Alexandria Eregbu, Plucked, performance, 2011. (Image courtesy of the artist.) Using a title borrowed from an essay by cultural critic Mark Dery, the Black To The Future Series is a sequence of interviews with artists whose practice has started to define a new generation of work in the realm of AfroFuturism and AfroSurrealism. This series has been created to spark conversation, to hear various points... 

Portrait of AfroSurreal Manifesto Author D. Scot Miller. (Image courtesy of the artist.) Using a title borrowed from an essay by cultural critic Mark Dery, the Black To The Future Series is a sequence of interviews with artists whose practice has started to define a new generation of work in the realm of AfroFuturism and AfroSurrealism.  This series has been created to spark conversation, to hear... 

The term multi-sensory falls short when attempting to describe The Colorboration Project experience. The sounds of Sid Yiddish and his Candy Store Henchmen, the rotating easels of Royce Deans and Tali Farchi and a little matzo together made for a on-the-spot improvisational experience that I won’t soon forget. In 2011, Deans and Farchi made a temporary home for Colorboration in Logan Square... 

Krista Franklin, "Do Androids Dream of How People Are Sheep" (Detail), Mixed medium collage on watercolor paper, 2011. (Image courtesy of the artist.) What is AfroFuturism and AfroSurrealism?  The art historian in me finds it exciting to be in the middle of a rapidly advancing movement that is all at once undefined but unmistakable in presence, expanding and unfolding, and setting the tone... 

If you were to dig into the corners of your closets, mine the contents of sealed boxes and locate the residual objects of your existence then pull them all together, what story would it tell about you? This was the process of artist Faheem Majeed as he began to create his most recent installation Planting and Maintaining a Perennial Garden for the Hairy Blob exhibition at Hyde Park Art Center. Instead... 

Mos Def (now known as Yasiin Bey), 1998/1999. (Image courtesy of Mike Schreiber.) In one of my favorite Black Star tracks, Thieves In The Night, rapper Mos Def challenges listeners to “separate the real from the lie.” Maneuvering comfortably in the classic techniques and processes of analog photography, New York-based artist Mike Schreiber works to achieve exactly that by creating images which... 

Installation view of Slow Dance at ACRE Projects, 2012. (Photo credit: Tempestt Hazel.) Almost everyday I find myself stopping to take notice of moments of poetic synchroneity. A crowd of strangers crossing the street  walking in time with one another; a group of birds in seemingly choreographed flight; a line of cars with turn signals keeping time together like an illuminated metronome. These are... 

Installation view of 'Profiles, Hallucinations & Tokens' Exhibition at The Silver Room, January 2012. (Image courtesy of the artist.) Somewhere between reality and our carefully crafted digital personae lies the work of Stephen Flemister. With years of portraiture exploration under his belt and a practice that is highly attuned to the nuances of the digitally-saturated age we currently... 

Heart & Lung Illustration from Gray's Anatomy or Anatomy: Descriptive and Surgical, 1858. Picture this: It’s 3am. You’re in your studio. The paint is slinging, ideas are flowing freely–almost poetically. Then suddenly, you see the color start to drain from the surface of your piece. It falls to the floor, motionless with shallow breaths, clinging to life. What do you do? Frantically... 

Fashion is an art. It is hard to come face-to-face with the work of Yinka Shonibare or Alexander McQueen without acknowledging this. Where it gets more difficult is when what we wear goes from being a beautiful object used as a celebration of individual self-expression or simply a necessity to a signifier of even more complicated concepts of beauty, identity and power struggles. Through the work...