spell features the work of six Black women artists who were paired with African American girls between the ages of 10 and 18. Their resulting portraits simultaneously evoke “movement and rest, contemplation and action.” The exhibition reminds us that while stillness and motion initially seem to be at odds, they actually sustain each other. 4613 Newhall St, Philadelphia, PA 19144. Ongoing.

1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, Marrakech, Morocco

Featuring specially curated content, events, and partnerships. Selected galleries at DaDa and la Mamounia will showcase curated selections of groundbreaking contemporary pieces by both emerging and established artists. The program includes events and gatherings across Marrakech that celebrate the rich cultural landscape of the city.

The Biennale Architettura 2023

Fundação Bienal de São Paulo’s four curators—Diane Lima, Grada Kilomba, Hélio Menezes, and Manuel Borja-Villel—have selected 120 participants, with 92 percent of the artists identifying as Black, Indigenous, and/or non-white. The Bienal de São Paulo was initiated in 1951 and is the second oldest art biennial in the world after the Venice Biennial, which was established in 1895.Fundação Bienal de São Paulo Parque Ibirapuera, Portão 3, Pavilhão Ciccillo Matarazzo BR - 04094-000, São Paulo, SP, Brasil. Runs through Nov. 26, 2023.

Longshoremen Local 1416

Longshoremen Local 1416 is part of Miami Museum of Contemporary Art of the African Diaspora’s (Miami MoCAAD) public art mural series, Veo Veo, I See I See, Mwen Wè Mwen Wè. Miami MoCAAD's interactive mural honors the International Longshoremen Association (ILA) Local 1416, an essential part of the Overtown community since its founding in 1936. ​The mural, created by Miami-based artist Reginald O'Neal and curated by Donnamarie Baptiste, features QR codes containing oral history videos about Miami’s Black Longshoremen and Overtown. On view at ILA Local 1416 Union Hall, 816 NW 2nd Ave, Miami, FL. Ongoing with corresponding website at murals.miamimocaad.org.

THE POETICS OF SPACE

New work by Ruby Onyinyechi Amanze entitled The Poetics of Space will be presented in a solo exhibition. She has designed the frames and plinths, in desire to emulate her interest in an architectural dimension, beyond the paper and plane. Mariane Ibrahim Paris, 18 Av. Matignon, 75008 Paris, France. On view from September 1 to Oct. 7, 2023.

The African Origin of Civilization

The African Origin of Civilization exhibition features collections from west and central Africa alongside art from ancient Egypt for the first time in The Met’s history. The exhibit allows introspection of different African cultures and eras while providing a rare opportunity to appreciate the extraordinary creativity of the continent across five millennia. The Met Fifth Avenue 136, 1000 5th Ave, New York, NY.

Strange Fruits

“Strange Fruits'', curated by Yuneikys Villalonga, presents recent work by Marielle Plaisir, a Miami-based multimedia artist. Working in paint, drawing, sculpture, fashion and performance, Plaisir creates intense visual experiences exploring her French-Caribbean heritage against the backdrop of Postcolonialism. In April 2024, Plaisir will present new digital artworks and a multimedia piece that were commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art of the African Diaspora (Miami MoCAAD) as a recipient of a 2022 New Work Award from the Knight Foundation. Coral Gables Museum, 285 Aragon Avenue Coral Gables, FL. Runs through April 28, 2024.

The Roof Garden Commission: Lauren Halsey

The Roof Garden Commission: Lauren Halsey, created a personal monument to Black lives and urban energy. Using 750 glass-fiber-reinforced concrete tiles, Halsey constructed a 22-foot-tall structure that resembles an Egyptian-style temple. Four large-scale sphinx statues with faces that are portraits of Halsey’s immediate family and her life partner stand as guardians, through which visitors can walk. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue , 82nd Street New York, NY. Runs through Oct. 22, 2023.

Miami MoCAAD: OVERtown: Our Family Tree

OVERtown: Our Family Tree is part of Veo Veo, I See I See, Mwen Wè Mwen Wè, an interactive public art project exploring Overtown through visual art, storytelling and technology commissioned by Miami MoCAAD and curated by Donnamarie Baptiste. The mural, created by Miami-based artist Anthony “Mojo” Reed II, honors Miami's first Black judge, the late Judge Lawson E. Thomas, who as a lawyer fought fearlessly for civil rights of Black people during the 1940s and 1950s Jim Crow era. Judge Thomas owned the Overtown law office building where the mural incorporates QR codes containing oral history videos about Judge Thomas and Overtown. On view at 1021 NW Second Ave, Miami, FL. Ongoing with corresponding website at murals.miamimocaad.org.

​“Reckoning: Protest. Defiance. Resilience.”

"Reckoning: Protest. Defiance. Resilience" explores the Black Lives Matter Movement, social protests and the struggle for equality. The exhibition includes images and artwork by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Sheila Pree Bright, Bisa Butler, Shaun Leonardo, David Hammons and more. Bisa Butler’s, I Go To Prepare A Place For You presents a quilt of multiple bright-colored cotton, silk and velvet fabrics depicting Harriett Tubman seated against a dark floral background majestically gazing down at the viewer. The exhibit offers an augmented-reality experience allowing visitors to use their mobile devices to connect the artwork with other objects and themes in the museum to create an interactive, immersive, digital experience. National Museum of African American History and Culture, 1400 Constitution Ave, NW, Washington, DC Ongoing.

Chakaia Booker: Surface Pressure

Chakaia Booker: Surface Pressure celebrates work of multimedia artist Chakaia Booker who is renowned for her expert manipulation of unconventional materials. This exhibit presents her signature sculptures composed of recycled tires alongside innovative creations in printmaking and painting. Sarasota Art Museum Ringling College Museum Campus, 1001 South Tamiami Trail Sarasota, FL 34236. Runs through Oct. 29, 2023.

The Now and Forever Windows

Artist Kerry James Marshall designed "The Now and Forever Windows" stained-glass windows showing Black Americans holding protest signs bearing the words “Fairness” and “No foul play”, replacing stained-glass windows honoring Confederate Generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson after a gunman shot and killed nine Black worshippers in Emanuel AME Church (“Mother Emanuel '') in Charleston, SC in 2015. Washington National Cathedral, 3101 Wisconsin Ave. NW, Washington, DC. Permanent installation.

This Life: Black Life in the Time of Now

"This Life: Black Life in the Time of Now" presents art reflecting the experiences of four artists with very distinct stories. These artists, whose heritages span three continents, delve into varied perceptions of Black experience. Each artist brings a unique perspective and creative voice to exploring Black life today.

"ARt Connecting Communities: Overtown and Coral Gables"

Marielle Plaisir is a French-Caribbean multimedia artist who has been exploring the concepts of domination and supremacy for many years. Plaisir's artworks resists harmful histories and offers hope for a better future, drawing attention to the interconnections between humans, the universality of fractured identities, and the power of recognizing and depicting inner worlds. This project, consisting of digital artworks and a multimedia piece, has earned the prestigious 2022 Knight New Work Award from the Knight Foundation.