Alpha's Bet is Not Over Yet - New Museum, NYC

I am a contributing artist to Alpha's Bet is Not Over Yet, an exhibition at the New Museum organized by artists Steffani Jemison and Jamal Cyrus, on view October 12 - December 4th 2011.

I contributed a written piece to Book Club Book, based on Fred Moten's "Black Mo'nin'" essay.  Book Club Book is published as part of Future Plan and Program, which was launched earlier this year.  The reception and launch for Book Club Book is this Thursday, November 17th at 7pm, at New Museum (235 Bowery
New York, NY 10002).  Please join me for the public reading and reception.

As part of the exhibition, I have a poster image on display.

“Museum as Hub: Alpha’s Bet Is Not Over Yet” is an exhibition, reading room, and discussion space inspired by the energy and politics of radical, independent Black periodicals published during the first half of the twentieth century. Borne out of “Book Club” (2010), a think tank and reading group organized by artists Steffani Jemison and Jamal Cyrus for Project Row Houses, Houston, “Alpha’s Bet” investigates approaches to language, the written word, self-education, and democratic distributions of knowledge. The project draws upon two hundred years of dialogues that span the spiritual, pedagogic, visionary, and populist. These perspectives are reflected in the exhibition’s title that paraphrases theorist and artist Rammellzee (1960-2010), who argued that language as a social agreement is not a passive vessel or known quantity but rather possesses the potential to reimagine structures of power.
The centerpiece of the project is an interactive newsstand display featuring complete reproductions of more than 500 issues of Black periodicals published between 1902 and 1940, including The Crisis: A Record of the Darker Races; The Messenger: World’s Greatest Negro Monthly; Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life; and The Crusader. The installation is designed to encourage browsing of the materials and provides space for both concentrated reading and conversation.
Expanding upon ideas explored in the periodicals on display, Jemison and Cyrus have invited artists to create posters inspired by the American Library Association’s READ campaign. Contributing artists include: Regina Agu, Firelei Báez, Jamal Cyrus, Nathaniel Donnett, Chitra Ganesh, Tia-Simone Gardner, Steffani Jemison, Nikki Pressley, Robert Pruitt and Autumn Knight, Bobby Ray, Martine Syms, and Ginger Brooks Takahashi. These posters are joined by a collection of contemporary chapbooks, zones, and self published volumes, which explore the potential of the publication form today, offering perspectives by: Terry Adkins, Adebukola Bodunrin, Nsenga Knight, David Leggett, Eliza Myrie, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Mitchell Squire, Martine Syms, Greg Tate, and LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs.
As part of the exhibition, Jemison and Cyrus have invited artists and writers to read selections in the gallery on October 20, November 10, November 17, and December 1, during the New Museum’s free Thursday evenings. Visitors to the exhibition will be able to suggest passages from the presented materials for public readings.
The project is accompanied by an illustrated publication that borrows the form of a reader—a compendium of essays, interviews, and selections from the periodicals and posters on display. Edited by Steffani Jemison and designed by Nikki Presley, The Reader includes contributions from Adebukola Bodunrin, Jamal Cyrus, Egie Ighile, Mitchell Jackson, Steffani Jemison, Ryan Inouye, Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts/The Freedwoman’s Bureau, Ethan Swan, and Greg Tate.
“Museum as Hub: Steffani Jemison and Jamal Cyrus: Alpha’s Bet Is Not Over Yet!” is co-organized by Ryan Inouye, Curatorial Assistant and Ethan Swan, Education Associate.



Installation photos courtesy of Naho Kubota



Installation photos courtesy of Naho Kubota



Installation photos courtesy of Naho Kubota



Installation photos courtesy of Naho Kubota

Installation photos courtesy of Naho Kubota

Installation photos courtesy of Naho Kubota

Installation photos courtesy of Naho Kubota

Installation photos courtesy of Naho Kubota

Installation photos courtesy of Naho Kubota

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks: A Response by African-American artists

I am exhibiting a collage as part of the group show "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks: A Response by African-American Artists" at Mountain View College in Dallas, TX.
The exhibition is open November 15 - December 9, 2011.

Henrietta Lacks was an young African-American woman diagnosed with aggressive cervical cancer in 1951.  During her treatment at Johns Hopkins Hospital (the only in her vicinity to treat black patients at the time), part of her tumor was removed without her or her family's knowledge or permission. After her death, her cells were grown into the HeLa Immortal Cell Line, which is still one of the most commonly used cell lines today in biomedical research and has become one of the most powerful tools in modern medicine.  Her cells were used to develop the Polio vaccine, and are used in cancer, AIDS, and radiation research, among areas of study.
Not only is the science of HeLa fascinating, but this book provides a multi-layered investigation of race and medical ethics in the USA and abroad, and the unacknowledged contributions of both Black patients and scientists. Skloot provides personal accounts from the Lacks' family and their troubled histories, but in a way that highlights their dignity and grace. Her narrative style makes this book very difficult to put down, and I recommend this to anyone looking for a great read. 

I found the chapter called "Night Doctors" to be especially riveting, as Skloot exposes some of the fear tactics used during slavery in the US, and actual trafficking of bodies of slaves from the South to the North for medical research.  It provides an important context for the disparities in health care today when looking at communities of color, in particular that of Black Americans.

"Night Doctors No. 1" - collage, graphite, ink on paper - 2011

Communograph - Round 35 at Project Row Houses

My 2nd installation, "Resurfaced", in Round 35 (in addition to my individual installation "Nostalgia For the Living") is part of Communograph, curated by Ashley Hunt.  Since my residency at labotanica last summer, I'd spoken with Ashley about the progress of my work for "Uncharted" and how I could contribute part of it to Communograph.  I set up a looping projection installation of photographs at the entrance of the "Communograph" house that I took of historic floors and foundations in the Third Ward. 

Last year I began a series of work in which I experiment with alternatives to traditional mapmaking through image, movement, and sound. I seek to question the authoritative nature of mapmaking and historical assumptions about what content is important for maps, and to discover what is revealed when spaces are mapped from within.

For Communograph, I investigated the floors and foundations of historic and/or abandoned spaces in Third Ward and the immediate Project Row Houses surroundings. The resulting photos are projected onto the floor of the Communograph house, transforming the space into an architectural map that changes and shifts throughout the installation.  I am interested in mapping the collective memories left behind in historic spaces and architecture, and I view floors as the universal access point and recorder of human interactions within a space. We all touch the floor, and we all leave traces behind.

Exposed foundation on corner of Dowling @ Elgin, Third Ward, Houston TX

Floor in historic Eldorado Ballroom, Third Ward, Houston TX

via the Communograph website:
Communograph is a multi-platform art project, conceived and initiated by Ashley Hunt and organized in collaboration with residents of Houston’s Third Ward community, Project Row Houses, the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts, and students and faculty of the University of Houston’s School of Art.

Hunt was originally invited to make a map of the Third Ward neighborhood that surrounds Project Row Houses, and through initial conversations with community members and questions about what it means to make a map today, the project expanded into a framework for community-based research, featuring five parallel activities. The title, “Communograph,” was developed to combine “community” with “writing” so as to ground this research in a writing of community from the perspective of the community itself. In this way, each of the five research activities serves as a platform for community members to enter into conversation, sharing their thinking and authorship. The goal is to build local questions, knowledge, audience and interpretation for what will, in the end, become an atlas for community members and institutions.

FIVE RESEARCH PLATFORMS


Each platform acts as the initiation of research processes rather than a final outcome or “finished work” in the conventional sense, and each has been developed out of collective dialogues with the featured artists, members of the sponsoring organizations, and with residents of the Third Ward.

1.The Communograph House, an exhibition of research-based artworks by artists: Regina Agu, Lisa Harris, Journey Allen, Michael Khalil Taylor, Rebecca Novak, and Ifeanyi “Res” Okoro II; the exhibition is curated collaboratively, between the artists and the project’s organizers;


2.Mapping Community Through Creative Action is a series of public programs presented by the University of Houston Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts (MC) and offered in conjunction with Communograph, an original project by artist, Ashley Hunt, commissioned by Project Row Houses (PRH).This series is curated by Bree Edwards (MC) and Ashley Clemmer Hoffman (PRH);


3.Sidewalk Talks, a neighborhood conversation series taking place in front of the Communograph House twice a month, organized by the artists from the Communograph House and members of the surrounding community, which will be supported in part by students of J Hill’s IART class at the University of Houston;


4.A project of participatory mapping and story collection, open to contributions by community members and visitors to Project Row Houses, constructed by students of Cheryl Beckett’s Graphic Communication class at the University of Houston’s School of Art with support from the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts;


5.An interactive website (this one), which archives information on the project and an the research that we gather along the way into a searchable database of community mapping for Third Ward, Houston, designed by the students of Beckham Dossett’s Graphic Communications class at the University of Houston’s School of Art.

Nostalgia for the Living - Round 35 at Project Row Houses

I have 2 installations at Project Row Houses as part of Round 35, on view October 15, 2011 - March 4, 2012.

I was selected for an individual house in the Round, which I used for my installation "Nostalgia for the Living":

I view the body as a reservoir of inherited and collective memories, myths, and shared experiences.

My installation and Ankara [fabric] wall drawing explore parallels between personal symbols of legacy, passage and continuity, and systems within the body, such as the nervous and circulatory. This is an investigation of the physical body as microcosm.

installation of skillets and saucepans - various sizes

Wall drawing - approx 10 ft x 20ft - marker on wall

antique cast-iron skillets - various sizes

What's the New News?

Nathaniel Donnett is a visual artist based in Houston, and someone that I have looked up to for years. As my career has progressed he has acted as a mentor, friend, and someone who challenges me to think harder and dig deeper into my concepts.
I was thrilled when he invited me to participate in his project "What's the New News," a public arts project in which artists and writers were commissioned to contribute works relating to Third Ward Houston.
Visual artists were provided with news racks, which were transformed into public art pieces displayed in the Community Artists' Collective during the month of September, and then will be installed out in the public at various sites around Third Ward.  Writers provided original works, which will be printed on newspapers and distributed via the news racks.

I took the opportunity to create a piece about an issue that I am passionate about, that of surveillance and policing in communities of color, such as Third Ward.  The imagery I used draws from photos that I've taken over the years of signage in the Third Ward, new incidents related to surveillance and policing (both locally and nationally), and maps.

From Nathaniel's statement:

"This project seeks to shine some balanced light on some of the stories that have been written about Third Ward," Donnett explained.
"The value of a neighborhood lies in its people, above and beyond its land and physical characteristics. They are who make it what it is, and this project means news for the people and by the people…and that´s the ´New News,´" he emphasized.


 My news rack is entitled "Open and Smile" and will be installed at The Breakfast Klub.

"Open and Smile" - news rack, collage, surveillance cameras - 2011





For Oscar Grant

  



For Chad Holley

 

rear view of "Open and Smile" - news rack, collage, surveillance cameras - 2011



Surveillance cameras in the interior



Africans in America: The New Beat of Afropolitans

I've watched the term "Afropolitan" growing more commonplace on social media outlets, in news articles, etc.

I've been very curious to learn if this term, which is appealing because of its global sensibilities, as well as being a term coined by Africans to describe ourselves (a refreshing change), applied to me.  Me being a half-Igbo (Nigerian) half-American born in the US, raised throughout Africa (including Nigeria, South Africa, Congo, and other locations), currently living and working back in the States.  Does it include my friends who are of African descent in America and other places in the diaspora who may not be able to easily trace their heritage to a specific nation, tribe, or language the way I can?

I've also been interested to learn the end goals of advancing this term and identity.  Do the goals include some sort of cultural revolution or awakening throughout the Diaspora? Social or economic improvements? Self-definition?

These topics and more were addressed at a 2 day symposium hosted by HMAAC earlier this month. Participants included:

The Symposium features a talented group of Africans in America, including artist Wangechi Mutu; actor. musician and social entrepreneur Derrick Ashong; author Taiye Selasi, who popularized the term “Afropolitans”; writer Teju Cole; filmmaker Odera Ozoka and arts maven Meme Omogbai. They will be joined by George Washington University professor Nemata Blyden.

*sidenote: Wangechi Mutu is one of my art idols and I had the privilege of meeting her and showing her one of my collages, which was displayed during the symposium. I went completely fan-girl on her, hugs, blushing and all. Somewhat embarrassing.*

My impressions leaving the symposium are mixed.  On one hand I embrace the showcasing of diverse African experiences, as well as the flexibility of the term. On the other hand, it is difficult for me to look past the potential classism that can be easily attributed to the term. 

The group of highly-educated and internationally mobile global citizens who are the faces and voices of Afropolitanism are a special but growing representation of the contemporary African experience.  It was refreshing and inspiring to dine and discuss with the participants.

My Cells (Part 2)

"Coming Full Circle" - a score by Sarah Ann Phillip's - http://myspace.com/pharasmusic

During the first group presentation at ACA, all of the residents across the various disciplines presented introductions to each other about ourselves, our work and processes.
Sarah Ann Phillips presented symbolic representations of her music compositions. Although I was already aware and curious about some of the variations of the traditional staff and music notes that some composers use for their notations, I had never seen any like Sarah's. She presented geometric shapes, colors, patterns, and non-linear, layered arrangements of sound.
I've had the opportunity to hear Sarah in a jam session, and have sat in on some of her rehearsals.  She plays with sonic extremes and improvisation in ways that recall some of the recent performances I've attended via programming by Dave Dove and Nameless Sound in Houston...non-pitch sounds such as key-clicks, string-plucks, striking instruments, and breathing sounds.  As she described her compositions, she also includes vocal elements and hand sounds, like clapping.
Sarah is a student of Wadada Leo Smith and his system of Ankhrasmation, a symbolic notation system.  One thing that stood out to me immediately in Sarah's notations was that there was an emphasis on allowing space and openness for improvisation and the performer's individual interpretations.  She mentioned elements such as "event lines," "rhythm units," and pathways.  Sections of bold color are used to provoke a response from the performers as they visualize what the color reminds them of and its properties (such as the squishiness of a yellow banana).
Sarah showed me the notation of a piece that she composed based on New Orleans, post Katrina.  She studied aerial photos of the city and its layout, and her resulting notations included colorful shapes and symbols alluding to broken levees, flooding, the Superdome, and other references.  The notation for this piece resonated with me not just because of my sensitivity to the events in New Orleans, but also because it opened me more to thinking about site-specific works and other ideas I've been waiting to pour some energy into.  More on this later.