Associate Director, BRIC Rotunda Gallery
BRIC Arts Media Brooklyn
Administrative Coordinator, Education and Humanities
Development Assistant
Interactive Web Designer
Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM)
Call for Artists: Emerson Visiting Critics and Curators Series 2007-2008
Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis
Development Associate
Editorial Assistant
Marketing and Communications Assistant
Web Project Manager
International Museum of Women (San Francisco)
Educations Program Coordinator
Jacobs Pillow Dance Festival (Boston)
Assistant Educator, School Visits
Assistant to Director, International Programs
Curatorial Assistant, Drawings
Museum of Modern Art (New York)
Development Director
Village of Arts and Humanities (Philadelphia)
Crew Chief and Stage Manager
Managing Editor and Staff Writer
Sales Associate (Part-time)
Walker Arts Center (Minneapolis)
Freelance Art Handler/Preparator
Manager of Interactive Media
Marketing Coordinator
The Whitney Museum of American Art
Every year, for ten, plus a year, Cave Canem fellows return to their respective cities from the week long summer retreat in Greensburg, Pennslvania, speechless or singing the same ambiguous tune,"It was a life-changing experience." Code Z hopes it is the latter, seeing as how this annual summer poetry retreat serves as a haven for academics and slam poets alike, and we would hate to see an artist robbed of his or her words. Although we rarely delve into the words worth world, communions of artists-literary or imagery are always welcome. Cave Canem, or"beware of the dog"in Italian, guards not only the House of the Tragic Poet in Italy, but also the birth of emerging poets through conversation series, regional workshops, scheduled readings and summer retreats.
The summer retreat, a boot-camp of sort, consisted of a four-a-day regimen for more than 50 writers including new poems due each am, peer-lead workshops, veteran poet workshops and readings by faculty or fellows, of which invariable lasted well into the pm. And in the midst of the sweat and revelry, fellows shared sonnets and synergy with accomplished poets such as founders Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady, Erica Hunt, Yusef Komunyakaa, Carl Phillips and Patricia Smith. As freshman fellow, Nicole Sealey noted,"It wasn’t easy, but we [the fellows] did it. And, we did it beautifully, each day knowing that it was an honor to have been invited. I haven’t known many experiences to be, at once, challenging and beautiful…this certainly was."As Sealy noted, the organic exchange between CC fellows, faculty and staff guaranteed development and communion for all involved.
Be sure to check for upcoming Cave Canem programming including a celebratory reading from Duende (Graywolf Press) with Tracy K. Smith at New York University on Thursday, September 24 and Thomas Sayers Ellis’ Race Fearlessness workshops every Wednesday at the Poets House beginning September 12 at the Poet House. Both events are in New York City, visit the website.
Nope. Though sampling is most often coupled with paying or demanding royalties, it would be an unsightly accusation for oil portraitist Kehinde Wiley or Cody ChesnuTT’s "Headphone Masterpiece”. In Wiley’s case, royalty reigns in a more time-traveled manner, for Wiley’s samplings are idealistic, even trite, when juxtaposed against the measure of status-black men posing, posturing on canvas. As inflated, stereo-hyped or subversive as Wiley’s portraits may appear in physicality and media exposure, his work demands space, recognition and ignite dialogue about the privilege of portraits, and their subjects. These themes and other forms of Wiley’s media-friendly Baroque badass will be open for further discourse at a lecture on August 18 at the Portland Museum of Art. The lecture is hosted in conjunction with the exhibit, Kehinde Wiley, at the Jubitz Center for Modern and Contemporary Art until August 19.
As a self-acclaimed anti-portrait painter, Wiley’s work reflects the European old-guard and Renaissance, depicting and replacing the subjects of pivotal artists such as Raphael and Titian-who are and were regarded as great-with young black men, forcing them in their mockingly astute dispositions, to demand the service of royalty. Well-regarded, received, and valued, (in 2005, his newest work weighed in at $20,000), Wiley’s brawny, beastie-teed subjects set on top of fleur-de-lys are alarming, but identifiably familiar. Akin to fine artist Yinka Shonibare’s fabricscapes, Wiley also ushers in pop fresh, by employing the classic or colonial. Passing/Posing, Wiley’s notorious exhibit, toys with mockery, while stamping similar seals likened to the hip-hop industry’s male domination.
Since Kehinde’s
Kehinde Wiley’s collection at the Portland Art Museum includes themes of masculinity through effeminizing titles and postures of female prophets. Blue-blooded and boldly lavish, Wiley’s work addresses de facto, black male masculinity, hardly a singular note in a symphony of archetypes. And with Wiley’s continued media accolades, Code Z hopes Wiley’s wonders will retain their knighthood-because someone claimed that the Sun never sets on the Empire.
Minneapolis-based Obsidian Arts, Inc. has been planning its six-block public art juggernaut Exploding Language for well over a year, and although the exhibition had been scheduled to run through the summer of 2007, the organization has announced that the show will be delayed for a full year until summer 2008.
Exploding Language proposed that artists use the Black Arts Movement as a jumping-off point to interrogate, reinterpret, and contemporize BAM artistic and intellectual sensibilities through a Gen X, Gen Y, or Gen-whatever lens. The show was designed to take up six blocks along historic Plymouth Avenue in North Minneapolis and was being curated through an open call for artists last spring. We note that the organizers seemed particularly anxious to install sound works, film, new media, and video projects.
According to organizer Roderic Southall, the problem is (surprise!) money. The organization is still waiting for responses from Target Coorporation and McKnight Foundation, both of whom had been approached for key funding, and without whom the project will have trouble moving forward as originally envisioned. General Mills Foundation, Jerome Foundation, Minneapolis Empowerment Zone, and 3M/COMPAS Community Arts Fund all have ponied up funds for the project already, still leaving a financial shortfall however.
Obsidian Arts is taking advantage of the extra time to invite specific artists to participate. Confirmed artists include Mica Anders, Wilbur Williams, Carl Pope, Michael Britto, Estela de Lerma, and Charles Huntley Nelson. Southall let us know that half a dozen other artists are being courted. Although organizers are still accepting submissions, a new formal deadline has not been announced.
Take a look at our staff listing page. Notice anything different?
For the last year I have been sitting at the helm of Code Z, bringing to the web what I hope has been a steady diet of innovative, informative news about Black visual culture around the world. Over this time I've been privileged to work with some of the best writers and artists of mine and previous generations: Greg Tate, Cauleen Smith, Deborah Roberts, Wangechi Mutu, Valerie Cassel Oliver, A. Van Jordan, Colette Gaiter, Kojo Griffin, Charles Huntley Nelson, Makeba Dixon-Hill, Thulani Davis, Piper Carter, Julie Dash, and dozens of others. As of today, I am proud to pass the torch to the next generation of Code Z impresarios as I move on to pursue other projects and interests.
During my entire tenure as editor-in-chief, I've kept a copy of the Society of Professional Journalists' Code of Ethics posted above my desk. I'm not a journalist by training, but rather an artist and writer, so I figured I needed some guidance in this area. The fourth section of the Code reads "Journalists are accountable to their readers, listeners, viewers and each other." I took that literally, and always attempted to look at you the readers as the real bosses of this publication. I hope that I've been able to maintain a high quality of relevant news and to serve an audience of Black visual creatives that was not otherwise being addressed. And with the help of talented writers, devoted interns, and many volunteers, I'm convinced that we accomplished that more often than not.
The new editors are Ayize Jama-Everett and Halima Adams. You may recognize their names as long-time members of the Code Z family. They've already got big plans for making Code Z bigger and better in the future, and I hope that you'll support them as much as you all have supported me.
Finally, I'd like to thank publicly everyone who helped Code Z along the way. Such a phenomenal project would not have been possible without the contributions of dozens locally, nationally, and internationally. Together we were able to create something special, and I have no doubt that in the future things can only get better.
Peace and love,
Cinqué Hicks
Created and nurtured by numerous luminaries, the dichotomies of Negro/Black music lie in two camps from the latter part of the last century:
First came the Summer of Soul in 1967, and seven years later, Wattstax a 1972 benefit concert in Los Angeles staged by the Stax label. A full twelve years after the Watts riots, the Stax crew rolled into Watts and proceeded to mesmerize. Hosted by none other than Richard Pryor and Jesse Jackson, Isaac Hayes, the Staple Singers, and The Soul Children (I Don’t Know What This World is Coming To, were but a few of the groups that graced the stage.
Aside from providing the template for Dave Chappelle's Block Party, and providing hip-hop producers with a wealth of samples, Wattstax synthesized the new Black America. Not quite country, or Rock & Roll, but somewhere in between "We Shall Overcome" and "Am I Black Enough for You?" one might find the Stax catalog and the energy exemplified by the charged photographs that documented the cultural touchstone. Captured mostly by unknown or unaccredited, photographers these sixty pieces of history not only offer a glimpse into burgeoning pop culture icons, but the sustainability and power of their craft.
W.E.B. DuBois said that "all art is propaganda and ever must be, despite the wailing of the purists... I do not care a damn for any art that is not used for propaganda." And Wattstax took that declaration to heart, putting forth the image of the Newest Negro--Black America. And demonstrating that, in the words of the Godfather of Soul, damn right we are someone. In living color.
Wattstax: I Am Somebody! opens August 9 and closes on October 28, 2007.
