Without Masks: Contemporary Afro-Cuban Art at the University of British Columbia, May 2 - Nov 2

The Museum of Anthropology (MOA) at UBC opens a window into the lives and struggles of Cubans of African descent in its new exhibition Without Masks: Contemporary Afro-Cuban Art on display from May 2 to November 2. This remarkable exhibition has assembled a diverse group of Cuban contemporary artists devoted to two fascinating themes: on the one hand, an insight into contemporary Afro-Cuban cultural and religious traditions and, on the other, an intense dialogue on the complex racial issues affecting the country today. 

Above: Juan Carlos Alom, Sin Palabras (Without Words), 2008. 

Digital print laminated on PVC, edition 1 of 3.

Orlando Hernández, formerly of the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Havana, curated Without Masks following his own rigorous criteria. Focusing beyond aesthetic, the exhibit favours originality and the profoundness of the works' sociological, historical, anthropological, religious, ethical and political messages.

"There is a very strong African tradition in Cuba. We inherited many religious practices from Africa—Palo Monte, Santeria, Ifá, Abakuá—and there are a lot of Cubans of direct or mixed African descent," says Hernández. "In Without Masks we seek to make new and deeper studies of those cultural, aesthetic, symbolic, and religious legacies that we share and take for granted, without forgetting that we have received them from black sub-Saharan Africa."

Here Africa / Ici l’Afrique by ART for The World, May 8 - July 6

Here Africa / Ici l'afrique assembles, for the first time in Switzerland, contemporary African art with more than 70 works by 24 artists from 17 African countries. The exhibition is hosted in the premises of the Château de Penthes, Geneva-Pregny, located in the area of United Nations and the international organizations. 

Left: Mustafa Maluka (South Africa), Untitled (Man), 2011. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Sébastien Bertrand, Geneva 

Right: Sedira (Algiers), The Lovers, 2008. © Zineb Sedia. Courtesy Mennour Kamel, Paris

Central to the exhibition is the question, "What exactly is Africa, in its gigantic and complex diversity, this gathering of nations created through ancient and recent migrations with different political regimes, specific evolution, and multiple patters of town development? Here Africa / Ici l'afrique, showcases the work of a selection of artists from different Saharan and sub-Saharan parts of Africa. 

Left: JD'Okhai Ojeikere (Nigeria), Onile Gogoro gold Akaba, 2008. Gelatin silver print 

Collection Patrick Fuchs and / Noboru and Fernandes de Abreu, Geneva

Right: Toguo, Talking to the Moon II 2013 , Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Lelong, Paris

These artists and filmmakers* are: Omar Ba (Senegal), Faouzi Bensaïdi* (Morocco), Filipe Branquinho (Mozambique), Frédéric Bruly Bouabré (Ivory Coast), Edson Chagas (Angola), Romuald Hazoumè (Benin), Pieter Hugo (South Africa), Adelita Husni-Bey (Libya), Nadia Kaabi-Linke (Tunisia), Gonçalo Mabunda (Mozambique), Mustafa Maluka (South Africa), Abu Bakarr Mansaray (Sierra Leone), J.D.'Okhai Ojeikere (Nigeria), Joshua Okoromodeke (Nigeria), Richard Onyango (Kenya), Idrissa Ouédraogo* (Burkina Faso), Chéri Samba (Congo), Sarkis & Guem & Perdrix (France-Benin), Zineb Sedira (Algeria), Yinka Shonibare MBE (UK/Nigeria), Malick Sidibé (Mali), Abderrahmane Sissako* (Mauritania), Pascale Marthine Tayou (Cameroon), and Barthélémy Toguo (Cameroon).

Centre for Contemporary Art, Lagos presents Àsìkò at Dak’Art 2014

CCA, Lagos presents in collaboration with Synergie Contemporaine, Dakar, Àsìkò, the fourth edition of its international art programme under the title A History of Contemporary Art in Senegal in 5 Weeks as part of the OFF at the 11th Dakar Biennale. In 2010, CCA, Lagos began an innovative programme with the aims of filling a gap in the art education curricula in Nigeria and other African countries, which tend to ignore the critical methodologies and histories that underpin artistic practice. Using the format of part art laboratory, part residency and part informal art academy, over the course of 35 intensive days The History of Contemporary Art in Senegal in 5 Weeks will focus partially on technique and primarily on methodology, critical thinking, and the implementation of conceptual ideas as well as the development and role of curatorial practice. 

Above: Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh, "S.A.F.P.A. (Six and Four:Prison Anxieties)," 2013. Installation detail, Chale Wote Street Art Festival, Accra, 2013. Courtesy the artist.

At the end of the 2013 Àsìkò, The Archive: Static, Practice and Embodied held in Accra, the participants provocatively titled their final project, A History of Contemporary Art in Ghana in the Last Five Weeks. Was this gesture an attempt to indicate that the complex history of contemporary art practice in Ghana could be broached within the temporal period allotted—five weeks? Certainly such an elaborate history condensed and absorbed in the space of 35 days, or 840 hours, is subject to questioning. Despite its inevitable sentiments of reductiveness, the title nonetheless provided a space of examination and reflexivity, a space in which to dwell on the effects of time and its potential in tune with the central theme of "The Archive."

Robin Rhode: Animating The Everyday at Neuberger Museum of Art of Purchase College, May 4 - Aug 10

South African artist Robin Rhode's exhibition, Animating the Everyday, a ten-year survey of his digital videos, is on at the Neuberger Museum of Art of Purchase College from May 4 through August 10. The 22 works in the exhibition focuses on the digital videos that Rhode identifies as "animations" and photographic series that correspond to or complement the time-based work.

Above: Robin Rhode, Kinderstoel, 2011. Digital animation, 2:20 minutes. Courtesy of the artist; Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong; and White Cube

Rhode's exuberant animations—created in the streets, studios, his parents' yard in Johannesburg, and Berlin, where he now lives and works—transform the quotidian into the playful and fantastic but include an underpinning of melancholy, danger, and risk. "I embrace chaos. I don't create a work only with the idea that it has to be lighthearted; there's something dark underneath," Rhode explained at a recent visit to the Neuberger Museum of Art. "I come from a culture that is very spontaneous, that has a lot of humor and sarcasm. It stems from the South African mentality and has to do with freedom, and with the possibility of imagining or reinventing another world quite rapidly...Approachability and accessibility are fundamental to my work."

Giving Contours To Shadows at Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.) / SAVVY Contemporary, May 24 - July 27

It is common knowledge that history and the privilege to write history is one of the most prestigious chalices, earned or seized by any victor or person in power. In its multi-dimensionality, it is the concoction of the real/truth, the fictitious, and the untold that makes history what it is, especially as it is the case that the silent voices in history are much louder than the voices which have found a way into our ears today. 

Above: Lerato Shadi, "Matsogo" (still), 2013. HD video.

Giving Contours to Shadows will have Africa as its point of departure to reflect on philosophical and historical aspects of global concern. The project is thus interested in casting light on alternative narrations and epistemologies, as well as on another art history. The project will investigate and deliberate on new narratives beyond the colonial/post-colonial discourse.

Rashid Johnson's Magic Numbers, opening at the George Economou Collection on June 20

The George Economou Collection has recently announced the upcoming Magic Numbers, a solo exhibition by American artist Rashid Johnson (b. 1977, Chicago), opening in Athens on June 20. Curated by the artist in collaboration with Katherine Brinson, associate curator at the Guggenheim Museum New York, and Skarlet Smatana, director of the Economou Collection, the exhibition features a site-specific installation of works largely conceived on the occasion of the exhibition.

Above: Rashid Johnson, "The New Black Yoga" (still), 2011. 16mm film transferred to DVD with sound, 10:57 minutes. © Rashid Johnson. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth.

Since coming to prominence in the early 2000s, Johnson has forged a nuanced and diverse body of work that explores the complex contemporary and historical forces that shape identity. His paintings, photographs, videos, and sculptures draw on a shifting corpus of references spanning music, literature, intellectual history, and pop culture, interwoven with dense autobiographical valences. His installations often take the form of wall-mounted shelves that suspend together found objects such as books, vinyl records, CB radios, plants, and oyster shells, imbuing them with a new, talismanic significance. In recent years, Johnson has also increasingly worked in a purely abstract vein, mining the legacy of modernist abstraction while exploiting the unique expressive potential of his vocabulary of unconventional materials. 

[EXHIBITION] Unbound: Contemporary Art After Frida Kahlo, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, May 3–Oct 5, 2014

Frida Kahlo is one of the most famous artists in the world. Her reputation and persona have grown immensely since her death in 1954, yet posthumously she has been turned into a stereotype of Latin American art. This predicament, along with her celebrity status, often overshadows the confrontational and boldly transgressive nature of her paintings, and ultimately undermines the revolutionary intent of her work. 

Left: Image 1, Right: Image 2. See image credit below.

At the time it was made, Kahlo’s unabashedly intimate portrayal of her physical and psychological experiences and her appropriation of Mexican folk art aesthetics challenged the bourgeois European mainstream. The scale and content of her work also stood in opposition to the monumental, nationalistic history painting being produced by her male Mexican contemporaries. Her work subverted accepted notions of gender, sexuality, social class, and ethnicity, and was prophetic in anticipating the broader cultural concerns—postcolonialism, feminism, civil rights, multiculturalism, and globalization—that reached a crescendo in the 1960s and continue to be relevant today.

Image 3: See image credit below.

In 1978, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago presented Kahlo’s first solo museum exhibition in the United States. Using two of the works included in the original 1978 exhibition, Unbound: Contemporary Art After Frida Kahlo brings her work into a dialogue with contemporary art. The selected artists in this exhibition share Kahlo’s spirit of rebellion and similarly assert themselves against the patriarchy as they insert their voices into dominant artistic discourses. This exhibition highlights four themes in Kahlo’s paintings to examine their continued relevance to international artists: the performance of gender, issues of national identity, the political body, and the absent or traumatized body. 

Portraits of Justice, Alfredo Jaar's permanent installation at John Jay College of Criminal Justice

Portraits of Justice is a new permanent installation by Alfredo Jaar at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. Commissioned for the Lynn and Jules Kroll Atrium of the new building designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the project was coordinated by independent curator Jennifer McGregor.

Alfredo Jaar, Portraits of Justice, 2013. Mixed-media installation. Courtesy the artist, New York. Photography: Rudolf Costin.

Jaar's new installation Portraits of Justice welcomes students, staff, faculty, and visitors entering the college with an elegant wall of pristine mirrors and aluminum panels. In midst of the reflections of the atrium's buzzing life, the seemingly minimal installation offers the college community a gaze into itself. The work's real complexity however unfolds as the mirrors light up every few minutes with faces of John Jay students, intermittently appearing and disappearing in various areas throughout the installation. 

At random intervals, some of the students speak out the word "justice" and, three times a day every day, the entire installation comes to life as it completely fills up with students whispering, shouting, imposing, or calling for "justice" in unison. The layering of reflections and the gradual unraveling of the complexity of the work reflects the difficulty and intricacy of a field like criminal justice, as well as the rigor and discipline that it requires. Mirrors, an age-old symbol of transparency and scrutiny, also suggest that all justice begins by looking at oneself.

About the artwork: Alfredo Jaar. Portraits of Justice, 2013. Installation with twenty LCD monitors, aluminum panels, TV mirror glass panels, and videos. Software design by Jerzy Klebieko. Cinematography by Rudolf Costin

Words via e-flux.

A Lot Like You | Exploring Culture, Identity, and Gender

A Lot Like You is a film about a woman's search for her cultural identity. Born into a Tanzanian-Korean interracial family, Eliaichi Kimaro travels to Tanzania to learn about her father's culture. There she discovers stories of women who struggle in a society that oppresses them and is forced to face her own past as a victim of abuse.

Winner of 6 film festival awards, A Lot LikeYou is praised for its fresh, inspiring narration of a personal exploration of identity within a mixed-race background. The film covers postcolonial and immigrant stories as well as stories of culture and gender violence.

Watch the trailer below:

Read more about A Lot Like You.

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30% |  A Film About Women and Politics in Sierra Leone
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The Coiffure Project | Natural Hair Photography

Created by Glenford Nunez of TYP Photography Studio, The Coiffure Project features models of diverse backgrounds with various natural hair styles. When describing his work with The Coiffure Project, Glenford Nunez explains, "..I want people to look at good photography. The Coiffure Project is a portrait project first. The catch is it's all about natural hair."

See more of Glenford Nunez's work at the TYP Photography Studio.

History In Photographs | Ghana & USA

From left to right, top-down:

Ghana, 1961, By Willis E. Bell from "Playtime in Africa". Source

NYC., Harlem, Neighbourhood ballet class, 1968 By Eve Arnold from the Black is Beautiful series

Harlem, 1938

"New Car", South Richmond, VA, 1938. By Robert McNeill, from The Negro in Virginia. Source.
1924 Ghana, West Africa - Prempeh I
June Jordan, Alice Walker, Lucille Clifton, Audre Lorde at Phillis Wheatley Poetry Fest, 1979

Toyin Oduntola | Art Basel Miami 2012 Series [5]

This year's Art Basel Miami was its eleventh edition and its representation of African American, Carribean Diaspora, and African Diaspora artists is described as the best in Basel's history. In this post series, I present some black artists featured at Art Basel Miami 2012.

Toyin Odutola was born in Ife, Nigeria and raised in Alabama, USA. She describes her methodlogy as, "Black Portrait: Where some may see flat, static narratives, I see a spectrum of tonal gradations and realities. What I am creating is literally black portraiture with ballpoint pen ink. I'm looking for that in-between state where the overarching definition is lost..."

Dotun (Don't Fret.), Pen ink and acrylic ink on board, 2011

All these garlands prove nothing, Pen ink and marker on paper, 2012

Toyin Oduntola is also exhibiting her work in The Progress of Love, at The Menil Collection (December 1, 2012 - March 17, 2013). She was also listed as one of Forbes' Top 30 under 30. Read more about Toyin Oduntola here.

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Delphine Diaw Diallo | Photography

Delphine Diaw Diallo is a French-Senegalese photographer, who is recognized as one of the World's Best Emerging Photographers in 2009. Her portfolio is a collection of portraits, collages, and commercial work.

Delphine created the Magic Photos Studio (below) in homage to Malick Sidibe's photo studio, using collages, adding drawings, and colours to her photographs to underline the emotions conveyed.

From left to right, top-down:

1st and 2nd: "Highness" series

3rd and 4th: "Portraits" series

5th to 8th: "Magic Photo Studios"

For more on Delphine's work, visit www.delphinediawdiallo.com

K'naan On Artistic Censorship for Success

I came across this NY Times article written by K'naan, a Somali Canadian poet and musician. As an emerging artist, K'naan gained popularity with his second and third album, "The Dusty Foot Philosopher" and "Troubadour" which told stories of his experiences in Somalia. However, K'naan's latest album, "Country, God or the Girl", had a noticeably different tone and was adapted to present a more self-absorbed, fun style which was more suitable for the radio and the top charts. 

Illustration by Jimmy Turrell, from a photograph by Steve C. Mitchell/European Pressphoto Agency

In  this article, K'naan talks about this brief attempt to produce popularly accepted tunes. He explains  why he's given that up to find his original voice to tell the stories of Somalia, of being an immigrant, of war, and of being an artist. I enjoyed the article because it provides an intimate self-reflection of an artist, revealing some of the struggles that artists face in finding the balance between profitability and artist authenticity. [Click here to read the article.]

American Promise | Two Black Boys in the Education System

American Promise is a documentary that offers a realistic look at the harsh realities that black males face in the education system today. Filmed by Joe Brewster and Michele Stephenson, the project began 13 years ago as they focused on Idris, their son, and his best friend Seun. The film follows them on their educational journey up to their senior year of high school. American Promise was successfully funded on kickstarter with this engaging video narrated by Idris' younger brother named Miles.

The film has now been completed and is an official selection of the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. Inspired by the American Promise, filmmakers Joe Brewster and Michele Stephenson created a book with bestselling author entitled, "Promises Kept: How to Help Black Boys Succeed in School and in Life". This parenting and educational guide is designed to offer strategies on how to deal with the challenges that Black boys face in the American educational system.

Watch the trailer for the American Promise here:

The film will be released on PBS, along with the parenting book by Random House.

For more on American Promise, visit www.americanpromise.org/