Review: FEMME at FLXST Contemporary
The six artists in FEMME at FLXST Contemporary demonstrate the divine connection that holds the stories of femmes in small, intimate, and bold ways.
Archives
The Power of Black Joy, an interview with artist Ariel Dannielle
The exhibition We Outside at Monique Meloche Gallery is an ode to Black women, the ones who start the trends with their multicolored hair, laid edges, and stiletto nails, the modern party girl, and survivor of a pandemic.
A Review of Soft Power, Hard Margins at table
Attempting to comprehend all of the messages in the work made me feel like an art history student again, looking at an image and desperately trying to grasp the meaning or understand what my professor was saying.
Review: Just Above My Wall, (To The Right) at South Side Community Art Center
In the discussions of the art world, it’s often lost on us how deeply personal the act of viewing and acquiring art actually is. We’re dazzled by headlines featuring big names and nearly incomprehensible amounts of money. It obscures the reality that in its purest form, buying art is about beautifying our intimate spaces and private moments.
Review of Hurvin Anderson: Anywhere but Nowhere
British-born Jamaican artist Hurvin Anderson explores the duality of his country as well as his identity in the exhibition Anywhere but Nowhere at The Arts Club of Chicago.
Black Artists Deserve Better: Thornton Dial at the IMA
Regarding the state of Indiana, I would say that it benefits from the perception crafted in our history classes that racism only exists in the south, and the northern states have always been a bastion of acceptance. Let me disabuse you of that belief. I went to college in Muncie, Indiana, where one of my professors quipped that Indiana is “the northernmost southern state.” In 1843, famous abolitionist and orator Frederick Douglass gave a speech in Pendleton, Indiana and was nearly bludgeoned to death by a white mob of anti-abolitionists. Additionally, Indiana has historically been a hotbed of Ku Klux Klan activity, (a fact that was shared with me repeatedly, almost gleefully during the time I lived there) and Confederate flags are the norm. Anecdotally I’ve seen them on car bumpers, proudly displayed on front porches, sewn onto jackets as patches, and on the wall of a frat house, just to name a few. All of this matters because The Davis Lab at the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) at Newfields is currently hosting an …
Review: How Far Between and Back at Monique Meloche
Brittney Leeanne Williams eschews references to traditional depictions of the human form in How Far Between and Back at Monique Meloche Gallery.
Review: Cristal Sabbagh: OOPS! POW! SURPRISE! at Glass Curtain Gallery
Cristal Sabbagh explores memorials, death, ancestral ties, and pop culture with her show OOPS! POW! SURPRISE! at Glass Curtain Gallery.
Review of Sergio Lucena: “The Blue that embraces me…” at Mariane Ibrahim Gallery
Any other time, it would go without saying, but in 2021, it’s worth mentioning that art is best seen in person. As we inch toward a return to normalcy, we exist in a half-in, half-out lockdown world, leaving us trapped in a sort of art show purgatory. Do we roam the viewing room online first? Do we go in sight unseen? Or perhaps we just do a little peek at the viewing room on the bus on the way to the gallery. To address those concerns directly, The Blue that embraces me… is a show you must see at the gallery. You can, of course, glance or pour over the online installation views here, but for that oomph, that deep breath of cleansing air, the show can only be seen in person. The brief show at Mariane Ibrahim Gallery is made up of six works by Sergio Lucena. Although blue hues are present throughout, as the title suggests, each canvas is an exploration of a range of colors. Lucena’s paintings all follow a similar theme: …
Not All Fair: The Black Female Nude in Art
In Greek mythology, Andromeda was a princess like many before her, achingly beautiful, conspicuously silent, and waiting to be rescued. In her young life, her beauty had been her foil; her mother, Queen Cassiopeia, boasted that her daughter was more beautiful than the Nereids, the daughters of Poseidon. When the Queen’s blasphemous words got back to the beautiful sea nymphs the enraged Nereids demanded justice from their father, the god of the sea. Justice came swiftly in the form of a wild sea beast that ravaged the coastline of the princess’ kingdom. The ruler of that kingdom, King Cepheus, concluded that the only way to appease the angry sea god would be to sacrifice his precious daughter to the monster. And so poor, beautiful Andromeda was chained naked and shivering to a rock in the ocean to meet her fate. When the hero Perseus flew over in his winged sandals, he first saw her on the rock and mistook her for a marble statue. Entranced by her beauty, the hero and demigod swooped down, murdered …