BLACK ART NEAR + FAR

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.

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.

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. La Mamounia Avenue Bad Jdid, Marrakech 40040, Morocco & DaDa 2, place Jemaa El Fna Marrakech Medina 40000, Morocco. February 8-11, 2024.

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.

"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."

At The Precipice is an exhibit that explores the use of color, tactility, material, and data. The artwork explores how it feels to inhabit an irreversibly damaged planet facing a precarious future and considers the purpose of art and design in understanding how our collective trajectory must rapidly change direction. This exhibit features more than 10 artists. Design Museum of Chicago 72 East Randolph Street Chicago, IL, 60601 United States. Runs through Oct. 30, 2023.

"In An Abstraction, the artist’s 12 paintings and 13 drawings will hang within a monumental, site-specific architecture consisting of five black triangular forms. These sculptural walls will reorder the gallery into new, unexpected spaces and extend the visual language of the exhibited works. Bringing together the artist’s Black Dada and Untitled (Days) bodies of work, the new paintings and drawings in the exhibition feature a variety of marks—spray painting, stenciled geometric forms, and expressionistic brushstrokes— to blur distinctions between painting, drawing, and photography and propose painting as a documentary and performative act. Pendleton’s new Black Dada works imbue his iconic black and white compositions with focused and saturated colors. Each of the paintings and drawings in this body of work bears one or more typographic letters from the phrase “BLACK DADA,” rendered in a sans serif font amid the artist’s gestural marks. Continually transposing and overwriting these two modes of inscription, Pendleton cultivates a living library of his own ever-evolving gestures and processes." -Press Release Excerpt

"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

"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."

"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

"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

Called to Create: Black Artists of the American South features: Thornton Dial, James “Son Ford” Thomas, Lonnie Holley, Mary T. Smith, Purvis Young, and other artists in the South who worked with little recognition, often using recycled materials as their art supplies and yards, porches, or boarded-up storefronts as their galleries. This exhibit brings their works to the public as prominent focal points within the National Gallery of Art. The National Gallery of Art West Building 6th St and Constitution Ave NW.​ Runs through Dec. 31, 2023.

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.

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.

“Njideka Akunyili Crosby: Coming Back to See Through, Again” includes New Paintings, presenting “a new vernacular and iconography in contemporary visual culture”. The show will travel to David Zwirner Gallery, New York in Sept. 2023. 519 West 19th Street New York, New York. Runs Sept. 14—Oct. 28, 2023

"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." -

"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."

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 Black identity is inherently improvisational, disrupting oppressive structures and often facing violence as a consequence. However, our innate resilience enables us to dream and envision futures that embrace all identities regardless of their expression. "Flaunt: Being the Dream" is a dynamic, multimedia group exhibition curated by Zola-Jourdan Savage with a soundscape by Run P., that explores the Black Transgender, Non-Binary, and Gender-Nonconforming (TGNC) experience to unpack contemporary perceptions of identity via the expression of gender and sex. In this presentation, universal themes including social roles and the way we inhabit them, cultural cues, power structures, survival, pleasure, and their intersection with race, transcend prejudices to represent the purest form of self-realization. In this context, the ‘performance’ refers to authenticity—being true to oneself. It is a misconception that individuals on the TGNC journey are being disingenuous and by claiming space for themselves pose a threat to the cisgender community. These preconceived notions often lead to senseless violence, social exclusion, and other forms of discrimination. To reaffirm the value of Black TGNC lives and to celebrate the myriad ways Black people connect performance to modes of expression i.e. how we show up, 20 Transgender, Non-Binary, Gender-Nonconforming and Queer artists contribute to a necessary dialogue that informs and expands the narrative.

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.

"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."