We love it when we can address the interests of a number of readers with a single article. To wit, the Pangea World Theater in Minneapolis, USA is hosting Ways of Knowing..., a multi-disciplinary, improvisational performance work that includes photography, storytelling, poetry, dance, and music (both live and recorded). The show opens for a 3-night engagement on 2 November.
Though this particular show is about memory and African American history, the evolving group has mounted other productions in the past, including, for example, a show addressing environmental issues, and will continue to explore other creative modes in the future.
Beverly Cottman, one of the 9 members in the current troupe, tells us that the process of collaboration and of mutual learning was more important to the group than the product or the final outcome. Says Beverly, "We find places where our different disciplines intersect, and that's where we improvise and broaden our outlook from there." That's why she calls the artists' learning process the "primary topic" of the show, while the description listed in the brochure is secondary.
The full cast includes Beverly and husband Bill Cottman, Steve Hirsh, Tom Kanthak, Mankwe Ndosi, Michael O'Brien, J. Otis Powell!, and Roxane Wallace. Kenna-Camara Sarge's choreography is also featured, though she is not in the production itself. Ways of Knowing... closes on 4 November.
A retrospective anthology of hip-hop adornment will hit bookstores 6 November, and the Internet sooner than that. Bling: The Hip Hop Jewelry Book is an illustrious compilation of all things shiny, silver, and gold. The book is part text--offering definitions of the term "bling," providing history on some OG jewelry designers and chronicling the stories of hip-hop jewelry throughout the years. Bling is edited by Gabriel Tolliver and Reggie Ossé. Gabriel is a self-described “creative mothership” who creates content across film, TV, and new media and publishing platforms as a writer, producer, and director, while Reggie began his career in the entertainment law arena as an attorney in the business and legal affairs department at Def Jam Records.
The coffee table anthology is chock-full of images of celebs for which the hip-hop jewels are synonymous: Fat Joe, Slick Rick, Lil Kim, and Kanye West, among others. Some of the written profiles are of the unnamed names of hip-hop bling-like designers, such as Tito and Manny, Avianne & Co., and Arsham A. Salam. Overall, Bling is an exploration of the influence of hip-hop on American culture.
Much is often made of the lack of discourse between the old guard and the "young bucks" coming up. This battle is constantly happening in barber/beauty shops, places of worship, and on various political fronts; however, there is one spot on the map that the old and the (relatively) new are joining forces. The Zacheta National Gallery of Art is currently presenting 84 works by a veritable who's who of contemporary American art (Laylah Ali, Kalup Linzy, Lorna Simpson, and Kara Walker, to name a few).
The show, black alphabet - conTEXTS of contemporary african-american art, is on view until 19 November. Did we fail to mention that Zacheta is in Poland? Oh yeah, it's like that. As the title suggests, black alphabet not only acknowledges the various media and modes in which artists work, but how the artwork speaks across disciplines; whether negotiating the term "black" as it relates to a people, a culture, or an artist's work.
Says curator Maria Brewinska, "Black alphabet is the first presentation in Europe of a group exhibition from the USA focused on the most powerful elements in contemporary American art created by African American artists. It will thus enable a deep and engaged exploration of this highly significant element within American culture, that at best is known only selectively, and at worst is absolutely unknown, on the 'old continent'..."
Perhaps the world is as flat as The New York Times' Thomas Friedman suggests. If so, there's no time like the present for art to build bridges, and initiate conversations, with people we would only have imagined talking to in our obtuse 20th Century.
The toughest part of writing about Noelle Lorraine Williams, working under the moniker of REBORN, is figuring out what title to append to her name. For now, we've decided to go with "artist-curator-philosopher-diva" for the Newark-based creative woman. Noelle's latest venture is a cross-disciplinary installation of work that stands at the crossroads of installation, performance, and craft, and extends her fascination with community, the individual, connection, and history. Noelle tells us she has paired up with artist Kevin Darmanie to curate this project.
The exhibition, titled Black Rock: The Metamorphosis of Home from Isolation to Connection Task Force, is scheduled to open for a limited engagement at Newark's Gallery Aferro on 27 January. Noelle and Kevin are open to proposals from artists of the African Diaspora whose work makes the link between the self and the community, however the artist defines community. Noelle specifically states that they are looking for a "call-and-response" aesthetic that will inform the entire exhibition.
A number of artists are already on board, including Nyugen E. Smith, whose work invokes an improvisational and abject future architecture in which all of the world's resources have been exhausted. Nyugen will be creating a large installation of one of his "bundle houses" in the space.
We're also excited about an entire portion of the space that will be devoted to black comics and comics that use black characters. We wonder if something's in the air, for this show will overlap with SMH's black comics show; due to open in mid-November. Noelle and Kevin are looking forward to hearing from artists by 11 November.
Though it feels much older, Cave Canem (CC) celebrated its 10th anniversary this past weekend. Founded in 1996 by poets Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady, CC has become a home for emerging and established black poets in search of both representation and communion. Through the program's week-long summer retreat, regional workshops, and annual book prize, CC has maintained its "commit[ment] to the discovery and cultivation of new voices in African-American poetry." Such voices ushered in a memorable, four-day event in New York City.
Hosted by Sonia Sanchez, past winners, such as: Major Jackson, Tracy K. Smith, and Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, read work from their award-winning books. Sanchez said in her introduction, "We never asked them to be like us, we simply asked them to be good poets." And they are--distinctive and amazing.
The gathering was not unlike a family reunion. Everyone was invited, and they all showed up. We may not have known one another, but we were all connected. Not by degrees of separation, but by an immaterial force and a mutual love of poeting. Notable kinfolk/poets who came through included Elizabeth Alexander, Tyehimba Jess, Lucille Clifton, Yusef Komunyakaa, Nikky Finney, Walter Mosley, and Al Young.
Upcoming Cave Canem events include a 26 October reading with Patricia Spears Jones at McNally-Robinson Booksellers and Derek Walcott with Elizabeth Alexander at The New School on 2 December. Both events are in New York City.
The moving memoir play, Who Killed Bob Marley? is now in full production at the new Gate House performance space in Harlem. The one-man play, conceived and written by Roger Guenveur Smith (writer of A Huey P. Newton Story, and actor from Eve's Bayou and Do The Right Thing, among many other credits), tells a multi-layered story of a young, twenty-something Smith, who plays himself, who meets Bob Marley in both Kingston, Jamaica and London, where Marley imparts a simple, yet profound message of truth.
Speed up to present time: Smith journeys to Jamaica to produce a film about a young poet, but has a close encounter with his own mortality.
The play sound design is courtesy of Marc Anthony Thompson (of Chocolate Genius Inc fame) and the videography is executed by Daughters of the Dust cinematographer, Arthur Jafa.
If you got the loot ($150), you can participate in the opening night festivities with Spike Lee and Ruby Dee. If not, $35 will get you tickets for its 5-day run (24 through 28 October) at the marvelously renovated Gate House at Aaron Davis Hall in Harlem, which used to be a water pumping station.
When we caught this brotha on Today being interviewed by the walking hairstyle known as Matt Lauer, we were afraid he might be reaching the point of overexposure. Still and all, 28-year-old, New York-based painter Kehinde Wiley has just opened a major solo exhibition at the Columbus Museum of Art featuring a raft of new paintings along with other installed items designed to shed light on the artist's working methods. The show is scheduled to run through 7 January 2007.
We're used to the painter's conceit of recasting seminal Renaissance, Baroque, and Rococo portraits with young, black men (almost always men) dressed in common everyday street wear and surrounded by the most florid of abstract filigree and pattern. The current exhibition, however, will be the first in which all the works the artist reinterprets are from a single collection--in this case, the museum's own. Kehinde set up shop in Columbus in 2005, selecting works from the museum's permanent collection and then selecting local men from the Columbus area to serve as subjects in his recreations of those works. The result is a cycle of six paintings that reconsider masculinity, race, and class through the lens of western art history.
The exhibition is filled out with a video of the artist's process installed in a re-creation of an "opulent baroque salon."
We note how hype tends to follow hype, as this project is fast on the heels of Kehinde's commissioned portraits of VH1's Hip-Hop Honors recipients, and that the current exhibition is being accompanied by not just a catalog, but by a 40-page hardcover book published in conjunction with LA gallery Roberts & Tilton. Ah, yes, we see Kehinde's PR machine is running overtime and wouldn't be surprised to see him turn up next on Oprah's big, white, softly-lit couch.
Most film festivals and film-related events focus on the heavy hitting industry cities: Los Angeles, New York, London. Corey "CJ" Jennings, CEO of Next Generation Awareness Foundation, has been trying to shift the balance by bringing relevant contemporary programming to the likes of Baltimore, Newark, Charlotte, and Clarksville, Tennessee.
Framed as a kind of "continuing education" for the general public, the group is now in its fourth year of mounting the Urban Film Series Tour in cities that it considers underserved by other film-related events [we wonder if "film-challenged" is the p.c. term for that], as well as hitting old standbys Washington, D.C., New York, and--for the first time--Chicago.
NGAF is looking for filmmakers to submit films by 22 December for the series that will screen beginning February of 2007. The curriculum is heavily issue oriented and Corey tells us he is looking for "purpose-oriented filmmaking," so it's probably best to leave the po-mo dadaist experimental shorts at home, though we think maybe you could sneak something into their "New Trends" division. The festival is usually presented around a theme, and that theme varies by the community and by the local political landscape. Overall, organizers hope to look at the idea of "happiness" in the coming year from a number of economic, social, and historical vantage points.
If things keep going the way they have been for the folks over at the Cadre Visual Artists' Grant, they may have a hard time giving away the $2000 (US) they have specifically earmarked for visual artists. The grant, spearheaded by photographer and Code Z affiliate Carla Williams and artist Deirdre Visser, is made up of small donations gathered from the general art community and set aside with the intent of helping one artist realize a personal project. Most donations were in the amount of $10.
Over the months, the art community has come forward with plenty of donations, but ironically few artists have stepped forward to apply for the no-strings funds. We've heard of this before. After all, we've seen the lists of college scholarships that routinely go unclaimed because no one applied for them. We even recall serving on committees of various charitable organizations and practically having to beg to give money away.
The original deadline has been extended, so artists now have until December 1 to pull together an application for the cash (did we mention it's $2000?), and the organizers are hoping that artists will step forward. The application requires little more than an artist's statement, a proposal of about the same length as this post, and a link to a blog or website. They couldn't have made it any easier.
Deirdre told us that they started the grant in an effort to form an artistic community that would be self-sustaining and ongoing. Instead of looking for money-bag donors to descend from heaven and anoint the same artists that everyone else is anointing, the small-donation system is designed to foster involvement from below. Artists supporting other artists.
The grant is open to international entries and there is no limitation on genre, age, or career level. This is the first round of granting; Deirdre and Carla plan to repeat the grant twice a year.
We're glad to see Carl Pope is still stirring shit up in the art world. Carl is perhaps best known for his engrossing (some would say "excruciating") video, "Palimpsest," from the 2000 WhiBi in which the artist used his own body as a living canvas for various forms of branding and tattooing, evoking by turns ritual scarification, dehumanization, and a brutal form of beautification. Now Carl opens a show of new work at Momenta Art in Brooklyn (20 October).
Eagle-eyed readers will have noticed a change to Code Z's "About Us" page over the last few days: we're happy to announce two changes in the Code Z family! Ayize Jama-Everett, formerly our book reviewer, is changing roles to become a management type. He'll be plugging into the development end of the site and helping to guide the business side to help us think through strategy and growth. We're still playing around with a title for him. We think Head Badass has a nice ring to it. We'll test market that and get back to you.
On the other hand, we're having no trouble with Makeba Dixon-Hill's new title of Managing Editor. Makeba wrote the lead feature article last month on the Atlanta art scene as seen through the eyes of a quartet of artists. She is currently affiliated with the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art and was previously with SMH. We tried to scare her off with our level of disorganization, but she stuck around and now she'll be organizing writers and topics for the daily posts here at Code Z.
We're glad to have both Makeba and Ayize on board.
We admire people who open the door and invite controversy in. Enter Overton Jones, CEO of NottaNigga Clothing. Usually we're all about the visual zing here at Code Z, so the NottaNigga items are unusual in that visually they're a little...well, ho hum. But that's not really Overton's bag.
Overton and his crew launched the line of clothing and other items sold through CaféPress.com in June as a way of initiating a dialog about that contentious n-word and how it gets used, or in their view, overused among and between Black people. They've been feeling both the hateration and the loveration ever since. The premise behind the signature phrase stems from Overton's exasperation with what he sees as people's casual use of the word nigga or nigger, insisting that the term is degrading no matter how some may couch it as a term of endearment used among peers. His website and company challenge viewers to consider themselves in the same league as cultural giants such as Malcolm X, Oprah Winfrey, and Sidney Poitier who would never be subject to that word.
Not everyone agrees with his tactics. And no, he hasn't missed the irony of using the word itself to decry the word. We suppose that's one of the hazards of our postmodern world.
Overton's company is based in Chicago and Indianapolis, and a portion of the sales of NottaNigga products are donated to the American Cancer Society and to organizations devoted to HIV prevention in Black communities.
We're skeptical. It's not that we don't buy the idea of fashion industry bigwigs from 38 countries, including several African nations, "reuniting for peace" in the form of a huge international gala event in Los Angeles this December (never mind the website; it's a wreck). It's that we couldn't find the actual name of a single so-called humanitarian cause or peace initiative anywhere in World Fashion Week's literature, even though that is the ostensible purpose of the entire gathering.
We are assured, however, that the star-studded gathering will include "Royal Families, Government Figures, Fashion Experts, Members from worldwide Trade Commissions and Tourism Offices, Top Fashion Designers, Top Models, Celebrities, Artist/Performers, Influential Leaders [and] International Press and Media." Seemingly, the event will not be sullied by the presence of any actual humanitarian organizations of any kind.
We'll be checking back to see if anyone eventually specifies any causes that will benefit from the event. In the meantime, capitalizing Humanitarian Aid in the press release actually does not count.
We've been clocking Ethiopian-born painter Julie Mehretu since her graduate school days at RISD, but really took notice when she broke through in the Studio Museum in Harlem's landmark Freestyle exhibition in 2001. Now Julie has mounted her first solo exhibition in a European venue with Black City at Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, also known as MUSAC.
Black City comprises a summary of the artist's recent work (2003 to the present) and includes some 20 canvases of various size. The current work extends Julie's signature technique and subject matter; paintings executed with a draftswoman's hands and an architect's eye. The work operates in layers, drawing on her personal history as a kind of latter-day nomad (born in Addis Ababa, schooled in Dakar and Providence, currently working in New York City). She deals with tropes of urban planning, particularly interested in those structures most closely related to politics and power, and layers over these abstract and semi-abstract figures that erupt in violence, struggle, and war. "I think of them as activist paintings in that way," says Julie. Hence the dense surfaces refer to complex civilizations shaped by war and the built environment and to the struggles for change.
Black City remains at MUSAC through 7 January 2007 before traveling to Kunstverein Hannover (Germany) and to Louisiana Museum for Moderne Kunst (Denmark).
When we think of Seattle, we think of coffee shops. Lots and lots of coffee shops. That was, after all, the city from which the worldwide Starbucks infection began. But aside from that, Elisheba Johnson has jumped into the fray with her recently opened Faire Gallery Café, and has incorporated interdisciplinary art right into the mission statement. Elisheba (that's e-LEESH-i-ba) wanted to create a space where people could experience art every day while being more than just a "café with art on the walls."
To that end, the upstairs space is primarily gallery, and Elisheba and crew feature a rotating roster of Seattle artists who use the space in ways far beyond what a typical coffee shop would offer. Artist Julia Gfröerer drew directly on the walls, while Michelle Sciubado has installed video as well as print work (on view through 3 November). In other words, it's a real gallery. Elisheba believes that this is the reason many artists are drawn to the space and why she has been able to maintain a relatively high caliber of artists that might not normally do coffee shops.
Faire also features live music and wine tastings, which Elisheba sees as going beyond mere entertainment to form part of a larger collaboration between many different kinds of artists. Faire is designed to allow different artists to come together to feed off one another's work and energies. She is working on eventually even hosting fully produced plays in the space.
Yesterday, we mentioned how many of the historical records of World War II stop short of mentioning the involvement of African soldiers. Phillip Harvey, the founder and editor of nat creole. magazine, hopes to forestall a similar problem when it comes to documenting immigration and migration into Brooklyn, New York. The histories of the first two great waves of European immigration to the borough (well, three if include that first wave in the 17th century) have been well documented, but the story of the third wave--with large numbers from the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere--has yet to be written.
Phillip's current project is intended to be a step toward starting that conversation. The group show Third Wave: The Planet of Brooklyn Transitions at the Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC) Gallery documents what immigration looks like right now through photography and painting. Among other highlights, he sites our homegirl Nsenga Knight and the photography of Delphine Fawundu-Buford for its "nuanced" take on Brooklyn that is full of "intricacy."
Phillip is no stranger to movement: After graduating from Morehouse College, he spent three years in Japan (uh, without learning Japanese first), then returned to get an Arts Administration degree from Teacher's College, Columbia University. We think that qualifies him. Phillip has been running nat creole., which we think of as kind of a digital cousin of ours, since June 2005. Third Wave is curated entirely from among the 1200 artists in the BAC registry.
Guilty as charged. We realized that when imagining World War II soldiers, we invariably picture various Americans, Europeans, Japanese, and a few sundry others. With his new project, Afrikan Heroes, Raphael Chikukwa, a Zimbabwean curator, historian, and critic aims to right this wrong by presenting the forgotten stories of sub-Saharan Afrikan war veterans (colloquially called "heroes").
Currently at the Imperial War Museum (IWM) in Manchester, Great Britain through 3 December, Afrikan Heroes rescues the photographic images and stories of the fighters who were often pushed to the front lines in service of the British Empire. The exhibition comprises new photographs, archival images from the IWM itself, film footage, and audio recordings. According the the IWM website, Raphael visited war graves across Zimbabwe, Tanzania, and Zambia and interviewed heroes still living, in order to capture their stories in their own words for the audio portions of the exhibition. Nearly 120,000 Afrikan troops served in the Middle East and in Southeast Asia fighting the Japanese in Burma.
The exhibition treats not only the historical period of the Second World War, but also the aftermath in which heroes report being neglected and feeling used or even tricked into fighting the war. Chikukwa's effort is one of corroborating the incomplete historical record with the personal records of soldiers and their descendants. As he says, "We should all remember, you cannot abolish memories."
We've noted a trio of art-related opportunities for the wordsmiths among us:
Black Arts Quarterly is calling for papers on the subject of "Innovations and Imitations: Exchanges in Black Popular Culture." This issue is being undertaken as a tribute to Professor Kennell A. Jackson who, as a historian, had always wanted to co-edit a volume on Black popular culture. BAQ adds, however, that this is only a suggested topic and they will consider other topics. Deadline 16 October.
Our friends over at UT, Meta DuEwa Jones and Cherise Smith are editing the 30th anniversary special issue of Callaloo on Callaloo Visual Culture and Collaboration. Sure, it's an issue on visual culture, but more specifically the editors are inviting writers to address specifically visual culture as it has manifested in the pages and covers of Callaloo itself over the years. It's a post-modern world, kids--get used to it. Deadline 1 November.
Speaking of Callaloo, they are also seeking "formalist and interdisciplinary submissions" that examine the life, career, and work of renaissance woman Barbara Chase-Riboud. Abstracts are due 1 June 2007.
Brian Hebert of the Fulton County Arts Council in Atlanta, Georgia says that the years '86 to '88 constitute two years; we say that's three years. We'll have to agree to disagree. Either way, they were banner years for the emergent artform of hip-hop, and now Brian is working with the Southwest Arts Center to examine the impact of that particular moment of culture as it expresses itself visually.
The Center has issued an open call to artists to participate in the juried group exhibition 86-88, and artists have until 13 October to submit work. Brian hopes that artists will take this opportunity to take a non-stereotypical look at hip-hop during those years and the years following. Rattling off names like EPMD, Public Enemy, and Boogie Down Productions, he says he'd like for artists to get beyond the blustery outer shell of such acts to get at the meaning behind the times that spawned them. He tells us he'd like to see more work of "serious substance," and not necessarily just images of people spinning on their heads.
Brian takes all this personally. "We fell in love with something that was real," he says, speaking of those halcyon days. Now he laments the often self-destructive impulse of hip-hop, hoping to reclaim some of its original motivating spirit in this exhibition.
The group show will be juried by Atlanta impresario Radcliffe Bailey. It is scheduled to open 17 November, and one artist will be chosen to receive a solo exhibition at the Center.
We just luuuuv art colonies. The whole idea of spending time away with other artists in a richly creative environment... well, it makes us all tingly. Taller Portobelo Norte was formalized in 2001 by Oronike Odeleye, Renee Alexander, Fahamu Pecou (yes, him again), and Torkwase Dyson as a way to strengthen the relationship between the art communities of Atlanta, USA and the Congo culture based Taller Portobelo art colony in Portobelo, Panama. The group hosts retreats, workshops, and cultural excursion trips between and within the two cities throughout the year.
The organization will be hosting a group of 6 artists ("mostly Californians," according to Oronike) on a trip to Portobelo's Black Christ Festival from 16 October to 23 October. The festival, which has been going on for 3 centuries, began when a crate containing a black sculptural figure of Jesus appeared in the bay during a cholera epidemic. The epidemic stopped after the people began venerating the figure. So of course it was time to party. And they've been partying ever since as the festival is now the town's biggest annual event.
TPN began informally in 1997 when Dr. Arturo Lindsay of Spelman College used his Lila Wallace grant to travel to Panama and study sculpture. Once there, Lindsay joined with photographer Sandra Eleta and artist Yaneca Esquina to explore African cultural retentions and to begin building a bridge between Portobelo and Atlanta. The October trip includes tours and attendance at the festival, and the group reserves 2 slots for emerging artists at a discounted rate.
We swear the city of Houston is not paying us any kickback money for continually talking about the art going on in that city, but dangit, we've seen a lot of interesting action there lately. Most recently we've noted that Austin artist Deborah Roberts is showing her most recent mixed-media work at O'Kane Gallery (at the University of Houston-Downtown) in a show titled Reconstruction, Reacting, Rethinking.
Using a variety of printmaking techniques and other mark making strategies, Deborah addresses the evolution of a contemporary "culturally manufactured image" of African Americans through the manipulation and appropriation of stereotyped imagery. We note that she takes a unique cut at the whole pop expressionism phenomenon by leaning more heavily on the "expressionism" than on the "pop."
Deborah told us that her own evolution as an artist has taken her from a more traditional narrative style to something edgier and more unsettling, and turned a significant corner in this transformation when she began to study the work of Robert Colescott several years ago. Deborah just won the Austin Critics Table's 2006 award for "Best Female Artist." The show runs from 12 October through 28 November.
A few weeks ago, we briefly mentioned the artwork of Githinji Wa Mbire as the exhibition currently on view at Berkeley, California's new caffeine-enabled hotspot, Guerilla Café. Well, time flies when you're having fun (or busily scanning the globe for the newest bits of Black visual culture). So now, Githinji's show, titled Every Life is a Prophecy, has less than a week to go in its current location.
Githinji, a Bay Area resident, is channeling what we've seen as a dominant strain in the aesthetics of Continental African art: recycling, reusing, repurposing. For example, check out Beninese artist Romuald Hazoumé for work that mixes the abject, the historical and the consumerist in disturbing ways. We also note El Anatsui's lyrical approach and Gonçalo Mabunda's obstinately political approach. Meanwhile, Githinji's approach might be described as "archeological". He builds large assemblages using bits of junk and discarded materials that he comes across while biking around the city or exploring abandoned building sites. He attributes the technique to a "natural humanistic healing" orientation to art making, and works with a heightened awareness of legacy and history.
The show runs until 8 October.
